Yes! We should stop providing instruction!

We inexplicably had all of our IEP meetings scheduled for the very end of the year. This happened because we had to do an end-of-year transition meeting for middle school and I'm passive so I never requested a meeting earlier in the year *sigh* (beating myself up again, over here).

At the end of 6th grade, I had decided that what the school could really do for our son was to give him some dedicated work time with someone nearby to help. So, at the beginning of 7th grade, we put him in the Study Skills class, but as it turns out, with Read 180 also, that meant he didn't get to have any electives. We did enrich outside of school (our son is very interested in pottery), but it was a real struggle to not have any art or "fun" classes.

We maintained that for all of 7th grade - but of course, in March of 2020, our kids left school one Thursday and that was that. I mean, after 3 weeks off, the schools went through the motions of trying to teach, but there was no support and there really was no expectation of any learning. What we discovered in the last months of 7th grade while the district basically ran around like Keystone Cops, and essentially just decided that no one needed to learn anything, was that Read 180 was really stupid for our son. It wasn't targeting the things he was struggling with. And it is the ONLY remediation (as far as I know) that the district will provide at the middle school (and high school) level.

So, in our IEP meeting in May (MAY!?!?) I asked if we could drop Read 180 for 8th grade. The SPED teacher was MORE than happy to drop Read 180 for our son (I may not have mentioned it, but at the end of 6th grade the SPED teacher also told me that our son would never read any better and that he would always be bad at reading. Good job SPED teacher - that is exactly what your job is...to tell us to lower our expectations!

At the time, it didn't really register that I should be telling the school that they were not providing appropriate reading instruction for his level and that they needed to fix that. Let me say that again...it never occurred to me that the school should be providing instruction that would actually help our son. That is because the schools had never provided such instruction and I just didn't feel like they were capable. And I felt like I would get push-back and I didn't want to deal with that.

Sidebar: I know this sounds like I am laying all of this on the teachers again, but really the problem is the system. I don't think that teachers really want to let kids continue to move through school without being able to read, but the only thing that they think they should do is give kids books. More books, bigger books, better books. They believe that enrichment will magically teach kids to read and it's just not the case. But I want to be sure to say that it is the SYSTEM that is broken. It is the STATE that should tell districts what to do, it is the DISTRICT that should provide professional development to teachers so that they can do better. I don't think I know any teachers who don't WANT to do better.

Unfortunately, COVID continued into the summer and beyond, and I never got any online tutoring going for our son the summer after 7th grade. We were all just trying to survive working from home with both kids in the house all summer too.

Up next: Distance Learning Sucks, But Hybrid Blows