Seattle: Liberals as long as we don't have to pay for anything

Maybe it's the fact that I'm facing my 13th year in the public schools with no contract in place and a best-case scenario involving almost breaking even to last year's salary. Maybe it's the fact that I have voted for 17 years to improve funding for public transportation and schools, only to see voter-approved bills shot down in the state legislature. Did you know that even though you likely voted like I did to keep class sizes lower (and lower is not low, just slightly more reasonable) and to let teachers have a cost of living adjustment (which for many years we did not, which means that every year we take a pay cut equal to the inflation rate plus the increase in health care costs), those were both slashed by your elected state representatives? So we will have up to 28 kids in a first grade class? And 24 kindergarteners with a teacher and no teacher assistant?

I digress. What I intended to rant about in this post was the fact that 53% of Seattle who voted this week decided they didn't want to put a 20 cent tax on grocery bags. Why would we want to generate money and help the environment at the same time? Bad idea, the majority of Seattle decided. Many of us bring our bags to the store already, so maybe they were annoyed by this measure for insulting them. Or maybe they don't, and adding 40 or 60 cents a week to their already high grocery bill was scary. But really, to me, it's just another case of not being willing to put your money where your mouth is, Seattle. You are perfectly happy to don your eco-friendly hemp baseball cap and roll out your Jade yoga mat knowing a tree was planted somewhere when you bought it, but when it comes to your money going out to intangibles like public education, infrastructure and transportation improvements, suddenly there's no extra cash in your wallet. I don't think Seattleites have their heads buried in the sand, but their wallets? Shoved down deep.

Shut up and Teach.

I just read an article in the NEA (National Education Association) Newsletter which I found rather disturbing. It drew me in via email with this tagline: What you post on MySpace and Facebook in your free time might just cost you your job. As a Facebook user and blogger, I was curious to see what the article had to say. For the most part, I am not concerned about writing and posting online. I generally think I edit myself appropriately and don't post anything explicit or inappropriate. Most of the teachers who were fired or disciplined for their activities online did not appear to do that. But this line was quite disturbing to me: But what about free speech? Don't school employees have the right, on their own time, to blog about their private lives without fear of losing their jobs? Probably not.

This feels like one more way we have unrealistic expectations for our teachers. No, it is not unrealistic to say that teachers need to have appropriate conduct in and out of the classroom. But to me, the fact that we don't care to pay our teachers a decent wage, yet we hold them to extreme expectations for continuing education, standards of excellence in their work, all with very little economic support or social respect, is simply unacceptable. Now we are going to take away their right to free speech, too?

World Autism Awareness Day

A few months ago the U.N. declared April 2 "World Autism Awareness Day." I am on vacation from my job, where I spend my days with lots of autistic boys, so personally I am not spending a lot of my awareness on autism today. But it's always there to some degree, when I see kids out in public and something about their behavior sends up a red flag for me.

I was pretty blown away by the new statistics on autism which I heard today. http://www.worldautismawarenessday.org/site/c.egLMI2ODKpF/b.3917065/
When I was in grad school 12 years ago, I learned that the prevalence of autism was 5 in 10,000. When I was doing my round of clinical training at the CDMRC/CHDD, we diagnosed about 1/3 to 1/2 of the children brought there for assessment as falling somewhere on the autism spectrum. I remember worrying that I was seeing something that wasn't there, like when I first learned about various disorders and felt I had all of the symptoms. I remember thinking that this very rare disorder was not seeming so very rare. When I started working, I had many autistic students.

Today, I heard that the incidence of autism is currently 1 in 150, and 1 in 94 for boys. One boy out of ninety-four born today has autism. That is INSANE. Or enough to wreak major havoc on education, society, and the future. What is going to happen to all of these people as they get older, and who is going to care for them?

We will, I guess. We will have to think about giving our time, our resources, and our care to people who need it. We will have to educate our own children about disability and difference, so that they can connect with and relate to people who are different from themselves. And we will have to choose our political leaders carefully, because whether or not we care to fund social services and education, we will have this population of autistic people living with us. So we can give them good education and support as adults, or we can deal with the consequences of not doing so.

I should not neglect to mention that despite many the difficulties and challenges which my students face and which they present to me as an educator, they are people. Individuals with distinct personalities and quirks that are funny, fun, and sweet. Many of their traits and habits and ways of thinking remind me of myself and the fact that we all have some elements of autism in ourselves. Because people with autism just fall in a part of the spectrum of human conditions. They just have more trouble keeping those troublesome tendencies in check.