So, you might expect that the teachers who will be teaching those children will have had to get trained up on how to do that, right?
Wrong.
There's been no mandate at San Diego Unified School District that general education teachers or school principals get training in special education before receiving an influx of students with special needs into their classrooms.
The district says it has provided oodles of training for general education teachers who want to learn how to connect with a child with severe autism, say, or a child with emotional disturbance. That training has ranged from one-day sessions to week-long intense training.
But teachers don't have to take that training. It's optional.
So, that means thousands of kids with learning disabilities, autism, Asperger's syndrome and other disabilities have trooped off to general education classes to be taught by teachers whose last training on special education might have been 20 years earlier during their university credentials.
General education teachers have suddenly been faced with students with emotional disturbance, who scream or run around classrooms. They have been asked to teach children with severe autism, who may be extremely hard to reach without specialized intervention techniques and methods. The range of scenarios runs the gamut from the benign to the potentially hazardous.
When I met with Joe Fulcher, the district's director of special education, I pressed him pretty hard on this. Why wasn't training mandated?
"That's something that was out of my hands, unfortunately," Fulcher told me.
"I would certainly like to see more gen-ed and special-ed teachers take more advantage of the training," he added.
Read more of voiceofsandiego.org article HERE.
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