CBC News features a thirty minute documentary tonight, about life at the school that the Fraser Institute calls the worst in BC.
Mark Kelley the CBC’s reporter on their seven series, spent seven days with the staff at Roosevelt School to try and get a better understanding of the challenges for both the kids and the staff of the school.
It’s a pretty good bit of work and should be required viewing for the school board, the education ministry and the boneheads at the Fraser Institute.
If you miss it tonight at 10:25 or so, check out their website at the CBC National, they should have an on line version of the news tonight on for at least the next 24 hours.
yep that is where I saw it, one advantage of the ole sat dish is that you can catch up to stuff you just stumble across and watch the whole show an hour later…
My son is starting school next year and has learning disabilities. It was interesting to see how much the teachers care and how much the system lets these kids down. How in the hell is my son going to get the attention he needs in school, when the little funds available are going to go to so many other kids who are worse off than him?
Mike I feel for you, I have had to advocate for my son, he too has disabilities, I can tell you this dont believe everything that Linda will say in your I.P.E meetings, I know people in the lower mainland and our school system is not on pair with lower mainland when it comes to the help our very special kids need. and do not hesitate to go above heads in the school system.
If you want more info Mike I will be glad to sit down or chat on the phone with ya, My son shane is in grade 6 and is doing better now that he is living else were in a differnt school system.
I may take you up on that Astro… we’ll see how it goes. I have a low tolerance for bullshit so I’m reasonably sure that I will be battling the local school system in the years to come.
Thanks for sharing Mike. I’m curious to know if you’ve actually had your son assessed for a learning disability or does he have an identifiable medical condition or sensory issue (deaf or blind) that impacts on learning? He just seems a little young to have been assessed for a specific LD. From my own experience the number one factor in the success of a person with a learning disability (or really any child) is the parents. Educate yourself about learning (sounds like you have already) as there are many good sources of information about learning on the web. If you are talking LD specifically, I’d start by visiting LDonline.org .
If you folks are interested, Bill Good featured this as the topic of his talk show on CKNW this morning for an hour discussing learning disabilities and what needs to be done to address the issue. It was quite interesting.
Go to the CKNW audio vault for today December 6 and select the 11 to Noon hour if you wish to listen to the disucssion. you have to log in and register but it’s painless.
I have the national segment in mpeg-4 format (copied from the TiVo), but I’m not sure it would be appropriate to post it online, due to copyright concerns.
My son is a perfect candidate to fall between the cracks and that is what has me worried.
He should be in Kindergarten but we’ve held him back a year to spend one more year in his pre-school. We’ve had him assessed and even though he’s 5 years old, in many ways he is developmentally a 3 year old. His main problem is that he has a very small vocabulary and communicates at the level of a 2 to 3 year old. He doesn’t have autism or anything else with a catchy name and that’s part of what worries us. Because he only falls into the category of a medium learning disability (I’m sure that’s not the exact phrase they used but I know medium was in there…) he will of course have access to an individual learning plan. My concern is then what? Next year I’m going to have a son in the public school system who can barely communicate with people who know him. How is that going to work with people who don’t? How is he going to explain to a teacher that a student is picking on him? The possibilities are endless and frightening for a parent when I see that there are so many other children out there with problems that are so much worse. How is my child going to get access to the help he requires when the limited funds are stretched so thin?
I saw a preview of a program that was supposed to air, they said it was Canada’s worst school … I meant to catch it, but totally forgot. Was this the same program, was it Roosevelt??!
From what you said it sounds like expressive language delay. Has your child worked with a Speech Language Pathologist? If not, you’ll want to make sure that he get SLP support when he starts school. Did an SLP do the assessment? Or was it a psychologist?
Dave Prince Rupert does not have a Speech Language Pathologist, they do in the school system, his name is Mack, and if rupert does have one now there is waiting list, can you say years, also if his child can see one in rupert, it will not be ongoing And Im speaking of experience.
a child who is or might be developmently delayed does not have the resources here in Prince Rupert, again Im speaking of experience with my child.
He’s been seeing the language pathologist for a couple of years now. It used to be once a week but she is so busy, now we’re down to once a month. The assesment was done by a couple of specialists that came up to Terrace from down south. One person assessed for Autism and the other, who I believe was a psychologist, assessed for his cognitive and speech abilities.
We’ve been fairly happy so far with the level of help we’ve gotten and I hope it continues into his school years. It’s taken a lot of work on our part though to continually make sure we are accessing what little services are available here in Rupert. He goes to the Baptist Fellowship pre-school which is the best in Rupert as far as I’m concerned. I’m pretty much prepared to do anything to make sure my son gets the education he deserves. I hope that doesn’t mean battling the local school system, but I’ve heard some bad stories from people with kids with disabilities in this town.
