Teacher to return to classroom after year suspension
November 10th, 2009 by Daphne DuretSt. Lucie County school board members decided unanimously tonight to allow teacher Wendy Portillo to return to teaching more than a year after the May 2008 incident where she led kindergartners to vote a 5-year-old boy out of their class.
School officials say Portillo, who had been suspended and stripped of her tenure, is expected to teach science and reading to sixth graders at Allapattah K-8.
She was Alex Barton’s kindergarten teacher at Morningside Elementary when she led his classmates to vote on whether he should stay in class after he’d been disruptive. Doctors later diagnosed Alex with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism.
Alex’s mother, Melissa Barton, in August sued Portillo and the school district over Portillo’s treatment of Alex. The suit is still in litigation.
School board officials earlier this year restored Portillo’s tenure and said she would be allowed to return to the classroom this year, although schools Superintendent Michael Lannon recommended against allowing her to work with young children.
School board members approved Portillo’s reinstatement along with several other personnel matters at Tuesday’s meeting.
Tags: alex barton, autism, teacher, Wendy Portillo
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November 11th, 2009 at 7:06 am
She still sounds like a teacher who did her best when she could not get help with a child that even his parent could not control. Parents should take the majority of the responsibility for a child’s behavior and not expect Teachers to do what they as a parent fails to do. Am so sorry for this Teacher’s loss. Believe the School Board should have stood by her and not “punished” her. Wish her the best for the rest of her career as a Teacher.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:55 am
I can not believe that this teacher was reinstated. Poor judgement by the school board officials.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:01 am
1. The school board should not have ALLOWED Wendy Portillo to re-enter the classroom. They should have BEGGED her to return. She obviously thinks “outside the box” which is a sign that she is an exceptional teacher.
2. The board and superintendent are spineless politically correct compromisers, buckling to an involved parent who filed a suit.
3. The superintendent may have sabotaged the system by forcing Ms. Portillo to teach sixth grade if, in fact, her special skills are in the kindergarten.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Can’t say that she sounds like a good teacher based on the incident. That is not a good teaching practice. However if we were all judged on a single bad incident, we would all be in trouble. Sounds like the parents still blame everyone else for their lack of parenting or just their own personal problems. She should have been punished but not sure to what lengths. The parent is next, when will parents wake up and know they are responsible for their children, even when they are wrong?
November 11th, 2009 at 8:33 am
FINALLY some common sense was used. Congratulations to the school board for re-instated her.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Disgraceful. Not a surprise, of course, but disgraceful nonetheless.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:02 am
It seems to me that most people, including the media, missed the point that the kid was diagnosed AFTER this incident. I know I didn’t hear that fact during initial reports and it is only a side note in current reports. Under those circumstances, I think the teacher’s reaction is far less troubling and probably pretty reasonable. He must have seemed like a real problem and she had no idea he had a medical condition. Further, I haven’t heard of any other incident on her record. What exactly was she supposed to do? Let him be disruptive at the expense of all the other kids in the class?
As a result, it seems fair that she was reinstated, and it also seems like the original response by the school board was a gross overreaction caused by parental / public pressure and the mother’s lawsuit, based on the “facts” reported at the time. Further, I certainly don’t see a reason why the mother should recover anything financially from the school district / taxpayers as a result of her lawsuit. If anything, the teacher should sue the mother for defamation, given that the kid wasn’t diagnosed until after this incident. The teacher is the one who suffered in this case, not the kid or the mother.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:09 am
This whole episode was blown way out of proportion. I don’t even think that what Ms. Portillo did was wrong. What I DO think however, is that Melissa Barton is nothing more than a gold-digger.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Picture it: 30+ years from now Alex is running for President of the United States. Voters ‘vote him out’ of winning. The solution? His mother sues every voter that didn’t choose him. That’ll teach ‘em!
I’ve said this since this situation took place and I’ll say it again. Teachers aren’t given the resources to work with children who need to be placed in a special class. Not ALL children should be mainstreamed. Oh, wait, that’s right, Alex hadn’t been placed yet so the teacher was getting no support! If mom cared so much why wasn’t he tested sooner? Autism signs develop much earlier than when a child is 5 or 6. Had he been diagnosed earlier and mom sent him to pre-K in the form of a special setting this probably wouldn’t have happened.
Had that student been in my child’s room and negatively affected my child’s learning *I* would have gone in myself and had the child voted out!
November 11th, 2009 at 9:23 am
The point IS … regardless of whether or not Alex has autism or “just” behavior problems, a teacher does not handle a behavioral issue by encouraging the other students to vote him out of class. What kind of person does something this is? You want this kind of person educating your children? Your non-disabled child has a bad day and the teacher gets all the other students in the class to gang up on him? I guess you’d all be OK with that.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Fundamentally, a teacher’s job is to foster an environment in which every child (yes, EVERY child) can learn to the best of his or her ability.
Young children with autism can, indeed, be very challenging. These difficult behaviors are the result of fundamental differences in brain wiring and are **NOT** caused by faulty parenting. The first step is to understand the reasons for the difficult behaviors. Persons with autism can become confused and terrified by situations that the rest of us would consider to be normal, everyday events. Many of these children are extraordinarily sensitive to ordinary sights and sounds. The best way to explain it is this: imagine the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard — now imagine this sound at 10 times the normal volume. This is what many ordinary, everyday sounds are like to some persons with autism. Imagine having to deal with this as a five year old.
For these reasons, an autistic five year old is not misbehaving because he wants to annoy the teachers. He is confused and terrified by some aspect of his environment. The solution is to identify the source of the problem and deal with it accordingly. It may be something simple that could be conveniently removed from the classroom, like a particular kind of pencil sharpener that makes a sound that hurts an autistic child’s ears.
For better or for worse, autistic children (even those that are mildly affected) are not socially manipulative in the way that typical children are. For that reason, punishment is rarely the solution when you are dealing with difficult behaviors in an autistic child.
In an age when 1 out of every 100 to 150 children has some form of autism, any teacher that does not understand this has no business working in the profession.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Mark, Bravo - very well put! Oh, and the numbers for autism spectrum disorders are now 1 in 94. So I guess we’ll have more and more kids kicked out of class as time goes on.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Mark,
Do you realize that no one knew the kid had autism when this incident occurred?
I think it is unfair to blame the teacher for not properly handling an autistic kid when no one, including his mother or doctor, knew he was autistic. Are you suggesting that teachers should stop everything whenever there is a disruptive student to identify the source of the problem (e.g. the pencil sharpener), under the assumption they MAY be autistic?
November 11th, 2009 at 9:36 am
To the Mother of the child: You and your son have done nothing wrong. You should seek compensation. You deserve a monetary settlement. You are not a gold-digger.You and your son can pave the way for others who have been in a similar situation and for the future. Don’t back down.There are alot of people standing in your corner and I am one of them. The people that make those heartless comments don’t have clue about your life.Your son is a great kid and you are a great Mother.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Hello?!?!? Who are the idiots posting comments on here??? A TEACHER had the class vote out another STUDENT. This is school where you are supposed to learn. One Florida moron (Biill) thought that was thinking outside the box. There really are no words for that comment. Yes, please let’s beg this pathetic excuse for a teacher to come back and alienate other children. The fact the child is autistic is beside the point. There must be training this teacher received for disruptive students. Is this really first time it has happened? Long story short, it does not surprise me only because we live in Florida. Welcome all you dumb a$$es who can’t do sh!t right, we are begging you to be the worst you can be and we’ll thank you for it.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Like I said, the teacher did not know the child had autism. But she knew he had behavioral problems. The way she handled it was totally unacceptable, whether the child had autism, or was just a “typical” child having a bad day. I hope you’d agree that you would not want your “typical” child, who happened to have a bad day, to be ganged up on, bullied and humiliated by his teacher and classmates. Justice is right - clueles people have no idea about this child and Mom’s life and they deserve every damn penny they get. I hope they get a ton.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:47 am
So, if instead of putting it to a vote, she simply removed him from class, would that be o.k. with you?
November 11th, 2009 at 9:49 am
I have a strange feeling that AutismMom would have a fit if an emotionally handicapped child were in her autistic child’s room causing challenges for her autistic child. I think she demonstrates narrowmindedness when she says “So I guess we’ll have more and more kids kicked out of class as time goes on” when talking about how the numbers of autism being diagnosed has increased. Autism varies greatly when it comes to behavior and academics. My friend’s husband has a form of autism: Aspergers. While it has gotten in the way professionally he has finally found work in life that he enjoys and has kept steadily. As an educator who has a degree in special education I see parents like AutismMom who only see the tree: her child; not the forest: the rest of the class. I FULLY agree that many children with special needs can be mainstreamed but not all. A child that is consistently causing disruptions needs to be in a more restricted environment.
Now…on to Mark. You say that teachers should foster a love of learning in all children. However, teachers don’t go through training to educate students who are extreme and this child appears extreme. Heck, he runs around when cameras are present in his home. I blame the school for not placing him in a room with a teacher that understood his needs. There are reasons I don’t teach statistics in high school: I’m not good at it and I’ve never been trained to teach it. Everybody keeps assuming that Ms. Portillo had been trained to work with autistic children but something tells me she hadn’t. (And people keep forgetting that the child had NOT EVEN BEEN ‘LABELED’ YET!)
I ask that all the people who point their fingers at her walk a month, no, make it a few days, in her shoes. You will probably change your mind.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Obviously JOHN isn’t a teacher. When you become one then your comments will be worth a tiny grain of salt. (FYI: teachers don’t go through special training for special needs children. Hence the ‘areas of specialty’ to work with these kids. However, they state has decided that EH, MH and LD kids are one and the same by combining them all and putting many kids with special needs in a single VE class. Kinda stupid don’t you think?
November 11th, 2009 at 9:54 am
I’m glad that she got her job back. She deserves a second chance. After all, she did not put her hands on the child.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Doctors later diagnosed Alex with Asperger’s syndrome after he was voted out of class. sound like mom is trying to get a fast buck.and remeber teacher do make mistakes thay are human too.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:09 am
While I totally sympathize with any parent of an autistic child, I also feel that children without these issues are being penalized by mainstreaming. Rather than being able to totally focus on kids who are able to learn at a regular pace, the class has to adjust the learning experience to accomodate these children who, through no fault of their own, are often disruptive. The teacher has to spend a lot of her time dealing with the issues of the autistic child while the rest of the class waits until she is done. My sister is a teacher and she has dealt with these issues for over 30 years. Teachers are supposed to walk a tightrope so they don’t appear to be neglecting the autistic child or the parents are in the office complaining. While these children are often extremely bright, they are also need almost constant attention in order to direct them to learn. I am sure this teacher was totally exhausted and that’s why she reacted the way she did. She was vilified in the press and portrayed to be some kind of a monster.
I am glad that the school board allowed her to keep her job. For the mother of the child to sue and seek compensation from a school system that is already overburdened financially is an outrage. She is the one who made it into a media event. The school system is doing all it can to try to accomodate special needs children while not neglecting the other kids who also deserve an education. The mother needs to be part of the solution instead of exacerbating the problem - maybe by volunteering in the class to help alleviate the burden on the teacher. Neither the parent nor the teacher is totally right and neither is totally wrong. It is, at best, a difficult situation that our school system is not financially able to handle perfectly.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Thank you Sympathetic but Realistic. While you aren’t a teacher you can empathize with teachers. People don’t understand what it’s like to be in the classroom. When a teacher goes through ‘regular’ elementary ed training special areas are briefly broached if they are at all. I doubt they were even mentioned when Ms. Portillo went to college. The only reason I ‘understand’ special needs kids in my ‘regular’ classroom is because my bachelor’s degree is in special education. However, autism has very complicated challenges and not all teachers can work with autistic children which is why they DON’T have a degree in ESE.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:24 am
AutismMom,
The reality is that if this kid wasn’t LATER diagnosed with autism, there would be NO news story and certainly no lawsuit. Could we do without the voting - sure. But removing disruptive students from class seems like a long-standing common sense practice going back many, many years and the best thing to do in the interest of the rest of the students. Even if you disagree with it, the voting certainly doesn’t warrant a huge payout to the mother or the ruining of the teacher’s career and the only reason it is even an issue is because we was LATER diagnosed with autism, a fact to which you are particularly sensitive. Further, I doubt he was just having one “bad day” but rather exhibited a pattern of disruptive behavior that got to the teacher when SHE was having a bad day. All your comments indicate you are upset because an autistic kid was treated the way he was, even though no one knew he was autistic at the time. I understand your sensitivity, but I strongly disagree with your statements and claims that everyone who disagrees with you is “clueless”.
It was an unfortunate incident that resulted from the unfortunate fact that the kid wasn’t diagnosed earlier. He should have been placed in a special needs program, but wasn’t. Don’t blame the teacher or the school district for that. Don’t blame anyone - it just was what is was. Now that he has been diagnosed, he can be placed in the proper program. I see no basis whatsoever for a big payday for the mom and think her attacks on the teacher were unwarranted and blown way out of proportion by the media hungry for a story. I continue to think the teacher was unjustly punished for this incident.
I’m sorry your kid is autistic, but don’t take it out on the rest of society.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Actually, I think the board did good in removing her from the kindergarten classroom setting. You all seem to have missed a major point here. When it comes to the education of my son… I don’t want a teacher teaching him how to gang up against one person, let alone a child. She could have removed the child from the class herself, not have the whole class vote him out! What is that??? What do you think this is going to do to any child’s self-esteem? Has anyone even bothered to ask that? She definitely used poor judgement and should not be allowed to educate young children who don’t any better…and just follow this teacher’s lead.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I’m surprised with all defending the teacher. We all know that most teachers are the scum of society. Allways looking for something for free. Scumbags should start paying their fuck bills.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:35 am
We can do without the voting, but suspending her for a year and temporarily stripping her of tenure was too harsh for this incident, particularly if she has no other blemishes on her record. It is certainly not the basis for a lawsuit, either.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:36 am
We have established that the teacher did not know that the child was autistic. Seems to me that the teacher was using a technique called peer pressure in order for the child to realize that his friends did not like him when he was acting up. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:42 am
FRank…were you voted off the playground as a child or did a teacher hurt you? Nice to know that the people who helped you learn how to write that horrible sentence are all scum.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:47 am
She might even become a pillar in her community as well as a good teacher. It all depends on her attitude towards re-employment as a teacher.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:59 am
I may be wrong, but I thought I read in an earlier report that he had already been to the principals office that day. There shouldn’t be any monetary compensation? That would just take $$ away from the education system. Those $$ could be used for training teachers and educating children.
People just keep looking for new avenues to sue, like the Pledge of Allegiance lawsuit. If you don’t like the rules, there’s always home schooling. Oh that’s right, then we can’t put a blame on others. If they want to make a point, that’s fine, but no money.
AND JOHN (15)- Obviously, your a MORON from somewhere else. So, why don’t you take your self back to where you belong?
November 11th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
In 2002-2003 I did on on-line survey of “Teachers Applying Whole Language” to test my belief that teaching children to write the alphabet to a definable level of fluency (incorporating both rate and legibility) would facilitate the acquisition of literacy, and to my pleasure I found an overwhelmingly positive correlation. The following school year (2003-2004) I started my own Internet listserv, and recruited five kindergarten teachers who wanted to help me reproduce the findings. The results were just as positive.
I wrote to the editors of about a dozen education and educational psychology journals, describing our controlled study and the only positive request for a manuscript submission was from the manuscript editor of the Harvard Educational Review. (The assistant editor of one well known journal simply emailed me, “That couldn’t possibly be true!”)
I immediately submitted a slightly different draft from the one that follows, but it was summarily rejected by the referees of the H.E.R.
As far as I know, this is (surprisingly) the only study of a possible relationship between early practice printing alphabet letters and subsequent reading success. The five kindergarten teachers involved are trying to spread word of this method privately, but so far with no success. Between the five, they have over a century of classroom experience, and I could share their email addresses with you, if you like.
Most K-1 teachers are aware that their students who are best at reading are also best at printing. However, they are not aware of the causal relationship between early printing practice and the avoidance of subsequent reading problems.
I believe the general public believes that school curricula already have fluency criteria for printing letters in K-1, and would be surprised to learn the fact that they do not.
I hope you will post the following study in the hopes someone will attempt to reproduce it. If there is truly a massive positive correlation between early printing fluency and subsequent reading success (as long as “dyslexia” has not already supervened), I believe it will be one of the most important social science discoveries in history.
THE WRITING/READING CONNECTION
By Robert V. Rose, MD (retired)
Submitted March 15, 2004
Abstract
The possible relationship between practice printing alphabet letters and learning to read in the earliest grades has not been adequately explored. The present article describes preliminary evidence that this relationship may be important, and that reading difficulties may relate directly to inadequate printing practice in kindergarten and first-grade
Historically, many authorities on the subject of literacy instruction have stressed the importance of adequate practice in printing alphabet letters. The first-century Roman writer and rhetorician, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (ca A.D. 35-98?) wrote that with regard to becoming literate, “Too slow a hand impedes the mind.”
In 1912, Maria Montessori wrote, in effect, that teaching young children to print letters is easy, that it is easy to teach children to read after they have practiced printing alphabet letters, but that it is difficult to teach children to read if they have not practiced writing them. 1
Marilyn Jager Adams noted that prior to the onset of the twentieth century the “spelling drill” was the principal means of inducing literacy for several millennia. 2
More recently, several published authors have called attention to the dearth of research on the possible link between printing practice and the acquisition of literacy in young children, but objective studies of the relationship are still lacking.3, 4
This author has made the assumption that emphasis on practicing printing alphabet letters increases the fluency with which children can print them. It was therefore decided to examine the relationship between fluency at printing the alphabet in preliterate children, and their subsequent success in learning to read well.
This method suffers the disadvantage of requiring children to be able to recite the alphabet in order to print the different letters both legibly and at a rate sufficient to demonstrate that they have practiced enough to have become “printing fluent.” However, it was considered superior to other methods of assessing fluency in printing alphabet letters in young children.
Such children have limited attention spans. It was therefore decided to measure the number of alphabet letters children write during a timed twenty-second interval, and multiply that number by three in order to obtain a “letters-per-minute,” or “LPM,” value for each child.
During the early months of 2002, five first-grade (second year of school) teachers were enlisted from teacher-related internet listservs, to do a cooperative study of the relationship between fluency in writing the alphabet, and concomitant reading skill.
The printing rate of each child was listed by teachers submitting classroom data, and each was matched by the subjective teacher assessment of the child’s relative reading skill. The assessments were A, B, C, D and E, to designate “excellent”, “above average”, “average”, “below average” and “possible reading problem”, respectively.
A total of 94 children in five first-grade classrooms were studied. When the letter grades were converted to numbers (4, 3, 2, 1, 0), “average relative reading ability” could be determined for subgroups of students, defined as printing at different rates.
Among the sixteen children who printed faster than 40 LPM, the average reading score was 3.6. Among the 33 children who printed from 30 to 39 LPM, the average was 2.9. For the 26 children writing at 20-29 LPM, it was 2.3. For the 21 children who wrote more slowly than 20 LPM, it was 1.6.
During this current school year, a number of kindergarten (first year of school) teachers have submitted series of similar studies on their classrooms to the k1writing listserv, accessible at http://www.yahoogroups.com. By the end of February, 2004, a total of five teachers had submitted serial data on a total of 106 kindergarten students, including data for the month of February.
The relative reading skills of the kindergartners were ranked according to a three-level system: “reading better than grade level”, “doing well at grade level” and “lagging behind expectations”. In the opinions of their teachers, six children were already reading at second-grade level or above.
Statistical analysis of the correlation again yielded similar results. Among the eighteen children who printed the alphabet faster than 40 LPM, 72% were “above grade level,” and only one was “lagging.” Among the eighteen children who wrote more slowly than 20 LPM, none was above grade level in reading skill, and half of them were “lagging” in this regard.
A tabulation of these findings is revealing. It is informative to look down the column of LPM figures for these 106 children, and observe the correlations. These data are presented in Table One.
The correlation between reading skill and fluency at printing alphabet letters in kindergarten and first-grade is readily apparent. This correlation was known to each of the experienced [kindergarten] teachers participating in this study even before the study was done. The experiment, then, was designed to answer the question as to whether this correlation is one of causation, or merely coincident with some other unidentified factor.
The kindergarten teachers involved have each been able to achieve a level of printing fluency that is considerably above what is generally achieved by American kindergarten students. The printing rates of their kindergarten children are comparable to the rates of the first-grade students in the original study, whose teachers had NOT been previously monitoring printing rate. If the cause of the correlation were in the opposite direction, and it is having learned to read which drives printing fluency, then one would expect the correlation to weaken in classrooms where printing fluency has been intentionally contrived. However, we here see the correlation has persisted intact.
This year, each of the kindergarten teachers has been making a dedicated effort to induce objectively measurable printing fluency in the students as the school year progresses. Each of the five kindergarten teachers has emphatically proclaimed that this practice is found to be immensely helpful in turning young children into readers.
A number of the classrooms have high percentages of poverty and minority children, and none of the children could read at the beginning of the kindergarten school year. It was found that printing fluency, which we arbitrarily defined as 40 LPM or faster, is achieved at different times by different children, and that such fluency is an excellent indicator of when children will learn to read, as well as indicating which children have become successful at reading at any particular point in time.
It was also observed that printing fluency gradually improves in almost all cases with continued practice writing the alphabet letters. Failure to cooperate during the time allocated by teachers for dedicated printing practice seems to be the main limiting factor in the development of printing skill.
None-the-less, our data suggest that fluency in writing the letters of the alphabet is a reasonable goal for all normal children by the end of first-grade.
But it appears that printing fluency does not at all correlate with reading ability much beyond the first-grade level. One teacher submitted data on 54 fourth-graders (fifth year of school), demonstrating no difference at all in the median alphabet-printing rates between children who had been formally identified as reading below grade level, and the other students.5
It is also apparent that printing skill is by no means a necessary prerequisite for literacy. Many children learn to read before they are fluent at printing alphabet letters. On the other hand, virtually all children who lag in reading skill in K-1 are dysfluent printers. That this lack of skill is remediable through continued dedicated practice, extended over time, appears to be of fundamental importance.
If the attainment of fluent ability to print alphabet letters in the earliest grades generally assures early success in reading, this fact challenges some current theoretical conceptions regarding the nature of reading disabilities.
Our evidence suggests both that printing fluency confers the ability to name random letters more rapidly than 40 per minute6, and that the ability to phonetically write words fluently, possible only after the attainment of fluency in printing letters, confers phonemic awareness.
Adams wrote, “It has been shown that the act of writing newly learned words results in a significant strengthening of their perceptual integrity in recognition. This is surely a factor underlying the documented advantages of programs that emphasize writing and spelling activities.”7
Montessori also considered practice writing alphabet letters to be crucial, and wrote, “We shall soon see that the child, on hearing the word, or on thinking of a word he already knows, will see, in his mind’s eye, all the letters, necessary to compose the word, arrange themselves. He will reproduce this vision with a facility most surprising to us.”8
While such rhetorical explanations of the value of writing practice have been seen as nebulous in the past, converging advances in the fields of pattern recognition by artificial intelligence and of the cerebral physiology involved in visual pattern recognition and categorization may render them more plausible.
It is emphasized that these studies are limited and preliminary, but their results underscore the pressing need to either confirm or disaffirm their apparent implications.
The author wishes to acknowledge the participation of the classroom teachers who did and submitted these comparison studies on their students. They are Libby Rhoden, Pasadena, Texas; Sue Fisher, Kailua Kona, Hawaii; Ann Vasconcellos, Homewood, Illinois; Helen Wilder, Middlesboro, Kentucky; Nancy Creech, Eastpointe, Michigan; Ruby Clayton, Indianapolis, Indiana; Alice A. Pickel, Phoenix, Arizona; Lori Jackson, Mission, South Dakota; Lalia Kerr, Nova Scotia; Jennifer Runkle, Ohio.
TABLE ONE
Kindergarten Students Printing Level in Letters Per Minute (LPM)
LPM rate:
> 40 LPM 30-39 LPM 20-29 LPM < 20 LPM
78** 39** 33** 27** 24* 18*
72** 39** 33** 27** 24* 18*
66** 39** 33** 27** 24* 18*
60** 39** 33* 27** 24o 18*
60* 39** 33* 27** 24o 18*
57** 39** 33* 27** 24* 18*
54** 39* 33* 27* 21* 18 o
54** 39 o 33 o 27* 21* 15*
51** 36** 30** 27* 21* 15*
51** 36** 30** 27* 21* 15 o
48** 36** 30** 27* 21* 15 o
48** 36** 30** 27o 21* 15 o
48** 36** 30** 27o 21* 12*
48* 36* 30* 24** 21* 12 o
48* 36* 30* 24* 21* 12 o
42** 36* 30* 24* 21 o 6 o
42* 36 o 30* 24* 21 o 3 o
42 o 30* 3 o
30*
In the opinion of respective classroom teachers:
KEY: o lagging in reading skill
* on level
** above level in reading
References:
1. Montessori, Maria. The Montessori Method, Dover Publications, 2002, pp.266-7
2. Adams, Marilyn Jager. Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print, MIT Press, 1990, p.388
3. Sofia Vernon and Emilia Ferreiro. “Writing Development: A Neglected Variable in the Consideration of Phonological Awareness.” Harvard Educational Review 69:4 (1999): pp.395-415.
4. Groff, Patrick. “Teaching Phonics: Letter-to-phoneme, Phoneme-to-letter, or Both?” Reading and Writing Quarterly 17 (fall, 2001): pp.291-306.
5. Data provided by Marianne Morin, Watkins Glen, New York.
6. Data on kindergarten classroom correlation between letter-naming and printing fluency provided by Sue Fisher, Hawaii.
7. Adams, Op. cit., pp.230-231
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Bob Rose
rovarose@aol.com
151 Sharp View Lane
Jasper, Georgia, USA 30143
Tele: 770-737-2503
November 11th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
To “Nice to See a Reasonable Decision”: You argue as if the only two alternatives are 1) to “stop everything” (presumably in the middle of class) and take the time to fully explore the source of the problem” or 2) humiliate the child by voting him out of class.
It should be obvious that virtually any other teacher would choose some other solution. For example, it would have been a MUCH better choice to simply remove the child from class herself and then contact the parents to discuss getting a psychological evaluation.
I am well aware that the child had not been diagnosed yet. However, if this child’s autistic behaviors were as disruptive as the news stories indicate, this should at least have been a sign that the child had difficulties that extend beyond the simple misbehavior that is common in young children. At a minimum, that should have been sufficient to SUSPECT a diagnosable condition.
What I am saying is this — if a kindergarten child is chronically disruptive, the first step should be to determine if a diagnosis is warranted. The solution is not to mindlessly punish, punish, punish. Perhaps more importantly, the punishment should never take the form of humiliation and actions that encourage bullying.
My point here is that if you argue that this child was wildly disruptive to the class, you have to also concede that the first step should have been to obtain a psychological evaluation to determine if a diagnosis was warranted. By all accounts, this child had been disruptive for a long time. Any qualified teacher should have first taken steps to rule out a diagnosable disorder.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
To Finally: I agree that few teachers have the training necessary to fully understand autism. Still, it has been my experience that most teachers are pretty good at recognizing when a 5 or 6 year old is just being a pain just to get the teacher’s goat and when there is some other issue.
Five year olds are not that hard to figure out — a typical child that just likes being disruptive is fairly easy to distinguish from a child that makes poor eye contact, takes everything you say literally, has unusually poor conversation skills, and who cries and covers his ears when the room gets loud.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Mark, Mark, Mark…poor Mark.
You either aren’t a teacher or you are so out of touch with how children are placed now-a-days that you seem some training.
I would bet it’s the former rather than the latter.
Just to educate you: sometimes children are removed only to be placed back in the room; a teacher doesn’t have legal authority to ’suggest’ psychological testing-if you do you and/or the district becomes financially libel; placement in a special program is a TEAM
November 11th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
DECISION, not a decision of one person…even a psychologist; Finally…and I get frustrated each time somebody as ignorant as this poster seems to be…I bet the teacher asked for help, submitted paperwork, etc.. Placement in a program isn’t a simple procedure. It sometimes takes a year, 2 years, 3 YEARS! Please give us your insight when you know what int he heck it is you’re talking about.
Oh..and if I punished a child everytime he/she didn’t make eye contact I’d never teach.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
FInally…you are one of the idiots I’m talking about. If you’re a teacher, God help all of us. I said she must have received training for disruptive students. Not speacial needs, not being a psychiatrist but handling situations that will arise from time to time. There is a saying that goes don’t let the inmates run the asylum. That’s what happened in this case. Instead of making a decision on her own (which apparantly she did not receive training for either) she put it up to a vote. Not parents voting or teachers voting but children. That’s just crazy. It’s amazing people are defending her. Her first day back to school she should just take votes on everything. Going to the bathroom, when school should end, what kids should learn, food to eat, etc.
And no, I’m not a teacher. I’m overqualified to teach in FL, I have a brain and know how to make difficult decisions. You can bet your ass though that when my kid goes to school, this crap will not be accepted. The bar is set so low that this teacher is back in the classroom.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
John….I doubt you’re overqualified to be a teacher. Maybe not even mildly qualified. You’re like other people who have a ‘big, opinionated’ voice but don’t have an idea what you’re talking about.
Let’s just say that when you go to college, get a degree in education, go through first year mentoring, and, gee, actually work in a classroom then your opinion will be valid.
Something tells me that when ‘your kid’ goes to school (I gather he/she isn’t old enough…I must have a brain to figure that one out) your eyes will hopefully be opened. But, given your level of maturity (”You can bet your a** though that when my kids goes to school, this crap will not be accepted) something tells me your child has picked up on your obtrusive manner and will be a challenge to deal with-autism or not.
You have heard the saying “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” haven’t you? You are the tree and your poor child is the apple.
(Oh, and if you took the time to read all my postings you will see that I am a teacher. Kinda highly qualified too given that I’m Nationally Board Certified-a process that is more challenging to go through than getting a master’s degree. But you’re so smart I don’t need to tell you that, huh?)
November 11th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I see, Mark. You think a teacher is supposed to recognize that some sort of diagnosis is warranted even when a parent or the child’s physician does not and even though it is unlikely the teacher could legally force an evaluation.
While I don’t disagree that we could do without the voting and removing the child herself may have been a better course of action, I think it is absurd to suspend her for a year and initiate a lawsuit as a result of these events. Further, I think your expectations are far too high for teachers who are trained in teaching, not medicine. Why in the world should a teacher have the responsibility to recognize this condition when his parent and doctor didn’t? Are you suggesting his behavior would not provide the same indications at home or at the doctor’s office and that ONLY the teacher should have recognized it?
November 11th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
First,
THE TEACHER KNEW the boy has autism. SHE SAID SO IN THE APPEAL I SEEN IT ON TV! I am sure that there are meeting notes that also prove this. If you have a child who has special needs there are lots of meetings before anything is ever accomplished. I recall the mom saying that there was a makeshift IEP in place, this gives me the idea that there were meetings thus notes on his issues.
I have been watching this case because I too have a child with Aspergers and it angers me to the point of tears that this mean, ugly person will be teaching more students how to hate others again.
To all of or the one of you who is posting under several “like” names on this board I say this : SCREW YOU. You have no idea what it is like to walk a day in the shoes of a child on the spectrum. Your child should be in this teacher’s class. Put your money where your mouth is and enroll your brat in her new class.
Mom of child, I support you too!
November 11th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
You know I was wondering who was more qualified to teach, the kindergartners or the teacher.
However, it is clear to me that she put the decision in the kindergartners hands therefore, they must be more qualified than her.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Finally,
If by your post, you mean I have high standards for the education of my child, you are correct. Way to figure that one out on your own.
Keep on setting that bar low. It only makes the rest of us look better.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
didugetaECM,
The news story above has clearly reported he was LATER diagnosed: “Doctors later diagnosed Alex with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism.”
Finally,
Not sure what you are trying to say to me. I stated that he may be able to be placed in a program where he belongs now that he has been diagnosed. Before he was diagnosed he certainly couldn’t. I blame no one for the fact he wasn’t diagnosed earlier. He simply wasn’t.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
What I find interesting is that ALEX Barton is now on the honor roll in his new MAINSTREAM school…hmmmmmmmmm.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Nice to see…., I haven’t addressed you. You and I are on the same page. I’m only addressing ‘people’ like John who can’t quite get it. Since he feels the bar is too low and he’s overqualified to teach I’d suggest he homeschool.
Ian…of course he’s on the honor roll! Let’s see, he’s probably getting services that he wasn’t getting before because he wasn’t diagnosed before. Also…if you were the school that he ended up at would you dare NOT put him on the honor roll? Mom might sue them! Let’s be honest about honor rolls: I could put my cat on the honor roll if I wanted to. Grades and opinions about behavior are often subjective. It’s never cut in stone, ever. BTW…you say he is in a mainstream school. Here’s a quote from a story: “Alex Barton, who just had his 7th birthday last week, is now enrolled at a private school in Palm Beach County. He started there last week as a second grader.” Uh..hate to break it to you but private schools and public schools are very different. My mother-in-law taught in both and there is a HUGE difference between the two.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I thought we were on the same page, which is why I was a little confused. I saw “decision” and thought you were addressing one of my comments.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
YO Nice to See a Reasonable Decision
If you read my post - you fu___r you would have read that I have been following this from the start - the article may say he was later diagnosed but I recall it being within days of the vote out. Furthermore, you of all people should know that a school district will not diagnose a child OR accept a diagnoses from a private doctor. Please go read IDEA Law before you continue here.
Also have you ever heard of Child Find? Look it up smarty pants and you will see why all of your comments are such foolish ones.
Now go buggar off.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
You recall, huh. Why don’t you complain to the Palm Beach Post for writing what they wrote instead of complaining to those of us who read it and believe it rather than relying on what you “recall” or your “ideas”. Why don’t you post a link to those notes you are certain to exist, while you’re at it or offer something other than your recollection before resorting to bitter comments to those who question or disagree with you.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Gee…DidugetaEMC…
I think part of your child’s problem is your nastiness..not aspergers. BTW…I helped a a child get placed back into his very necessary ESE class (as a pull-out) because another school removed him from it. The child had spina bifida and was PI! I used laws such as PL94-142/IDEA to help his family. If you are sooooo angry about the misunderstandings of others concerning autism take all that energy, get rid of the bitterness and get in touch with the state officials that now make it even HARDER to get children placed in appropriate settings. Yelling at people and calling them names via a message board does no good but to make YOU look like an a**.
I’ve learned that it is far better to work with school officials using an appropriate tone than to yell and scream.They are more willing to help and assist you and your child.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
“Doctors later diagnosed Alex with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism…Alex’s mother…sued.” I smell a rat. Uh, make that a lawyer. They have a way of finding a physician willing to make a diagnosis that fits the case. Aspergers syndrome is so nonspecific that it has been used as a criminal defense by clever lawyers. Why not use it in a civil case when the plaintiff is so sympathetic.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
ANY parent who feels this teacher made the right decision needs to be slapped up-side the head. Where does a grown woman who has our children’s developing minds in her hands, get off making 5 yr olds vote out their classmate?! Anybody who is ok with that is SICK.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Wow, I see some rather amazing posts. Some are reasonable and some are just ignorant rants but overyly emotional mind midgets. This disruptive child was removed from the classroom, finally. Good for him and good for everyone else. Now the other children, who seem to be forgotten in this story, can possibly get a chance to learn in a less hostile environment. My sister teaches and she has some horribly behaved kids in her class. She puts in huge amounts of time in order to try to prepare lesson plans that will accomodate a wide span of learning abilities and then has to deal with kids who can not, and frequently will not, behave. For the life of me, I have no idea why anyone would be a teacher. It is a thankless job that pays poorly and to have to deal with some of the kids or worse yet, the parents, would be unworkable for me.
Also, often the parents enable this bad behavior by not teaching their children how to respect others or how to act in a public situation. I can see that we may have two or three of these type of parents writing of this site. Rude, disruptive behavior is often learned at home before it is taken to the school environment. While this child was eventually diagnosed with autism (presumably)I suspect that his Mom was already filing that lawsuit in her head. She sounds like a gold digger.
Bottom line, I’m glad that this teacher was reinstated and I think her punishment for this action was just way too extreme.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:32 am
G,
You are a moron. First of all I resent your comment regarding “midgets”.
It is clear that you think that because you are not disabled you are some sort of superior breed. The only thing that you are that is superior is superior-ly stupid and arrogant.
To refer to the parents as bad parents because their child is disabled is not only low class but cowardly and to call the mother a gold digger is a lame excuse to the teacher.
Remember, if it werent for Wendy A Portillo there would be no story.
Go get em’ mom!
November 12th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
The mother is a victim of people who are attacking her for standing up for her child. Most of the people who attack her wouldn’t even stand up for their own children.
I knew someone like those who attack her once, I tried to save her children from her by adopting them. Instead she refused and now the kids lives are chaotic, she would never stand up for them either.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Ian, you must be of limited learning capacity since what I said is that some parents enable their children to have bad behavior, not that parents enable their children to be disabled. Can you not read? Maybe not, not with those lips flapping so wildly. So, my fine, emotional, bizarre, mouthy responder…get a grip.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Here is my take, as someone who has teaching experience, is the mother of a six year old with autism and a 3 year old that does not have autism, and now works as an autism consultant.
If I had been Alex Barton’s mother, I would have been livid. If I had been the mother of another child in the class, I would have been livid. It is not the responsibility of the other students to be put in the position of disciplining their peer and if I had found out that my child had been made as a classroom exercise a party to the bullying and humiliation of another student, I would have instantly demanded that they been removed from that classroom. I do not send my children to school so that someone can teach them how to hurt others. Some have pointed out that the boy was behaviorally disruptive. While I can believe that (mother of a boy with autism, remember), I fail to see how it was that Ms. Portillo had not been trained to work with disruptive behaviors if she was a certified teacher. They teach classroom management in college. They do inservices as well. If she was having this many problems with this child, she should have been contacting the IEP team and finding out how to get a behavior intervention plan in place. She had options that she chose not to exercise. My personal opinion is that Ms. Portillo proved that day that she was not well-suited to teaching. I hope that the school district at least plans to closely monitor Ms. Portillo for a good long while in regards to her classroom management skills and her interactions with students.
November 14th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Instead of voicing an opinion and trying to make the school system better, let’s just homeschool. Great option Finally. Keep in mind this puts you out of a job. No, I will be your worst nightmare. I’m the parent who will demand you actually “teach” my child and not vote them out. I will challenge you from K-12. You will be pushed to a point that you realize you are not suited for the job you have. I have no problem being the loud voice of reason in the sea of substandard education. It would be a lot easier to leave or just say it’s a one time thing. This is not the case. From the postings I see, there are a lot of bystanders out there that would rather ignore the problem. Just wait. Change really is coming and it’s going to start with Finally. See you in less than nine months. By the way, I’ll be the guy hammering away at you during parent-teacher day. Ciao.
November 14th, 2009 at 1:01 am
By the way, Crystal sounds like she has a pretty good handle on the situation.
November 15th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Yes, the child was diagnosed after the incident but not before; does that mean that teachers should be allowed to bully only undiagnosed kids? Or only those who the teacher can’t “control?” Or only 6th graders, but not kindergartners??
And along with her personal bullying of the child, she taught the rest of the students (except 2) that bullying others who are different is acceptable. Is this the lesson that’s OK to teach 6th graders but not kindergartners? Is that the message the school board is sending to parents, other teachers and students?
Or is it only OK to bully autistic and aspergers kids? Or just those who appear to be autistic or aspergers, but not those who are diagnosed?
I am a teacher. My family includes many teachers and administrators. I wholeheartedly support teachers in all that they do, and know how overworked we are. But this kind of behavior should NEVER be acceptable from a teacher.
November 15th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
It sounds like the system failed everyone. Was there an aide or someone in this teachers classroom who could spend a lot of time dealing with the behavior issues of the child in question? Ot was the teacher to leave the rest of the class unattended so she could spend what may have been excessive amounts of time trying to keep this child from harming others in the classroom or distracting the other children from learning? There are more and more demands being made of teachers and fewer and fewer resources being made available in this poor economy. I think you can go to all the training classes in the world on how to handle bad behavior but there are some people that the “techniques” taught will just not work on. This may well have been the case and since I was not in this womans class and neither was anyone else here, I suspect, we’ll never truly know what was really going on. I believe I read that this was an experienced teacher, not a novice, so I would think she had been around the block a time or two with behavior issues in the classroom and this child was beyond the norm.
In many areas, schools welcome volunteers to come in to help out with routine tasks so that teachers can focus on teaching. Maybe parents should think about volunteering a few hours a week to a school of their choice to help with the education process of their and others offspring. Who knows, it could be a very educational experience as well as being self rewarding.
April 29th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
What’s going on with that lying publicity hound, Melissa Barton? Has a judge thrown out her loopy lawsuit yet? Has she found a new scam yet? First it was a shady time-share resale business, then it was the two year long drama because she says her son was sad one day, what’s next?