Order up!

[tonysam]

This sounds like a nice deal, but since I know this school and know the principal who runs it, it really isn't the best thing to do, and that's block schedule something that really is special education:

Every Tuesday, Sparks Middle School eighth grader Angel Smith takes a menu to a teacher and returns about an hour later with a tray of food that he helped to prepare.

“We say, ‘Your food is ready,’ ” Smith said of his weekly rounds with his peers.

He walks back with an evaluation in hand from a satisfied staff member who’s pleased and grateful for his service.

Smith and his peers are appreciated for their efforts in providing an inexpensive and healthy meal. The service to staff members is part of a two-hour block class they take called Comprehensive Life Skills that has a specific purpose in mind, according to Ramona Carlos, one of two teachers.

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Once a fucking idiot, always a fucking idiot. I am not referring to the teachers or the students. "Comprehensive Life Skills" is not just culinary skills. Special education kids who are CLS must learn the gamut of EVERYTHING about life, which includes outings in the real world. Second language learners should not be put in "CLS" classes. You'd think after four years this principal would get a clue about special education law, but he is stupider than a box of rocks. I don't expect anybody there to clue him in, not after what happened to me. I left that goddamned school after a year of taking his shit just so I could be set up and get shitcanned from another school.

[soleiri]

1. They've got to be kidding.

Are they really teaching English Language Learners how to work in a restaurant at the middle school level?
Holy hell what the fuck?
why? what's their justification? what are the students expected to learn from this?
How to ask if they want fries with that?
I'm Latina, so I could be extra sensitive about this.
To me, it's racist.

[tonysam]

2. The principal doesn't know shit what he is doing.

I don't think he even realizes what he is doing. Yeah, it does look racist when you think about it. This school is something like 80 percent or more Latino while the teachers are almost all white.

What the cooking part of "life skills" is that students simply learn how to cook meals, prepare them, and so forth. What I and my predecessor had before the food fascists took over the district were cookie sales. It was hard work baking the stuff after the kids spent several hours over the previous day making enough batches to sell. The cookies almost always sold out. The kids learned not only how to read recipes, they also learned how to make change and count change after the cookies were sold. It was a tremendous idea because the kids learned everything. In my last year at this school I and the aides had the kids fix full meals, not nonsense drivel like the crap "created" in this class now, but REAL recipes like pumpkin pie, pancakes and bacon and eggs, hamburgers and fries, and many desserts taken from REAL recipes. Of course we had other activities which taught the students life skills.

This principal has so RUINED the program it is pathetic. CLS should be special education only for those kids who need the most intense instruction (mental retardation, autism, the lowest learning disabled kids). It isn't just limited to cooking; it's all about life.

Second language learners could take regular home and careers with the other students in the general population. There is no excuse for CLS to be ruined in this manner.

[RationalAltruism]

3. So, what is this supposed to be, advance practice for a minimum wage job?

Sounds like the principal is an insensitive moron.

[tonysam]

4. He's a total moron.

The whole point of comprehensive life skills is that it is a self-contained classroom program geared for the moderate to severe special education students and learning disabled kids who are not MR or autistic but several grade levels below and that they are taught LIFE SKILLS they can use for a lifetime such as social skills, simple vocational skills, cooking, mending, arts and crafts, simple money management, and academic skills in reading and math. In high school it is more vocationally oriented. These are kids who cannot take regular classroom courses because they would never be able to do it apart from electives or science (which can be easily adapted for these kids). These kids are such they will not be able to go to college or take vocational courses but they will be functioning members of their communities. At the heart of CLS, in times past was THE "special ed" class in schools around the country, are the community outings where students take regular field trips to businesses, movie theaters, museums, bowling alleys, skating rinks, shopping malls, stores, and so on because important life skills are taught in the field. It's real life experience. Kids learn how to spend money that they have earned in classroom projects. They learn how to act in restaurants and order meals (don't assume parents teach kids this). The kids use public transportation to go to these trips, not school buses, so they know how to use an important source of transportation.

What this principal did was destroy a perfectly good program and thought he could "combine" Home and Careers, a completely different program with a completely different emphasis, with CLS, and wrongfully put ESL kids in a class which they don't need to take but could take an elective, Home and Careers, with the regular student population. If I had still been at that school, I would have fought against him tooth and nail. This is the dumb shit who tried to get me to cheat for him regarding alternate testing.

[Kali]

5. "LIFE SKILLS they can use "

"LIFE SKILLS they can use for a lifetime such as social skills, simple vocational skills, cooking, mending, arts and crafts, simple money management, and academic skills in reading and math."

No offense to whatever your personal issue is, but I think ALL students should be taught more of theses things.

[tonysam]

6. No, it's different than that.

These are the kids who MOST need help because they will likely NOT be able to work in regular jobs or careers following high school. Many of them will not be able to live on their own and raise families.

It's completely different than Home and Careers or high school vocational training. If you are talking about true autistics or the mentally retarded, or those who are very far behind academically, it's a different ballgame entirely than kids in the general population. And HC or vocational teachers typically aren't qualified to teach special education. "Life skills" is a type of special education program for special education students with the greatest needs.

They have different needs, and many of the life skills taught are individualized. Some need more help in social skills, while others may need to know how to use the restroom or tie their shoes. It's that basic.

And principals don't FUCKING "dump" kids of different classifications and call it "CLS." He's violating the law.