Let Them See You Fight

Kevin was a perfectly nice person. His title was Special Education Specialist. He worked for the school district and was a part of the central office. ​He was married. He had kids and had briefly taught in New York City.

There was truly nothing offensive about him.

Yet, almost every interaction we had ended with me shouting at him, storming out, and emailing his supervisors.

It wasn’t pretty.

In my defense, it's because I was right and he was wrong. I was advocating for children and families and he was being a bureaucrat.

During most of my time as Principal, I appeared cool, calm, and collected with our team. I rarely lost my temper and when I did, I would ​apologize. But there were some times when it was necessary to display some fire. There were times when the families and staff needed to see ​me fight. They needed to know that I felt their struggle and had their back.

Poor Kevin.

It wasn’t his fault. Most likely, it would have been the same regardless of who I was sitting across from. I was yelling at the machine. The machine ​that didn’t allow me to provide the type of support that some of my children needed to find success.

This became my role in the world of Special Education. Our team designed it that way intentionally. The rest of our staff would be kind, ​competent, and deferential towards Kevin. When that didn’t work, I came in to play the heavy. In these meetings, my voice needed to be raised ​– for my families, for my staff, and for my children.

The same situation would develop almost yearly. It looked something like this.

Child X enters our school in sixth grade. Their family shares with our team that their child has struggled for many years in school. They would ​receive phone calls to come pick them up because they were being “disruptive” or “challenging.”

Often, these were kids who were academically strong in the early grades. Mom, Dad, and Grandma would openly cry discussing the challenges ​they’d been facing. Sometimes the child struggled at home. Sometimes they didn’t.

The family, like almost all families I ever met, just wanted their child to be safe, happy, and successful. By the time they got to us, they were ​almost always beyond tired of fighting for their child and had resigned themselves to accept that the rest of their child’s school career would be ​difficult.

We would tell them we understood. We would tell them that they were now at a school that was small, calm, and could provide their child the ​attention that they needed. We never made promises but we shared that we would look at the whole child and communicate with their family ​frequently.

We would never illegally suspend their child by asking them to come pick them up. We would do things by the book.

We would take time, find their strengths, identify supports for their challenges, and figure out next steps with them. We worked hard to be in ​lockstep with our families even when it was going to be a long, drawn out, process.

Our team would do just what we promised. Our incredible general and special educators would work together, try different strategies, create ​different scenarios, and measure impact. For most of the children who passed through our school, these techniques worked without the need ​for outside intervention. For a small handful, we would need additional support to ensure that the child could be safe, happy, and successful.

In order to obtain the additional support needed to ensure an appropriate intervention for a child, the school would have to go through a ​specific, time consuming, and paperwork heavy process. We would have to show that we had exhausted every avenue of support and all ​manner of instructional accommodations or extensions. We would have to document time on task and time out of class. We would have to ​ensure that each reward or consequence was appropriate and aligned to the plan we had laid out. We had to measure, track, and adjust.

We did, every time.

Throughout my ten years as Principal, we only asked for support for a small handful of students.

Each time, it was because we knew that they needed more help inside of our school to find success or they needed to be at a school that had ​the appropriate level of support they required.

Each time it was because we had exhausted every option that we had created and each time, we were met with resistance from the school ​district.

It would always go something like this…

Kevin: Giving Ikara a one on one could create a stigma.

Me: Ikara currently roams the school, mumbles profanity to himself, and threatens to fight female students. You don’t think he has a stigma?

Or this…

Kevin: We don’t want Maddie to enter high school with a one on one support. That could be awkward for her.

Me: Currently, Maddie is not on track to graduate 8th grade. I am not concerned with how awkward high school could be for her.

Generally, the support was a person who would work solely with the student throughout the day. Someone to assist the child when they needed ​an intervention, academic support, a break, a reminder of expectations, etc…Someone whose sole purpose was to ensure that their child got ​what they needed and by doing this allowing the rest of the class to move forwards without disruption.

We had to do this exercise as a step in the process even if we knew in our hearts that this child was in the wrong setting. There is a protocol to all ​of this that our school respected even if it infuriated us because it delayed the necessary help a child needed.

Part of this process had become me yelling at Kevin.

Kevin was the face of this resistance. He would come to the meeting supposed to have already reviewed the weighty amount of documentation ​that we had provided to the district detailing everything that we had done to support the child and the family, the outcomes, and all of the data ​in between. He would listen as our team went through the regular meeting protocols.

Then, Kevin would say that it would be a team decision about whether or not we would add the additional support for which we were ​requesting.

It wasn’t a team decision.

The team was the school staff, the family, and the district representative (Kevin). Inevitably, Kevin would be the lone vote in opposition to ​everyone's recommendation. Then, the conversation would become heated.

“You keep saying it’s a team decision but you’re not listening to the team.” I could be heard stating, loudly. “Well, I just don’t know that we’ve ​done everything yet.” Kevin would reply.

Kevin didn’t work in our school. He only came to attend meetings and observe. The information we were discussing was compiled over several ​months and always included detailed information on the interventions by the teachers and staff who were doing all of the work.

“We have done everything! Maddie, who we love and who loves us, is kicking holes in our walls. She’s running away from home. She’s storming ​out of class and threatening members of the school community. Her Mom is right here. She agrees she needs more support. She’s asking for it. ​She agrees the school has done everything. We have created plans, incentives, and trusted adult connections. We’ve modified, extended, and ​personalized instruction. We’ve helped Mom get support outside of school. We’ve increased time with related service providers inside of ​school. What actual strategy would you like us to use that we haven’t used yet?”

This was a version of the same angry rant that I would use each time.

Kevin would generally offer the same refrain, “We can have the behavior specialist team observe.”

I would sigh loudly.

“Fine. When?” I knew this was part of the process. It would take weeks to set up. In between, the child would continue to have the same ​challenges and disrupt our learning community.

We would do it with Maddie, Kyja, Ikara, Derek, and Daniel. It almost always went the same.

After several more weeks, the district’s team of behavior specialists would come and observe. They would arrive in a child’s class, stay for an hour ​or so, and then leave. Unsurprisingly, they never witnessed anything because children act differently when there are visitors in a room and ​because children are able to tell when they’re being observed.

Like with Daniel. Daniel, who had been born into the traumas of addiction and abuse. Daniel, who was being cared for by his long-time guardian ​who was clear from the beginning that he needed much more attention and support than our school could give him. Daniel who had a traumatic ​brain injury and would antagonize children older and larger than him.

But Daniel was sitting in class when he was observed.

He was engaged. The specialist said he seemed fine. Then they left.

Twenty minutes later the school was in lockdown because Daniel was angry about a perceived issue and had begun to destroy school property. ​He threw desks and chairs. He ripped frames out of windows. We tried to de-escalate the situation. We cleared the building. We did everything ​we were supposed to do.

Nothing worked.

His Mom came. The police came.

As soon as he began escalating we called the behavior specialist team to come back.

They didn’t.

They never saw it.

Just like they hadn’t seen Kyja choke-slam a child before the school day because a football hit her leg. Just like they hadn’t seen Derek hit his ​head repeatedly against a wall because he was unhappy with a math grade. Just like they hadn’t seen Ikara tackle a female student because he ​didn’t understand what “playing” was.

These were children in extreme need. They were suffering. We could see it every day. We loved them. We worked with them and their families. ​We wanted to see them be at their best but it was a fight to get that support every time.

Even when the specialists would provide “strategies,” they were often laughable.

Maddie likes making friendship bracelets. She says it helps her calm down. Try to have her do that next time she’s in crisis.

Derek likes Takis. Next time he’s hitting his head against the wall, see if you can get him to eat some.

These were the suggestions of people who don’t live the day to day reality of schools.

So, I yelled at Kevin. I yelled at him because our children, families, and staff needed me to. They needed to see me fighting for them. Not saying, ​“I understand” but actively supporting them with everything I could.

Families needed someone to express the anger that they didn’t always have an avenue to share.

Staff needed to know that I believed they had done everything possible to support this child and this was now a time when we needed more ​help.

Almost every child eventually got the support they needed. It took months. Sometimes, years. They didn’t get it because we did the process the ​right way or because it was the right thing to do, but because we wore down the people from whom we were requesting help.

Because I yelled. Because we emailed their bosses. Because we were the loudest and squeakiest wheel possible.

Getting support for children in crises shouldn’t be this hard. The reality is that there were children throughout the district experiencing ​challenges that were often deemed more urgent than ours. We were repeatedly told that our school “has a strong team” so we know the child is ​in a better space there than some of the other kids.

But none of that mattered to us because our kids weren’t getting what they needed and they should have been. We knew we were not meeting ​their needs.

There are no heroes in these stories. There are only very tired people begging an organization to do the right thing for the sake of a child, a ​family, and a school.

There are no villains either. Kevin is not the problem but a symptom of a system gone amiss. A system without structures in place for kids who ​are about to fall through the cracks.

When I was yelling at him, I was yelling at the system that was broken. I was yelling at the world that couldn’t prioritize our children’s needs. I was ​yelling for all of the families that could yell no more.

I was yelling because sometimes your people just need to see you fight.

Back To Home