Gotta love little schools. Little Man's class had a sub all week last week. Due to confidentiality issues, the sub is not given the 504 modifications. The regular teachers are supposed to leave all the work ready for the kids. This did not happen. What also didn't happen was the sub getting informed that there were modifications. Or that Little Man has migraines resulting from the issues or anything. So, the sub puts a movie on and plays it up on a brick wall. It's all nice and blurry. Then there is a 20 question test over the movie handed out. This is not blown up to the appropriate fonts or double spaced so that he can differentiate between the lines. Background here: Although the boys issue is considered a "vision" issue, and although Little Man is legally blind in one eye (as in can't see the top line - big E- of the eye chart in that bad eye) what the issues really is is a processing issue. The right eye sees one thing, the left eye sees something else, the 2 images instead of becoming one their brains are so vastly different that the brain can't make sense out of them. In Little Man's case, this causes severe, throwing up, can't open his eyes, migraines. Part of the modifications he has is the ability to rest his eyes between assignments. This prevents him from over-working the eyes/brain and keeps him from getting migraines. Now, he's had these modifications since 1st grade. This has always been a part of his schooling. And the modifications were put in place so that he could stay in his advanced placement classes with all the reading and work that they involve without suffering from daily migraines. The rules behind this for the 10 years we've had the modifications in place have been that he cannot abuse this privilege and that unless it was really an emergency, he had to finish all his work first. This has never been an issue for a kid who pulls straight A's without any effort or studying.
Back to the issue at hand. With the sub they had last week, once he finished his movie and test, he had a whopper of a migraine starting. He was feeling like he was going to throw up. So, he did like he had always done and been allowed to do. He put his head down on his desk and tried to relax and rest his eyes. This class was 6th period so he knew he could make it thru the last 2 periods. Well, the substitute told him that he needed to get going on a word search. For one, there was no grade to the word search. It was busy work because the class had finished the test so quickly. For 2 - you don't give a kid who sees jumbles of letters anyhow, one with no depth perception or peripheral vision, a jumble of letters and ask them to find words. He's already fighting to make sense out of real words. So, he told the teacher he wasn't feeling well. That he thought he might throw up. So, the sub wrote him up for insubordination. Now, I imagine that he should have explained the 504 to the sub. That he should have told her about the migraines and the modifications instead of just saying he didn't feel well. But, this was how they had always handled it in the past. So that the whole class didn't get a lesson on the condition and embarrass the boys.
Well, I didn't worry too much about the referral. I knew that the modifications were on file and any effort at all to check into it would show that due to the sub not being fully informed of the circumstances, there was a simple mix-up. Yeah. Right. See how wrong I was. Stay tuned to find out how wonderful my first 2 days of the week went and why I am now thoroughly unimpressed with the new school's administration and all things related to the power hungry fool that is otherwise known as the male chauvinistic vice principal and administrator they have.
