Real Reform or Placation

“…if more teachers knew about the… policies established as a result of the Whitehead case… they would be more empowered to speak out and utilize those policies” (Motel Special Ed)

I began teaching in 2003 as an ESE teacher. I taught special education students my first four years of teaching. There were many times I questioned how things were done or how accommodations were implemented. For example, at times a student’s Individual Education Plan (IEP) would call for a small learning environment (SLE). However, their were no resource classes with less than fifteen students. Somehow fifteen students in a classroom didn’t seem like a small learning environment.

So, I inquired of more experienced teachers as to what was considered a small learning environment. They said three or four students, and this is what I had thought that term meant—it sounds more reasonable than fifteen students. I would follow up my inquiry with the observation that IEPs were calling for an SLE but those students were placed in classes with fifteen students in them. The other teacher’s eyebrows would rise slightly and then he or she would proceed to say that it is in the eye of the beholder or some such retort.

The small learning environment quandary was only one of several observations I made as a “green” ESE teacher. I find it interesting that had I known about the Whitehead case I would have been much more likely to pursue my inquiries when I discovered inconsistencies with the way accommodations were implemented. I guess that is precisely why to this day the Whitehead case all but does not exist unless one stumbles upon it by accident.