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Special Education Students, Parents Welcome More 'Normal' School Year

Family photo outdoors
courtesy
Mollie and Jacob Emery with their children, Aedan and Isla.

Mollie Emery of Bloomington has a young son, Aedan. He was set to start kindergarten at Northpoint Elementary School last August.

Emery said her son does well academically, but he needs structure.

“It’s difficult for Aedan to regulate his feelings and his behaviors, whether that is excitement or whether that is sadness or anger,” Emery said. “He’s just a very intense kiddo.”

Aedan was signed up for Unit 5's special education services to get help with motor skills and speech; he was non-verbal before he got speech therapy through Easterseals.

Because of the pandemic, Aedan started kindergarten spending much of his time in front of a computer screen at home. It did not go well, even with four days a week of hybrid instruction. The Emerys hoped remote learning would be short term, but COVID-19 cases surged in McLean County. By November, Unit 5 went all remote.

Mollie Emery said that's when it was time to get out.

“I think that’s when my husband and I hit the wall (thinking) this can’t go on. This is not sustainable,” she said. “Our child is not sleeping, he’s regressing. We are losing skills that took years to accomplish.”

The Emerys were not alone.

The last school year was hard for many students because of remote and hybrid learning during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. But it was especially tough on students who need special education services.

As pandemic restrictions forced educators to completely re-imagine how they provide instruction, Mollie Emery said children like Aeden fell through the cracks. In Unit 5, only special ed students with more intensive needs got in-person learning for the full year.

“I don’t think history will be super-friendly to the way our special ed students were treated during this (pandemic)."
Mollie Emery

The district's director of special education, Carrie Chapman, said she wanted all special education students in person. That's nearly 2,200 districtwide. Chapman was told she could if there were enough teachers and other staff willing to work in-person during the pandemic.

Carrie Chapman
Unit 5
Carrie Chapman

“I could reach out to staff and ask them if they were willing to come in and do that,” Chapman explained. “If I didn’t have staff who were willing, then there wasn’t any way for me to bring those students back.”

Chapman said many did agree to teach in-person, but not enough to bring every special ed student back to the classroom, as some were concerned about the health risks.

She noted some special ed students aren't able to wear a mask and there was no COVID vaccine available back then. As a result, students in Level 1 Special Services, those who needed less support, stayed hybrid for a bulk of the school year.

Lindsey Dickinson, president of the Unit Five Education Association teachers union, said the district was unable to guarantee safe working conditions at the time of those discussions.

"When the district was able to put proper mitigations in place, we happily returned to in-person teaching to serve our students and community," Dickinson said. "Educators in Unit 5 are always willing to do what is in the best interest of students."

Chapman said she understands the difficulties some parents had watching their children struggle with online learning, but she said teachers did their best to build structure and flexibility into the curriculum. She also said in-person teaching doesn't always run as smoothly as they might imagine.

“What I had to remind staff and sometimes parents is that we see that in the classroom as well where it’s just not going to work for this student,” Chapman said. “We don’t send them home, obviously. We work to build other supports in the classroom."

Modified instruction

Despite the dramatically different format, leaders in special education in Bloomington-Normal say students did much better in remote learning than you might think.

Brandon Thornton
Lyndsie Schlink
Brandon Thornton

Brandon Thornton teaches special ed English and math at Bloomington High School. Thornton said he saw a big increase in the number of kids who were on the verge of failing in the spring, adding remote learning caused anxiety for some students. He said it was especially hard for children who didn't have a true learning space at home, away from distractions.

Thornton said BHS teachers dropped curriculum that he said wasn’t serving kids and drilled down on what was most relevant.

“These are the most important things for English. This is the most important content for math that will get them to the next level of math. We cut out the things that didn’t necessarily need to be done,” Thornton said.

Thornton said that greater reinforcement of the most important content helped students recover and avoid learning loss. He said the modified format also revealed a truth for him about individual student attention.

“I think the power of assistance is way more important than what we as educators have believed,” Thornton beamed. “We were kind of forced to abandon homework in some classes at least. We were doing a lot of the work in class.”

But Thornton said he doesn't see teachers dropping homework any time soon.

Other options

Mollie Emery's son Aedan dropped kindergarten for a time last year because she said remote learning wasn't helping. The Emerys enrolled him in a private preschool so he could be around other kids until Unit 5 brought all students back to the classroom.

Emery gushed that Aedan was like a different kid when he got back into the classroom.

“I am almost going to cry. You could ask his principal. You could ask his therapist, his teachers. Between February and May, it was phenomenal what he accomplished,” Emery said. “As happy as it makes you, it makes you sad to think how much further he could be along.”

As Aeden starts first grade, his mom hopes her son can move into general education by the time he gets out of grade school.

Emery said she doesn't blame Unit 5 for the struggles Aeden faced last year, but said she had to fight to get him legally mandated help. It amounted to two hours of in-person instruction and therapy each week.

“I don’t think history will be super-friendly to the way our special ed students were treated during this (pandemic),” Emery said. “They have rights that don’t dissipate because of COVID and those rights were definitely violated.”

Emery said it worked out for Aedan because she was able to get him in a private preschool. But she said many other parents don't have that option. She said that's what keeps her up at night.

Thornton said even though school is much closer to normal this year, we could all use grace and patience.

Eric Stock is the News Director at WGLT. You can contact Eric at ejstoc1@ilstu.edu.
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