What does it take to awaken the advocacy mama bear in me?
When we lived in Alaska and Washington State, I spent a lot of time advocating for those with special needs. I testified before a state committee, appeared on television, picketed the state disability offices, provided help to families with Individual Education plans (IEPs), and formed a group that worked on helping those with disabilities be heard and get what they needed, and getting a special needs PTA up and running. We moved to Mississippi and 6 months later COVID started. I haven’t been involved with advocacy here at all. It wasn’t that there weren’t things that needed advocating for. It was more that with going back to school, working, and the shutdown of COVID I didn’t have the time or things were so influx due to COVID no one knew what was going on. No one knew how IDEA and FAPE applied in a COVID world.
Why did the advocacy mama bear awaken again?
A school saying that despite my son finally passing pre-algebra after taking it 5 times, it will not count as a math credit. Because the class was not passed while my son was in 9th grade, they are saying that the state is it cannot count as a math credit. It will count instead as an elective credit. What this means is that my son is starting from scratch on his math credits and in his final semester of school he will have to take 2 math classes at once, and take a harder math class than he would need to graduate because he has no math credits currently. This is my child who has dyscalculia- a math disability.
Dear state legislatures and educators-
Calleen Petersen
- It shouldn’t matter which grade a child passes a math class as long as they pass it.
Mississippi ranks at the bottom on many measures of education. Why are we making it harder for children to graduate for nonsensical reasons? Have you heard of IDEA? How about IEPs? Do you need a refresher course?
This is what it took to wake me up. In social work, advocacy is part of the job on a macro and micro level. I will not stop until this policy is changed, not just for my son, but for everyone else. And then I may turn my efforts to their “graduation track” policy that has been struck down in other states.
Mississippi, you don’t know what you just unleashed.
Wow!! Just ….WOW!!! That isn’t just waking one up, that is waking one up from a deep sleep with a hot poker that has a steak on the end! I honestly had to read that one a couple of times to really let it sink in. This gives a whole new meaning to “stuck on stupid”. I have always thought it to be bad to allow children to just go forth, instead of holding them behind. To me, that was setting up a bad precident. We are hurting feelings because they aren’t allowed to be with their fellow classmates? That to me, shows a sign that the child is struggling and needs more assistance than the other students. Or it can just show that they are given a free pass. Although my sonshine is not on the top tier of things, he is not at the bottom. I have had to seriously advocate to his teachers to inform me of how I can help and to inform me before he is failing. (you know, flare signals, smoke signals, text, email, snail mail, carrier pigeon) I don’t want him to fall through the cracks and he by golly, is going to graduate with a diploma, not a certificate of completion. Life is busy, but it is never to busy that I won’t advocate for him or hound him if he is falling behind. Good luck momma …wish I were there to assist.
Thanks Shannon. I can now say after another IEP meeting and my challenging their policy they have backed down and are now counting it as a math class and not an elective.