Dr. Frank Einstein (10 page)

      Community-based instructio
n facilitates chronological age appropriate activities that can be addressed in home, school or city community environments. As the student ages more emphasis should be placed on Community Based Instruction as the student prepares for leaving the school support systems to adult life in the community. The community often becomes the primary educational environment as student’s age. Community Based Instruction provides the availability of age-appropriate instructional environments for students eighteen to twenty one years of age that state law requires. Teaching functional skills will often be a bridge for individuals with disabilities to their communities.

       A key to Community Based Instruction is to offer experiences across settings and time peri
ods to promote generalization. Community-Based Instruction enhances community inclusion with students without disabilities, employers, family and other community members, ultimately enhancing an individual’s quality of life.

     Community-based instruction occurs routinely, on a regularly scheduled basis (i.e., weekly, twice weekly, daily, etc.) and must be specifically related to
Individual Education Plans objectives.

     What about Academics? Reading, writing, language, math and science subjects are incorporat
ed into functional activities. Students learn skills such as; money handling, counting change, how to pay for goods and services, banking, budgeting, time concepts, time management, planning and scheduling. Reading and writing skills are taught to enable students to use functional materials such as cookbooks, directions, applications, maps, schedules, planners, environmental signs and work related information.

      Students learn to use adaptive aids such as checklists, cue cards, picture symbols, and/or augmentative speech devices to assist them in successfully accessing community activities and resources. Community Based Instruction should not replace classes but complement them to provi
de a wide array of experiences. This is how I taught my moderate to severe special education class:  During the lesson, I teach the concept of the lesson.  I apply the concept to a real world situation.  I use guided practice as I guide the students to apply the concept to the activity.  I have the students teach the concept to someone else.

      The MOVE Program is designed to help families, educators and therapists work together toward goals specific to the individual student needs. I enabled Yantee to use a walker.  She crumpled up constantly in her wheelchair.  Yet she stretched out and took steps in this customed made walker. MOVE is activity-based giving the student many opportunities to improve sitting, standing and walking skills while participating in activities of daily living. Without a consistent, long term program, students who grow older and larger often lose physical skills and develop deformities.  I wanted to get a walker for Ruby but the principal blocked it.  He told the parents it would be harmful.  This he said despite the fact the district physical therapist recommended it for her. The primary goal of MOVE is to educate all people involved in the life of the individual with disabilities. I tried to get walkers for the other students but the principal blocked it .These people are supposed to become part of a lifelong teaching and learning process. MOVE includes six steps for testing, setting goals, analyzing needed skills, providing support, reducing support and teaching the skills. MOVE is not a therapy but includes therapy services as a vital part of the program.

      Conductive Education was first developed by Dr. Andras Peto in Budapest, Hungary in the late nineteen forties. At that time, Hungarian children who could not walk independently (without walkers or aides) were not allowed to attend school. Dr. Peto believed that the majority of children with cerebral palsy could learn to walk if they had the proper instruction, motivation and opportunity to practice skills throughout the day. The ultimate goal for these children was to walk without any help or equipment so they could attend normal school. Vygotskian principles of teaching were combined with strong experiential understanding of psychological and other factors in disability. Children lived in an institution and were expected to take responsibility for motor movement from the time they awoke in the morning until the time they went to bed at night. Emphasis was placed on group activities and socialization within the group. Specialists from several disciplines were trained to become conductors and they shared equally in instructing the students. Conductive Education is not a therapy but some conductors have therapy backgrounds. Traditional motor improvement programs include a wide variety of approaches and service delivery models but share in some basic concepts. Students must qualify for services provided by a specialist such as a physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech language pathologist, adapted physical education and/or special education teacher unless the family is paying for the services. Therapy services are often provided in isolation on a one-to-one basis. School systems use the Individual Education Plans I.E.P. process to coordinate the services.  I have included both Community Based Instruction and MOVE in an Individual Education Plans. The therapeutic methods used by the specialist depend upon the experience, training and beliefs of the individual responsible for the program. The most common foundation for therapy is Neuro-developmental Treatment (NDT) developed by Karl and Berta Bobath in nineteen forty three. Neuro-developmental Treatment is multifaceted and the implementation of the program is dependent upon how current the training is and the amount of training. In most cases, goals are set by the professional and shared with the parents and other professionals. Gross motor development is often based on the developmental model (skills are taught in the sequence learned by typical infants and children.)

       MOVE and Conductive Education also have much in common. Both programs teach skills while the students participate in activities of daily living. Both programs expect initiative and active participation from the student. When fully implemented, both programs have high success rates for students who were previously not making progress. Neither program promises a cure or miracles. Both programs strive for the highest degree of independence and dignity for the student involved. Both are educational rather than therapy programs and both are top-down models rather than bottom-up or developmental models.  This is why it is so tragic that I
could not do this for all my students.

     
Virtually every person is capable of learning and improving. We simply need to find the best ways to teach. Components of different programs can be combined to produce the best learning opportunities for individual students. If you are concentrating on teaching a skill to a student, you should see some measurable improvement within a two week period. If you see no change, you need to change your teaching methods. Generally, there are many ways to achieve a goal—in other words; there are many paths to the barn. The bottom line, however, is get to the barn.

     
The first year I worked at Elizabeth Learning Center the principal accused me of leaving my students unsupervised while i was on duty. He accused of this at my stull evaluation.   This citation made my evaluation unsatisfactory.  Unsatisfactory means termination.  His accusation was that I was eating in the staff cafeteria.  At the school bell to begin school, I remained still in   the cafeteria.  Only it did not happened that way.

       I was in my classroom before the bell.  After the Stull evaluation, assisted by the union, I got witnesses to disprove his allegations.  My assistant wrote that I had been there before the bell. Also a fellow teacher wrote that I left the cafeteria before the bell.  Thusly I enabled the evaluation to be thrown out.  A thrown out evaluation equated a satisfactory evaluation.  The next year the principal thought he did not need a stull because he threw me out of my class. Never thinking i could achieve tenure. Again no stull is a good stull.   

                             
                Chapter seventeen

     
I was supposed to die at birth. So I have no place in this world.

       I sat at a long conference table in the office of the attorneys that represented the Los Angeles Unified School district.  I looked out of the office's huge windows to crowded skyscrapers.  This conference room bored me.

       I sat next to my attorney. Across the table were the district attorneys.

       “Mr. Berg,” began one of these attorneys, “We know that you have schizophrenia.”

       “No I don't. My wife does, but I don't. I have been dealing with her schizophrenia for seven years.”

       “You have been diagnosed this by a Dr. Demartian.”  This guy was the one delusional if he thought I had schizophrenia.  I have cerebral palsy.  

       “He never told me that.  Anyway, I don't hear voices.  I've never been hospitalized for it. I’ve never taken psychotropic drugs--”

       “Well, we'll going to the arbitration board to remove you from the position as teacher. We will succeed in this because of your diagnoses of schizophrenia.  Then the district will proceed onto the Credentialing Commission and have your credentials revoked by them.    

      “However we want to offer an alternative.  If you agree to leave the district we will give you
forty thousand dollars.  In addition, we will pay your attorney for the service here today.  Also your attorney can assure you that you can get a disability pension from the State Retired Teacher System.”

      My attorney encouraged me to accept this offer. Year after year, the district brought trumped up charges against my job performance.  United Teachers of Los Angeles, UTLA, (my union) prove the charges always to be false.  I knew that this charge of having schizophrenia also to be a lie and I could win at the arbitration board. But the next year I would have to fight another false charge.  Then another district attack would happen to me. And another.   I did not know if I could take these constant attacks anymore.

  
   As I considered this offer I imagined my opponents across the table with spastic cerebral palsy.  Then, they would sit there saying “I hate myself! I hate myself!”

                                           Chapter    Eighteen

         Yet if I died at birth I would not be able to help people or serve God on Earth.

       All that year my principal would come in my classroom and sabotage my class.  Doing so, she would end up breaking state law.  In protest I just stopped teaching.  I watch TV during class time because what she wanted me to teach was illegal for my student. I had a Moderate to Severe Special Education class.  For the four years that I taught there its administrators were hostile to me.  This was a Learning Center School and having a Moderate to Severe Special Education class was contrary to its mission.  Also the administrators thought my disability was inappropriate for being a teacher.  Of course saying this was illegal.

       With my seventeen year old student the school had illegally changed her
Individual Education Plans from the mode she had been taught for twelve years ever since kindergarten. They made this change without any assessments.  I wouldn't teach it because doing so without any assessments was illegal. I racked up a lot absent days because of this.  But none of this could be charged against me because the principal had broken the law. So they somehow got the psychiatrist to falsely diagnose me as schizophrenic. Or maybe the psychiatrist diagnosed me covertly to get a higher fee from the insurance company. 

      After scouring through my life, they found something that they could use against me.

      I was tire of fighting. Actually, they were offering me over a million dollars during my lifetime.  So I gave up and settled with them.

                                          Chapter Nine
teen

       With nothing to do I tried blogging.   So I sat at my desk.   To formulate my ideas I would talk to myself out loud. If I was about to write an article I would first think it out loud.  I have been criticized in the past that my voice's volume when thinking out loud is too high. Because of cerebral palsy I lack the control of the loudness of my voice.  After making these thoughts i wrote this down.