Joanne wrote: “Teachers also say they’re promised training in dealing with children with disabilities or behavior problems, but they never get it.”
Well, in my town at least, this lies squarely on the shoulders of the administration. Our local autism organization (of which I am a member) went to the school board and made a presentation on autism and the educational needs of autistic kids. At the end of the presentation we offered to come into schools FOR FREE and train teachers in some autism basics. The school board’s response? “Gee, we’d love to hire more special ed teachers, but we just don’t have the money.” After the whole presentation was about little things regular teachers can do to help autistic kids.
I saw some of the comments on other blogs about the story about the Aspie kid who was voted out of the classroom. As the parent of two Aspies I was horrified at the number of people whose response was “the kid was being a dick, being voted out would teach him not to be a dick!” Telling an Aspie kid that age that his autism-motivated behavior is unacceptable is like telling a paraplegic that he’s just too lazy to get his butt up out of that wheelchair.
