Carly’s Voice

Carly’s Voice by Arthur Fleischmann Page B

Book: Carly’s Voice by Arthur Fleischmann Read Free Book Online
Authors: Arthur Fleischmann
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would she ever be accepted
     anywhere?
    Excerpt from Northland Educational Centre, June 1999:
CLASSROOM REPORT
    Carly is beginning to show an interest in symbolic play, particularly in the Daily
     Living Center . . . Carly is able to identify five body parts and she enjoys the shape
     sorter and puzzles when encouraged to do so. We continue to work on increasing Carly’s
     attention span.
    Carly continues to use a combination of communication systems in order to have her
     needs met. These include sign, gestures, sounds and photos. A recent addition to her
     verbal approximations is the “s” sound, which she has used to request “chips” and,
     in a different context, “swing.” She has been observed to combine “words” by signing
     “more” and saying “s” to request “more chips.”
    Carly enjoys gross motor play such as running, jumping and climbing on playground
     equipment. She is propelling herself well on a riding toy and now able to turn corners
     . . . she has been practicing throwing and catching games. Carly has also been working
     on “turning” activities and has shown good wrist movement when turning objects such
     as jar lids.
    Matching, sorting and copying are all important goals for Carly. She is now able to
     sort two colors, match identical objects as well as pictures to objects she is motivated
     by.
    Carly has learned to independently remove her shoes and socks and shirt if they are
     loose. She is working on independently putting on her socks. She drinks from a cup
     with nospillage. Next year we will introduce such fasteners as zippers, snaps and buttons . . .
    After two years at Northland, just past Carly’s fourth birthday, she began to outgrow
     the services that the school provided. And even the reduced fees outgrew our credit
     line. We moved on to the public school system’s watered-down services for special-needs
     education. There were suitable placements for a child with more common disabilities.
     However, for a child like Carly with a mixed bag of behavioral and what we presumed
     were intellectual deficits, there was no perfect fit. The philosophy of the public
     education system in our area was to offer “good enough” for as many as possible. It’s
     what our friend and lawyer Martha Ellison once called “equality with a vengeance.”
     Provide a bit to everyone, but not enough for anyone.
    Even though we were prepared to send our ABA therapists into the classroom at our
     expense, the rules of the school board forbade outside staff from working in the classroom.
     In one of the neighborhood schools, however, the principal was prepared to be flexible
     and admit a worker with Carly. Then, partway through the year, we were called to a
     meeting. The teacher stood in front of us with a written statement.
    “Your daughter does not seem to like me or the environment of our classroom,” she
     read from her script. Her hand shook slightly as she spoke, and she avoided our stunned
     gaze. She was a fastidious woman who kept her classroom tidy and efficient, and Carly’s
     needs were anything but efficient. The principal and school board administrators looked
     on in sycophantic sympathy.
    “Doesn’t like you?” I interrupted, incredulously. “She’s autistic , for God’s sake. She doesn’t ‘like’ anyone.”
    “I just don’t think I can do this,” the teacher responded.
    As far as we could tell, the teacher had made no effort to learnabout autism or our daughter’s needs. Nor was she required to actually teach Carly,
     since we had provided a trained ABA therapist to run all programming for the half-day
     sessions. In fact, Carly wasn’t even in the classroom very much because her therapist withdrew her to a private work space
     in the hall when she needed quiet and greater focus. But it was clear the battle was
     already lost. Carly was asked to leave the school by the end of winter break.
    We were told that there were more appropriate schools for Carly

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