TDSB WARD 10 WORKING GROUP STUDENTS WHO LEARN DIFFERENTLY WED. OCT. 22, 2009 – first meeting
Att: Kathleen Foley, Jason McCallum, KaMerine Childs, Heidi Schwartz, Nancy Freeman, Marie Foley, Fatima Lima, Sandra Gomez, Susan Hart, Gabrielle Langlois (minutes), Tyler Johnson (rep Chris Bolton, trustee)
1. Introductions and shared stories of experiences within the TDSB to get support for students who learn differently.
2. Summarized many commonalities in the experiences and identified areas to explore:
- Teacher Training- Acknowledged the enormous workload of teachers with a range of students and often teaching split grades. Most teachers lack training to enable him/her to identify learning issues and/or to implement various teaching methods/tools appropriate to individual learning styles. The quantitative-side of human resources: We’ve lost an SNA at our school even though the need was for more SNA’s. Well trained-teachers and SNA’s need to have the right ratio of student to adult in order to implement a program.
- Guidelines/Practices – There is no easy way to find out processes, guidelines, practices, resources to navigate the TDSB system. Criteria are not clearly defined. Causes high level of confusion and frustration to students and parents. (What are the guidelines for determining who gets tested? If they can’t read? Write? Who has resources? What are the steps to identify, get tested, get accommodations, get resources (computers, software, learning aids), training to use, etc. Even when identify problem, no access to resources.
- General Information – Where are the programs for kids who learn differently, how can we search them to know which options best suit student? Who is the Special Ed coordinator in my area? Who decides which learning programs are or are not used in the TDSB? And why? How does the public have access to effecting change regarding Board policies/priorities? What are the results/products of SEAC? Are recommendations implemented?
- Coordinated support for students – Every year parents have to start all over. “My kid has an IEP…” no transition meetings from year to year, school to school. Parents may not be consulted regarding use of learning aids. Assessment may recommend laptop but not made available. Free TDSB software but no one knows about it, no one has password (kids with memory issues!), staff not trained.
- Ombudsman – paid position(s) that would take up individual issues – not a Board person.
3. The group discussed next steps and agreed that we would work at 2 levels.
First we would try to get a better idea of what work has been done, recommendations on the table (if Special Ed will ever get moved up on the Agenda at the Board level), to determine if we should be advocating for any particular big picture issue (like teacher training that would benefit students system-wide).
Secondly we would explore coordinating Information Sessions that would be open to everyone that would share information (Educating parents to navigate the TDSB, have presentations by specialists on relevant topics such as assistive technology) and making sure as much information is uploaded to the Ward 10 website so it accessible to everyone (like a list of all schools with supports for students where you can search by keywords to match student profile with program)
Other useful info:
Storyline online: Thank you Mr. Falker,by Patricia Polacco
Autobiographical story of how a teacher helped a student who couldn’t read succeed.
TDSB Communications Dept. tel: 416.395.2721 – to order any documents from the Board.
Meeting ended at 8:35pm. Thanks to Dovercourt School for meeting space.
Possible next meeting date: Thurs Dec 3.