Several years back I had a teacher go on a maternity leave. The teaching assistant in the room was a certified teacher who had done a nice job and I felt earned herself the opportunity to take over the position.
Ms. Cook was a pretty young lady who was just starting out her career, and as could be expected, she had some nerves about her new responsibilities. During her first week in the teaching position came the first IEP meeting she was responsible for attending.
Mrs. Miller was pretty much batshit crazy. She was the student's grandmother who was raising the boy in the absence of his mother who was out of the picture for reasons unknown. Mrs. Miller was also one of these parents who had a terminal disease yet never actually died or appeared to decline in anyway. However, every time we had to call her on a behavior issue we would be reminded of her illness. I'm certainly not a doctor and hate to make humor out of someones sickness, but I seem to have two or three medical miracles on my parent list every school year.
On the day of the IEP we all packed into one of those, way too small, horribly uncomfortable conference rooms. The IEP process is pretty canned, with each professional in the room receiving an organized point in the meeting to share on the students progress or lack thereof. Not today though.
Mrs. Miller kept interrupting- not protest or even discuss anything related to the comments of the staff, rather to make these rambling speeches about how children need love to grow or how schools couldn't replace churches. At one point in the middle of the social worker's update on the boy (as we neared the end of hour number one), grandma interrupts again.
"Excuse me, but you have to understand, when you've got that pipe in your mouth, and all you want is another hit, and you're gettin' it on....!" At that point she offered a few quite animated hip thrusts (previously unseen in school IEPs to my knowledge), looked Ms. Cook who must have thought she signed for the circus (no comment), slapped her on the knee and said, "You know what I'm talking about girl!"
No child left behind, right?
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