Leslie Newman writes in her report that she is satisfied staff made all “reasonable efforts” to accommodate Grayson and “that some of them have suffered significant physical and emotional harm in the course of these accommodation efforts.”. When the group surveyed principals if they had ever requested children stay home, she was surprised at how widespread the practice is. At first, administrators asked Ms. Kahn to pick up Grayson early or keep him home for several days. And he thought teaching one Grayson was bad! The head of Canada’s largest school district, the Toronto District School Board, says it, too, has started tracking how many children are being excluded, and is asking principals to work with superintendents before requesting a child stay home. Tina McGee’s nine-year-old daughter, Kherrigan, has severe autism, medical issues and a severe intellectual disability. Ms. Kahn had hoped the school could accommodate Grayson’s developmental disorder – he was diagnosed with autism in the summer of 2017, and while he’s verbal and can impressively add figures in his head, he becomes aggressive if rules change or the work becomes too difficult. Read our, I'm a print subscriber, link to my account, Avoid the use of toxic and offensive language. There are only so many staff.”, John Malloy, head of the Toronto District School Board, says the board wants to accommodate students with special needs 'wherever possible.'. Ms. Kidder says she was “astounded” by the response: 48 per cent of elementary-school principals and 40 per cent of high-school principals reported asking that a student with special needs not attend school for the full day, citing insufficient classroom support. The Upper Grand District School Board, for its part, wouldn’t comment on Grayson’s case, but also said it is strongly committed to supporting students with special needs while balancing the safety of students and staff. Stephen is a camp, gay member of the class. The Kahns embrace the idea of inclusive education and believe Grayson should learn alongside his neighbourhood peers. For now, at least, they’re keeping Grayson at home, and up until recently, the school district was providing him with home instruction. What about his education?”. He was expelled from school for striking an educational assistant. We work. Teachers' unions say that violent behaviour in classrooms is disrupting teaching and student learning. This is not acceptable.”. She was told that Connor could attend the school’s breakfast club every morning for the first few months. The provincial government doesn’t track how many students are attending for only part of the day, and the New Brunswick Teachers' Association president, George Daley, says while the model is important, it has been “difficult.” He says teachers need more supports and there needs to be flexibility so students with behavioural issues can spend time outside the regular classroom learning different life skills. Over the past few decades, schools across Canada have moved toward a model of inclusive education, but many are struggling to find the best ways to include children with complex needs in regular classrooms. The family has four other children with behavioural issues, all of whom have been accommodated by the school. He can’t be here.’”. The family’s experience highlights the growing challenges that parents – and educators – face when it comes to accommodating special-needs children in the public school system. And then she would brace herself for the phone call. In Grayson’s classroom, parents were concerned for the safety of their children. On other occasions, he punched, shoved, kicked and threatened staff and other students, school administrators say. So four years ago, in its annual survey, the group asked principals if they had ever requested that children stay home. Bad Education Grayson (2012-2014) Show all | | Edit Filmography ... Grayson - Christmas (2013) ... Grayson Show all 16 episodes. Laurie Pett turned to home schooling as a last resort when her 10-year-old son, Connor, was deemed too burdensome for the regular school system. When he began Grade 2, Ms. Kahn met with school administrators. Ms. Kahn was exasperated: “Who’s going to pay my bills?” she recalls saying. Others, she says, may need time away for intense therapy, or to spend 15 minutes in the regular classroom and work on being there longer. After she dropped them off, she’d practise deep breathing with help from an app on her watch. “It can if the teachers and staff aren’t so overworked.”. “Teachers or principals or districts should not be guardians to the classroom door as to which kid is valued and which isn’t,” he says. So, as children across Canada head back to school this week, Ms. Kahn’s son will be staying at home. At some point during the day, she knew that Grayson’s school was likely to call and ask her to pick him up because he was causing trouble. “It’s not just that I’m fighting for my kid,” Ms. Kahn says. Inclusiveness can’t work, they say, without a thoughtful rethinking of how we teach children with diverse needs and how we structure the school day. “It’s not about cracks in the system,” she says. © Copyright 2020 The Globe and Mail Inc. All rights reserved. Season: OR . The approach raised red flags with Ms. Kahn, who says her child does better with one person. Grayson plays a table-soccer game with his father, Dave, at home on a school day. And then in late October, everything boiled over. What will it take to make inclusive education work? Bruce Uditsky of Inclusion Alberta, a non-profit organization that advocates for children and adults with developmental disabilities, says inclusion is dependent on the leadership and mindset of those in charge. “There’s a lot of little things the school could have been doing to help facilitate that but they didn’t. “What are we doing that we expel seven-year-olds instead of really looking at what’s causing this behaviour, and how do we stop that behaviour?”. Some brought cupcakes, others came in with stuffed animals and hair accessories, mostly red as they knew it was Kherrigan’s favourite colour. His return would be graduated over a period of time. As she and her family have discovered, the road to inclusion is paved with good intentions, but riddled with cracks. Release date: 07 October 2014. “However, as you might guess, these often don’t feel like requests to parents and they happen with surprising regularity in many cases, all of which can have a big impact on the family,” Mr. Reid says. She says Grayson is the victim of a system that cannot properly handle children who have special needs that come with behavioural issues. She counters that she was only serving as an advocate for her son. Prof. Specht, of Western, has seen students who have struggled with aggressive behaviour moved to another school and do much better. At the TDSB, about 40,000 students, roughly 16 per cent of kids, are supported through Individual Education Plans. They wanted their son to thrive socially and academically, so they spent $2,800 to have him privately assessed and discovered he had autism. Expulsions such as Grayson’s are rare, but it’s difficult to know how common other measures are. 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