I just received the following press release regarding a teacher in Pennsylvania who was found guilty of abusing his autistic student.Apparently Stuart Kaplan has been found guilty as of Tuesday of slapping, harassing, abusing and restraining an 11 year old child with Autism. The press release is as follows:
Pennsylvania: TEACHER STUART KAPLAN found GUILTY, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On Tuesday, October 6th Kaplan was tried and found guilty of slapping, harrassing, abusing an restraining 11 yr old Alex – A bright child with Autism and Tourettes.
I’m finding this trend of abuse by teachers on students with Autism quite disturbing. Florida has now a case where a teacher put hot sauce in an autistic student’s beverage as well as the vote the autistic student out of class issues with Alex Barton. What do you think should be done to properly educate special education teachers on how to discipline autistic students?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
On this topic, I once contimplated coming up with a t-shirt that said “I am Autistic, I have come for your children! Be afraid, be very VERY afraid! And where it to one of those walks.
Hopefully fellow peoples with autism would realize I was doing it for the houmor and would not find it offensive. And seeing what the AutSpks croud would do would bring great amusement!!
I really don’t feel that way, I have a very twisted sense of humor, I hope not to offend with this comment. I am proud to have my AS. I would want that shirt to show the absurdidy of Autism Speaks and the mentality of the organization.
They need to be taught not to discipline autistic children. Stims, meltdowns, etc. are not discipline issues. They are mostly involuntary or functional behaviors. Teachers need to teach not punish. They need to teach autistic children to go somewhere private for disruptive involuntary things. They need to teach autistic children alternate non-disruptive functional behaviors.
In the case of Alex Barton, he wanted to wear his shoes on the wrong feet as a stim because they feel neat to him that way. What’s the big deal about that?
Having had that harmless stim taken away, he replaced the stim by sitting under a table. He was 5 years old at the time. What was so horrible about that to require discipline instead of simply ignoring him?
Instead of disciplining him for a completely innocuous stim and forcing him to engage in a mostly innocuous stim as a substitute requiring escalating punishment, a competent teacher will teach the autistic child to replace the mostly innocuous stim with the completely innocuous stim.
Autistic children are unaware of other people’s attention and really don’t care about it all that much. Lack of “joint attention” is one of the signs of autism that worries mothers so much. These behaviors are not manipulative. Not bad or good. Discipline has nothing to do with them.
What I have found so annoying is that so many people blame the parents of Autistic children as if it’s their faults, their faults they couldn’t read the signs and get a proper diagnosis for them…There will always be someone else to blame…Like in the case of Ms. Barton so many people are rallying because they think her punishment was too severe, I think the suspension was pale compared to what Alex would go through due to her lack in judgment but I do not agree with the fact that Mrs. Barton sued her for it.
But, back on the subject, I think teachers should be given a full teaching themselves on how to deal with students like that, with different degrees of differences and not to take a student at face value…If a student is misbehaving perhaps it is NOT that they don’t want to learn they just have something that is preventing them from concentrating. Putting children, who I was once like, into special ed classes would stunt their growth and punish them by taking them away from people their age and stop them from becoming the best they can be due to things they can’t help.
It disgusts me, it really does
Sorry I meant Ms. Portillo