Aug 28 2007
Alternative Education - Middle School
Planning for the school year 2007-08 in Alternative Education is exciting at Erie @ CC BOCES. Thanks to the advocacy of local school district principals and guidance counselors at the Spring Alternative Education Regional Meeting held this year at the Hewes Center, eight grade students will be rotated through the High School program both in an an integrated model with 9th graders eg English and US History and in individual 8th grade units for selective subjects, example math and science. Student support for this class will be provided by a guidance counselor, teacher assistants and 6-12 certified teachers. This population of 8th graders is distinct from the Intensive Alt. Ed. student who requires more therepeutic interventions and collaborations guided by social workers and counselors. These professional collaborations involve teachers, parents, mental health professionals, probation officers and community wide resources aimed at forging healthy relationships for and with kids. In Chautauqua County, the Intensive Alternative program became a last step for students awaiting special education classification and more restrictive placement. By shutting this door, more appropriate student referrals will be sought for the program.
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The school year has started with two eight grade students in Alternative Education. We are promoting the idea of a graduation program in all our faculty and individual department meetings. The reasoning behind this is that we do not want to focus on the middle school as a distinct entity from the genreal instructional Alt. Ed. program. The 2 students appear to have integrated well. The challenge for the teacher subject specialists is how best to incorporate the skills and talents of the teacher assistants to reach out to this population in a way that is instructionally meaningful. I will be monitoring time on instruction versus AIS. I believe that the latter is too easy a route to flee too in light of the comfort zone we at the High School level have got used to. It is interesting to note that two weeks into the school year we only have 2 Alt. Ed. middle school students. Is the theory perhaps true that by shutting the intensive alt. ed. middle school door we have filled up all the special ed. 1:6:1 middle school slots and thereby appropriately identified who is a true alt. ed. middle schooler? What impact will this have on the alt. ed high of Hewes in the future? I have delivered an answer to the alt. ed. faculty this past week. Our future is inexorably linked to the growth of the Special Education High School at the Hewes Center. Two high school programs. Nine high school teachers…………….
Great Job!
Walter: At the Hewes Center we went from having one middle school Alt Ed. class to none. This year we have two enrolled middle schoolers both eight graders who are ‘actual’ Alt. ed students ie not IEP, no 504 plan and no possible chance of ever being classified. This is success!. The two students are taught both as an individual class in Math and science for instance and are integrated with ninth graders in social studies and english.