How We Label Students Matters

How We Label Students Matters

  August 06, 2015    Verenice Gutierrez, PhD

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I have been reflecting on the path that lead me to be passionate about the intersectionality of Special Education and Bilingual Education.  Both of these fields are highly regulatory, there are federal mandates and benchmarks that must be reached annually.  Both fields require specialized training.  Educators that I have worked with that have made these fields their area of specialization are deeply committed to helping children.  Still, within these two fields we often find our most marginalized, vulnerable students for whom educational outcomes are less than desirable.

I am the oldest of five girls.  The two youngest are significantly younger than I, 18 and 20 years difference.  By the time the girls came along I was a college student working on a Bachelor's of Business degree.  As they grew, I wanted to ensure that their educational experience was different than mine in that I wanted them to have a quality education that wouldn't leave them with significant gaps as mine did.  Their bedroom was a classroom with the alphabet running along the top of the wall and the obligatory calendar corner where we learned days of the week, months of the year, counting, etc.  So despite the business degree, I ended up becoming an educator.  I enrolled in an alternative education program to expedite my acquisition of a teaching license.  I started substituting and fell in love with the process of educating children.

When the eldest of my two baby sisters entered school I had the first experience that lead me to combining the fields of Special Education and Bilingual Education.  Her two Kindergarten teachers wanted to refer her to Special Education because she just wasn't learning.  They felt she had a cognitive disability.  They wanted to know the conditions of her birth (breeched baby who had been without oxygen for a few minutes).  My mom agreed to the testing because it was sold as more support and who doesn't want more support for their child.  When the results came in there was discussion about two standard deviations from the mean, working within her potential, etc.  Basically we were told that my little sister was within the educable mentally retarded range.  No consideration was given to her being a Spanish dominant, second language learner through the identification process.  I remember I flipped out.  I wouldn't let my mother sign any papers and I wouldn't accept the diagnosis.  My baby sister could learn.  She learned every day in her little bedroom/classroom.  We read, we sang, she knew letters and numbers.  The only thing that worried us was that she inverted b's and d's and p's and q's.  Dyslexia, maybe, but definitely not educable mental retardation!

About this time the university open up an opportunity for a cohort to earn a dual Master's in Bilingual and Special Education.  I, and my sister's two teachers, were in the crowd of interested applicants.  I got in.  They didn't.  The more I learned, the harder I resisted and advocated for my sister to receive a proper education.

Then the baby entered kindergarten.  She refused to talk to the teacher the entire year.  She went into selective mutism.  This one they wanted to refer for Autism.  Autism?!  Why? How?  Because she wouldn't speak and they had no way of demonstrating that she had reached all the kindergarten benchmarks.  So I videotaped her meeting and exceeding all of the kindergarten benchmarks and speaking non-stop.  On tape she told me she wouldn't speak to her teacher because her teacher was an idiot.  I asked her why she thought that.  Well, the teacher told kids on the first day of school that they shouldn't cry or they would get sick.  "You don't get sick from crying," she said, "the teacher is an idiot".  And there you have it, five year old wisdom.  Not autistic.  Later this child would be put forth to be tested as gifted and talented.

Now my 18 years younger sister is enrolled in a Master's program for social work.  The 20 years younger sister is wrapping up a nursing degree.  However, had I not had access to the Master's program, had I not been with my mother at the various meetings, had I not resisted the labeling both girls would have had very different educational experiences and outcomes.  Their potential was being curtailed in kindergarten!  Their love of learning was going to be squashed because they would have been othered through the process of being labeled.  How I wish I could say that these were the only experiences I have come across in my 20 year career; sadly they are not.

When I became a principal of a school where 51% of the students spoke a language other than English as their first language I was shocked at the poor ESL service delivery model and alarmed at how Special Education was a dumping ground for so many English language learners and kids of color.  I found that students had been referred for not turning in homework and had been given a designation of being cognitively disabled.  Excuse me?  Not turning in homework is not one of the 13 exceptionalities nor should a behavior that may not be within a child's control be a cause for referral and subsequent evaluation.  Boys of color who couldn't sit still or mind their p's and q's where quickly referred for either ADHD (nope, teachers can't give this diagnosis I warned) or for Emotional Disturbance (this one lead me to pull out the DSM-IV and give a lesson on the spot).  I spent four years acting as the gatekeeper to Special Education.  I had to re-educate and re-train my staff to convince them that there is no magic fairy dust in Special Education, that we couldn't simply pawn the kids off to a specialist and that it was their responsibility to educate all children starting from where they were.  Yes, it is hard to have so much variance in skills.  Yes, differentiation takes more time and is hard work.  Yes, I expect you to do this.  Welcome to urban education.

In my last year I tackled the issue of overidentification of boys of color into the emotional disturbed category.  This was the toughest and most heart breaking.  The school had been quite effective at creating a direct school to prison pipeline.  A lot shifted when one of our 8th graders tried to stab his mother.  When he was adjudicated the judge requested his school file.  A file full of office referrals for insubordination, open defiance, fighting... Many of those referrals had resulted in suspensions.  So the judge went hard on him because he had a history of violence.  Our school file strongly supported the judge's assertions.  Except we failed that kid.  He had been screaming out for help since 3rd grade and the school kept being punitive rather than therapeutic.  We never stopped to question why he engaged in the behavior; we simply sent him out.  When we as a community looked at how our actions or inactions had set the course of this child's life, we all changed our behaviors and approach to handling "difficult" children in our school.  We became more compassionate.  We searched for ways to create a safe, inclusive learning environment while we taught the boys how to navigate the school system with more positive outcomes.

I am not going to claim to have fixed everything.  I did not create a utopia of a school building without any problems.  We still had our issues but I will claim that we (because I didn't do it alone) created a much better learning environment dedicated to producing positive educational outcomes.  So now I am in the next phase that leads me to want to have impact on a much broader scope.  I want to offer my experience, both theoretical and from hands-on experience, to other administrators who wish to address issues in their Special Education and ESL delivery models.  I am open to connecting with principals, directors, superintendents and school boards.  As a nation we cannot afford to continue to have the same results we have had with our culturally and linguistically diverse students.  All of us will be impacted by our nation's success of failure in meeting the educational needs of all our students.