This OP is my response to some of the posts in this pit thread which I started in July 2007. I don’t remember why I didn’t stick with the thread long enough to see some of the really angry responses; but I just re-read the whole thread today and I feel I should reply.
In what capacity was I there? I was there as a substitute for the art teacher. It was my first experience with mentally handicapped kids and I chose an art class because I felt I could contribute more to that than to a regular “teaching” type of class. I do art as a hobby.
How did I know what the kids’ mental conditions were? The school staff told me. In their own words, the kids were “vegetables”, “have minimal brain activity”, “are not even aware of their own existence”. Perhaps they were just trying to explain it in a way that they thought I would understand, but I took their words literally. Did I try to interact with the kids, so that I could find out for myself how they were? No, I was not allowed to; I didn’t have the “proper training”. The art teacher was absent and they just needed a warm body to sit behind her desk. Well, I didn’t stay behind the desk, but I also didn’t break the rules. On subsequent visits, I’ve been allowed to interact.
“How dare you criticize these wonderful people who devote their lives to helping the helpless!” OK, some of them are not so wonderful. This is what I observed: I saw (on that particular day) no caring, no love, no gentleness. Everything was done in a very perfunctory way. The art teacher had left a project for the kids to do, and the aides performed what was expected of them. I previously described how they did the hand-over-hand thing. That took about 15 minutes. When the projects were finished, so were the aides. They totally ignored the kids for the remainder of the 45-minute class, while they discussed their love lives and gossiped about other aides. In fact, even when they were working with the kids, the aides were not really paying attention to them, but were socializing among themselves. And the incredible thing is, a lot of these aides are actually parents of mentally handicapped kids, so you’d expect them to care, wouldn’t you? But they didn’t. Perhaps they were burned out. However, I also have to say, there are many wonderful people at the school, who I met later. I just didn’t meet any on that first day.
Yes, my OP was the product of my first day at that school, the product of an “uninformed” individual impression. Since then (July 2007) I have taken a total of 12 assignments there, mostly for one or two days, and once I was there for a week. I am free to accept or decline any assignment that is offered; I have never declined an assignment for this school. I have changed dirty adult diapers and undressed teenagers who’ve peed themselves. Some of them were uncooperative. I’ve been vomited on. I’ve held a boy who was having a seizure. I’ve been physically assaulted.
I’ve substituted for that particular art teacher seven times now. She has won “Special Educator of the Year” several times, so she is often away giving talks to civic groups or whatever. That first day, all of the kids who came to class were Severe/Profound, so that skewed my impression. But the school does have all levels of mentally handicapped, up to “Trainable” (TMH). Many of those kids can do artwork on their own. Some of them enjoy it. Some of them don’t want to do art, and they are forced to. Not physically forced, but coerced, like “If you don’t finish your picture, you won’t get a cupcake after lunch” or “you won’t get to go to your club”. If the aides don’t feel like dealing with it, they just do the artwork themselves and sign the kid’s name. That is standard operating procedure.
I have seen these same kinds of things happen at other schools. Last week I subbed for a middle school class of autistic kids. One of the exercises they did was matching numbers and letters with pictures. For example, there would be a picture of three balls, and the kids were supposed to pick out the number “3” from a pile of other numbers (1-10) and stick it next to the picture; or there would be a picture of an apple and the kids were supposed to pick out the letter “A” from a pile of letters. We were supposed to record how many correct choices the kids made. I had two aides and we each worked with three kids. The aides were giving not-so-subtle hints to the kids as to which choice to pick out; sometimes they actually pointed to the correct choice or gave it a more prominent position in the pile, sometimes they just said “No, not correct” until the kid happened to pick out the correct choice, and they counted that as a success. So they were recording success rates of 8 or 9 out of 10. I did not give my kids those kind of hints, and their success rates were 0, 1, or 2 out of 10, and that is what I recorded. I suppose I messed up the progress chart. It had shown a nice progression, starting the school year with 1/10, and now up to 8/10 with two months to go, totally on track to make 10/10 by year-end; then along comes this 1/10, WTF? Guess that sub really didn’t understand what we are trying to accomplish here.
I am not opposed to art classes for the mentally handicapped. I am not opposed to the idea that art can be a form of therapy for them. But I also know that in some cases, particularly with S/PMH kids, that there is a certain amount of dishonesty or delusion or denial, or whatever you want to call it, that occurs.