Thriving in Elementary School

Families often start coming to therapy in the preschool years, and a big reason for that is making school entry more smooth and successful. Today. We have the pleasure of speaking to a learning support services teacher here in a local school district. We will take a look at some common challenges for elementary aged kids in school, as well as some strategies that can make school life positive and full of growth. Let's welcome, mr. Leech to the lowdown podcast. Hi there, mr. Leech .

Good afternoon. Hello? Yeah, we're , we're excited to have you here on the podcast before we get started, we have this little surprise that we give to all of our guests and we have a few secret questions that we would like to ask you so that our listeners can get to know you a little bit. Are you ready for those? Fabulous. All right, so first, what are you reading right now? I am reading, I'm actually reading three or four different books at the same time, trying to keep myself busy.

And I'm reading a fantasy book, a Assassin's apprentice by Robin hall . Ooh . Yeah , it sounds interesting. It's fantastic. Question number two, mr. Lee , what is your distress routine? My distress routine is to go for a long, long run in nature. How long are we talking? As long as possible marathon distance or longer on trails is the best way for me. Oh, wow . That's wow . That's long. Are you question number three? Are you a coffee or a tea person? I've switched to coffee more recently.

I did go through a T phase , um , and got very into , uh , especially black and white teams . But now I'm firmly in the coffee camp. Two to cups a day. Yeah, well, I think most of us will join you there, although Hannah does prefer her hot chocolate that's for sure. Yeah . Do you have a go to workout playlist that you like?

I then , um, once I'd finished university, I was kind of unsure of what direction to take and using that kind of experience I'd had in my mother's school. Um, I became an EA , um, at a school for children on the autistic spectrum, and I knew that that was a route or a path that I felt passionate about and I wanted to have more, more impact or more, I guess, more creative decisions about the curriculum that I was teaching. So then I retrained and became a teacher.

Um, and then I taught in , uh , a couple of S uh, separate , special needs schools taught in different countries where they have different systems and , uh , then eventually made my way to BC where they run and across Canada, they run more of a mainstream integrated approach.

Um, you know, if you're working with eight children and there's only two adults in the room, it's quite different from, from having one, one EA assigned to one child in a , in a mainstream classroom of say 20 to 23 children. But yeah, I do. I do think that the, the manner in which I've kind of arrived at this position is I've been very lucky to have experienced a number of different settings. And I felt like I can bring that to the , uh, the table.

It's really important to actually when you're bringing everyone to the table, getting everyone to connect in and be like, well, this is how I think, and this is why I think about this. And this is why I focus on this in the same way that, you know, the way an SLP or OT would look at a challenge or a stretch for a student would be very different because of where they're coming from.

So I think making sure though the older participants know there , know their responsibilities, but I think also know their strengths . Um , I've seen, I've seen the relationship between VA's and teachers work very well and also very differently across different settings.

Um, so really the IEP, is it saying, what are we doing above and beyond what we're already providing in the classroom? How are we going , uh, beyond to meet the needs of the student? And then the specific needs are usually a specified. So for example, or we might call them a stretch. So the student has a stretch in, for example, mobility, gross, motor fine motor, and then it will be okay, so how are we going to meet the stretch? Or the student might have stretching communication.

So how are we gonna meet the stretch? But also IPS do focus on positives as well. So we talk about strengths and areas of stretch. It's not just areas of stretch, but it's really, it's a place where , um , the classroom teacher, the learning support teacher, the principal, and the educational assistants and parents can come together and talk really trying to get a holistic picture of the student.

I think there's, there's also an element of creating accountability to make sure that if, if we document what the student needs in the IEP, we can then check back on that throughout the year, review that progress.

So with respect to an IEP, our IEP is meant to have academic goals, safety, goal , self care goals, or all of these, like from your perspective, what kind of goals should be included.

Um, so for me, an IEP is really what are the student's needs, and that means it could be , um, personal care. It could be academic goals, it could be communication goals, it could be independence or , um, uh , personal awareness. So it really is quite , uh, quite a myriad of different things. It's all the things really that make us who we are, make a person who they are.

I think that, you know, thinking about thinking about the types of clients you'd have at the DSRs, I think that there is not a set pro former in the sense of, Oh, if a student is known to have down syndrome, they need to have a communication goal. They need to have a physical goal. They need to, there is there's nothing along those lines, it's more what other needs. So we have some students that would have an IEP that have no communication goals, no physical goals.

They literally just have regulation goals. So when they're upset or frustrated, they would have a goal of what to do. Whereas we have other students that have like multiple objectives in each goal. So the goal would be the general heading of like physical , uh , independence or communication. And then within each of those, there would, there could be three or four objectives for the student to work on three or four is , starts to be quite a lot.

And I've, I've had a lot of conversations with people over the number of, of objectives that you actually set in an IEP over the course of a year. That's something we can talk about later.

What are you, what are you doing? What, what expertise can you share with us so that we can better meet the students' needs at school? So in terms of, in terms of documentation, I mean, even things like simple stuff like writing samples, or I , I personally find videos fantastic because videos really give you a chance to see quite a lot.

And even something like a raw writing sample, you know, if someone's written something, students rent something, you can look at it and say, okay, was this independent? Or was it hand of hand or is it partial, physical prompt? Whereas if you're looking at a video, you can see clearly, okay, well actually the adult just gave them the pen and then they were able to write it. Great. Um , so yeah, I'm a big fan of, and sharing videos with parents as well.

You know, throughout the year, just a quick video, I felt like speaks , you know, a picture paints, a thousand words, but, but I really think a video goes even further because you can, you can then see the progress. So you have video evidence. If parents can bring that along as is excellent.

Sometimes I feel like it's a little bit pushed to the side, but I think the interest of the student for so many of our students, that interest is the biggest, the thing that's going to take them the furthest in terms of how deep they'll delve into a subject. You know, if you say, okay, we're going to be looking at, you know , 14th century Italy. I can imagine some students would say great.

And some students would say, I'm not that interested in it, but if you said, okay, we're actually going to be looking at trains. And we are going to look at trains through the ages, and we're going to look at the differences between trains and we're going to look at comparisons and I can imagine that you'd get a lot of students that would be, you know, clamoring. And they probably be teaching you a few things about the trains.

But I think, I think that bringing that interest piece, you know, what does your, what does your, what does your child love to do? What is important to them? And one of the things as well with the IEP process that I like is now , um , and this is, this is coming from ministry of education. Now we're actually beginning to write the IPS in the student's language.

So it's , I can statements as opposed to the name of the person, you know, Jimmy can it's, I can with the idea that we're really coaching it in the student's language and thinking about how would they describe it. So yeah, for me past pause videos about what the student can achieve , um , stuff about their motivation, the more information parents can bring is fantastic.

We have lots of contact with the one-to-one school support and how our kiddos are doing, given that this relationship is so important. What steps can families take to make sure it's a successful working relationship?

I think it's important that the expectations are very clear so that, you know, okay, we will, we will be communicating once a month or we will be communicating once a week. We'll be sending a video twice a week. So that, that people are sure exactly kind of where they stand. I think in terms of ensuring, ensuring that the child is , is working with someone that they really feel like respects them. I think that's, that's a lot of the way in which the child interact .

It talks about going to school. Like we have one student and he literally skips off the bus and it's like, okay, if you're skipping off the bus to school or looking forward to your day. And I think, I think that that taken the child's lead on that is , uh , is very, very key. I think, I think that the clear expectations is important.

So not, not putting too much on the support staff and making sure that the classroom teacher is involved and making sure, you know, if the classroom teacher is actually communicating with parents, then allow that to happen rather than having the staff member do that as well.

I think that the, the learning support teacher works alongside the EAs and helps with their schedules, but in terms of more of the assigning of EAs to specific students, that that's really, the principal is responsible for that, but in collaboration with the district. So it's , it , it ends up being a kind of a multilayered approach. It's not one person at the school that just says, you'll go in with them. You're going with them. You're going with them.

It's based on the school's needs and the staff that are available and the expertise of the staff that are available. I think being, being open to it and using , um, making sure that, you know, people are positive in their interactions. I think I know for myself that I've sometimes spoken to teachers and teachers feel like the age should just be dealing with the student.

Um, and my take is always, you know, well , actually it's very challenging for a lot of the educational support staff, because when they're given a student that may have some aggressive and challenging behavior, they're given, you know, they're not given a lot of prep prep time in order to actually adapt any of the material. And then actually it , technically, it's not their role to adapt the material that should be done for them.

So they give it a very short period of time to adapt content for a student with very high needs. So I like the EAs are under quite a lot of pressure and often taking that as the first, not necessarily core , but just the first perspective, like these are members of staff that are working very hard for the children , um, kind of guides would then guide the interaction with them as opposed to thinking, Oh , this member of stock , maybe isn't doing enough for my child or,

It's a good thing for us to know too, because a lot of the times I'm wondering like, Oh, how can the EPA act this way? How come they don't know about this thing? And it's because it's just there , they are under a lot of pressure and they do have a lot on their plate and it's just a matter of, you know, not being prepared enough or not having enough time to be prepared for that. So, so that's a really good, a good perspective to have for sure. Yeah.

And therefore, if I talk to this person, let's say it's the principal or whatever, then they're going to make sure that whatever I need is done and that's not how it works in reality, largely it seems like due to just the pure shortage of having staff enough staff to meet everybody's needs and staff that have specific training say from pop word or from a different organization and have had time to go and pursue those other resources.

So, yeah, there's a lot to consider and I think, Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, no. Um , I was just going to say, however, for parents that do feel like the relationship or the dyad between their particular child and whoever's supporting them at school, if that does need some help, then seeking out assistance for that is not a bad thing to do. It's not wrong to go and talk to somebody at school. And certainly nothing can be fixed if you don't say anything. Yeah , absolutely.

And , and putting phrasing it in that sense of how can we improve versus these are the things that are , I don't like this, I think is also really important to mention you too , about like how EAs is assigned. Uh , we have really two levels of EA. There is EA and EA three and an EA three has received a thousand hours of training alongside a behavioral analyst. So there are only two types of EA.

So when you're thinking about, okay, well who's assigned to my child, if your child, usually someone with a , with an ASD diagnosis and challenging behavior would have any [inaudible] . So they've had more , uh , help , um, functional behavioral assessments and the, you know, the ABA method, but you, your , your child really could be assigned anyone, anyone that meets the requirements for being an EA has been accepted into the post.

So it's not as though there are different levels of EA , you know, Oh, this is a specialist and they might be a specialist and working with students with downs syndrome, but there's not a category of that within the system. It's good to know. Yeah . Thanks for clarifying that.

Whereas the students setting , how are they, how are they interacting with their pets? For me personally, I agree that inclusion is , is a way we think about things, but I've also in now , I've spent a number of years in what would be cluster segregated settings and in pluses, specifically for students with learning exceptionalities. And I think those often get kind of penalized for being uninclusive. For me, the real question is, does it benefit the student?

And if you cannot answer yes to that question, then you're not helping the student. You know? So for example, people might say, Oh, well, you know, my child is getting removed from the class so they can work one to one with someone . Well, is it benefiting them in order to work one-to-one with that person? Yes. Correct. Or is it, would it benefit them more to stay in and be part of community circle for that session?

Yes. Then do that, it , it , I think that it can get very, very difficult to separate when you start to weight into what is inclusion. Um , I think it's very easy to say we should include, we should always include. Yes, but the actual fact of things is we need to make sure that we're meeting our students' needs.

And for her own story, she felt that one of the reasons that she pushed inclusion and complete inclusion so much when her son was younger, was partially her own grief and not wanting to be different and not wanting to be other. And I can see that mirrored in a lot of the families that I work with, especially when the kids are younger and getting started in school.

And there's a great leeriness towards pulling the child out of the classroom for any reason, thinking that that might, you know, not benefit them and cause them to be more different or, you know , less accepted or fall behind their peers even more. And you're kind of saying that's not the right lens for the problem. And the lens is really, what's going to be the most helpful thing because in reality, being in the classroom might be helpful a little bit.

And being out of the classroom might be helpful a little bit. So it's kind of a day to day. Where's my student at what's going to help them right now. Is that what you've read ? What you're kind of saying?

Yes. Okay. So actually there, you've got an example of having a student leave the classroom for a small amount of time to be taught specific skills to then reenter the classroom. I think, like you said, on a day to day basis, it changes on the needs.

I mean, there's also the big part that, you know, if you're having a student, if your student is being pulled out of the class to work on something specific, they do miss what's going on in the class, you know, some of the social interaction and engagement with their peers, they will be missing because there'll be working on this specific thing outside of the class. However, you can't have both things. Unfortunately at the same time, you have to decide what you want to focus on.

And you might say, actually, I don't want my child to be working on those things outside of the class. I would prefer them to always be in the class. However, just because your child is in the class, doesn't necessitate learning. And that's really where you start to look at. Like the integration model is slightly problematic, is it's , we've gone from, we've gone from having a students with learning exceptionalities, physically separate. And we said, no, that doesn't work for us.

We can't have them physically separate than we've had. We've gone to having them in the classroom and sometimes out of the classroom. And we said, okay, that sometimes works. But I think when you put, when you put someone who learns in a different way into a classroom of mainstream peers, and you, you're saying that despite the fact that I know you've learned in a different manner and style, I'm going to expect you to learn the same as all of your peers.

You're actually serving that child and you're not meeting the needs. And so having them in that classroom for me personally, all the time, isn't, that's not inclusion because you're not looking at a child centered approach. Yeah .

So changes should be made in those kinds of situations. Even it looks like

Leach brought this up was that inclusion can be like that theoretical underpinning because if you want for somebody to be truly included in the classroom is that they're learning together with their peers, they're interacting with their peers, but if it requires them to leave for a little bit and then come back in, there's nothing wrong with that.

So I think, I mean, inclusion looks different for different kids, but the actual physical presence of being in the room, doesn't necessitate inclusion right away. So it has to really be looking at the student, what their needs are, what their challenges are, what's the best learning environment for them. Um , and then kind of going from there. So, yeah.

But each kid is thinking about totally different things . You know, the teacher's pointing out the globe and one kid is thinking about truck, one kid, just thinking about video game. And this happens even with neuro-typical children. And this is that this is across the board, this happens. So finding, finding a way that we don't, we don't equate being physically present as learning because I think then the danger is that, Oh, great.

Well, the , in the classroom, we don't have to worry about anything. I think, I think as well, I liked that . I liked how you were describing it and talking again about like the benefits to the student is that we put labels on things like inclusion, integration. We do pull in model, pull, pull out model, push in model. There's all these technical names that we give them.

But really when you say, what is the best for my child and you have that open conversation , um, you can, you can chunk that down and segment it to tiny weeny timeframes. What is the best for my child this week, today, next week, over the course of the year, but really what is, what is the best thing for them? I feel like a lot of the questions can be easily answered versus who should we do?

Well, are we following inclusion if they're integrated, but at 50% of the time they leave hot school early, it gets very complicated very quickly. Right? So would you say that this is a good conversation for parents to sort of spark up at something like an IEP meeting just to make clear where their expectations are and their priorities? Because there are some parents that I know whose number one priority is their child's academic progress on . There are other

So we were talking earlier in her about, you know, like the communication aspect or the physical or the academic parents can now actually say, I think communication is the most important thing for our family and for this child. So they can parents really start to say, like, these things are the most important.

Yeah. I mean, that's something that parents could bring to an IEP and that would be fabulous to have a parent come and say, like, you know, we know our child is fine academically, but we think social is what we'd really like to work on because then, you know, the roadmap already starts to be made. We can start to see the kind of destination we want to get to. Um , and I think equally for, for, for parents who maybe don't bring that to the meeting, having someone ask them that is really powerful.

So saying, what are your hopes? And asking the child as well, if they're old enough and want to be present, what are your hopes? What do you, what do you want to work on? And having them give the perspective?

I'm going to change tracks a little bit and talk about some sort of social side of things, a one major priority for a lot of families when they're thinking about their child in school is sort of starting and maintaining peer relationships. And I'm wondering how you view the school's role in this kind of area.

Um , so for me, the , the most important thing for students to have positive peer relationships and authentic, I think that's , for me, that's the key word , authentic peer relationships is for people to see the child as an expert, or for them to be seen as a whole person, if they're only ever seen as someone that we help or someone that we, Oh, they dropped that drink again, let's pick it up for them.

You can never move past that sense of being a helper or a helpy DIA , you know , you have the students end up becoming a helpy to , uh, to the child. Yeah. So I think , I think that's, that's probably one of the biggest thing is showcasing the student's strengths so that they're not seeing just in terms of their challenges,

And he joined in a Dungeons and dragons club at lunchtime and he is, he's like an encyclopedia. And he's amazing. So he's gone from this role of kind of being quite socially awkward to where I can now say, Oh, can you help that student that just trying to make a new character? And he's like, absolutely, he'll sit down with them . And then he's like, okay, hit points, hit points means this, this means this. And he is able to break it down to them.

And he is taking on like a leadership role because of his skillset . So he goes from being someone who's maybe academically fine, but socially very awkward to now, other people are saying like, wow, I can actually engage with him on a level because of his knowledge and his depth of understanding, which is something that wasn't possible before.

And it is a genuine, authentic connection as opposed to, Oh, it's so nice that this student comes around and it's, you know, it's, it's, it's the opposite of tokenism cause it's authentically recognizing the other person and what they bring, as opposed to saying, yes, the student has learning exceptionalities. We have to treat them slightly differently.

And we have to, I think there's a, I think there's sometimes a danger in just giving high fives and being very positive without there being any substance to that.

Yes. I think, I think that to be a helper and a help he is , is great, but I think that there is a limit to how do you build a friendship with someone if you're just caring for them because it's not a reciprocal relationship. Whereas I think if, if everyone realizes that everyone has a place and yes, our roles are slightly different in the school, but everyone is contributing in the way that they can.

I think that's very powerful, but I think going back to what we were saying earlier, it depends, it has to begin from both sides. So it has to come from a school wide approach where we accept diversity and we accept identity and we accept different backgrounds.

And also that we then provide the student a chance to show the skills and, you know, in every class we're making it very clear that we're all in different places, but we're all doing what we can and bringing what we can to make the classroom and really the world a better place.

Um, a lot of parents want to be able to have that student hang out with their kids outside of school, but then it's very difficult if it's not supported and, you know, Marla can also speak to that supportive communication piece. But I think that's kind of where the problem starts, as well as the parents don't know how to get that friendship outside of school, into, you know, like going to the movies on the weekend or going and playing basketball on the weekend.

Like how do you transition from one space to the next in generalizing ?

Oh , would you like to come and see? And the problem with these scripts is that they're learn so well, but that's the only option that a lot of our students have. And I think teaching, teaching those, the more difficult challenges, like I , I think about this all the time. So I had one of my students kept asking another student if he wanted to come round to his house. And the student that was being asked, didn't want to be rude. So he said, no. And then the other kid then asked him again.

And so the student who was asking, turned away and instead of reading this body language, I was like, I I'm trying to disengage from this conversation. The student that was asking then walked around to the other side of him, ask him again. And I realized that what he'd been taught is he'd been taught. If you ask someone, will you , do you want to come and have a play date with me?

If you ask someone that enough times, then you know, Oh, okay, well, I only ask 40 times, but if I ask 60 times, perhaps that is the recipe for success. Right . And that will get me a friend. And actually it's not, it's really not that simple. But I think on giving our students a way to understand like, Oh, we could have a play date or we can, we can go and do a shared activity together, or we can, you know, Oh, we both like this. Okay. Let's maybe have a day of playing this .

And then they kind of almost give that almost as a package idea to their child and their child then says to the other kid, Hey, would you want to come and play Lego on the weekend or something along those lines, as opposed to, you know, I think what often happens is we verbally prompt our kids by saying, I'll ask Jimmy to come round on Saturday.

And so, you know, the student goes and says, well, you come around on Saturday and Jimmy says, no, no. And then it falls apart and there's no reparation, there's no ability to reconnect and pull it back. So I think it's finding a way to structure or finding

So for example, if someone was about to enter a kindergarten classroom with that child, and they were particularly anxious about it by looking at that whole picture of the child and thinking, okay, so this is where they've got great strengths. They can work focused for 30 minutes on drawing really detailed pictures. Fabulous.

Okay. What are more of the stretches and not making it so much about, well, those are not, those are atypical for the age range, making it more about where is your child and what do we need in order to help them develop. But also understanding that with developmental milestones, we do have an idea about some of the prerequisite skills that we need.

I've definitely spoken to lots of parents that are worried, you know, when their child enters school, when we are talking about going backwards, when we talk about going backwards to go forwards and saying, you know, well, if you're , if your child is not writing, that's not a problem we need to look at what are the prerequisite skills in order to write, we need to kind of go back in order to, to go forward from that point.

So I think, I think that the biggest thing for me would be for parents to take a breath and not to feel like it's needs to be a comparison. They're all children come to school with their own unique set of abilities, their own strengths and stretches, and that by just being more calm and not in a place where they feel like they need to compare their own child to the other children, they're going to be more, be able to be more present for their own child. I think,

Sure. We would like to know if you have any really sort of exciting and accessible resources that you can recommend for parents and or for students that you think are, you know , great right now.

And it goes along with the words almost as though it's subtitled, which I really like . So I've, I've been really, really into CBC kids news. I've I find that actually I'm surprised that not many people use it, but it has , um , especially for children in the older grades, children that are in grades five, six, seven, it has a lot of current content that's really engaging. Um , like I check it off and just to see what's coming up.

Um, so, you know, they're looking at key words about what's going on at the moment, but when the Raptor is one, they were talking about the Raptor celebration and how Toronto is celebrating. And it's very current and very up to date. So kind of a springboard from that tar Hill readers is a fantastic resource. So Tarheel T a R H E L, based from a North Carolina, but all he'll read is there's a massive compendium of what they're called is PowerPoint books.

So people have made books that you can look at online, or you can download them. And one of the really nice things about PowerPoint books and I'm a , I love literacy. And I, in terms of we're talking about what are the students engaged in? You know, if they're not the interest in reading the book, but if you took them on a , on public transit, took photos of them on public transit and then wrote a book with them. And then, you know , you put it into PowerPoint.

So you have each slide has one picture of them on different parts of public transit. And then you got to write with them the different things about public transit. I know for so many of my students, that's incredibly motive, but you know, they're practically grabbing the laptop off me in order to type the story. Um , so Tarheel reader is a fantastic resource for that to use.

I know if parents ever trying to do anything at home, and it's a slightly challenging , uh , online stopwatch.com has a number of different types of basically stopwatch, stopwatch kind of apps time , time is exactly. But you know, there's a sand timer or there's a different clock countdown or the candle one , or there's a dynamite one, or, you know, there's a rubber, rubber duck in a bath that there's, there's a variety of different ones.

But I find like having those visuals, I, you know, I use them in staff meetings. I like to keep myself on track and having those visuals are fantastic. I do know a go noodle has become quite popular in my school environment as something to use. Um, so I think most of my sources would be literacy based.

I think for me, I know now that there's a, there's a large amount of things on Facebook and kind of at home programs that are designed for kids, I'd say for me, this is not maybe necessarily an exact resource, but just being creative with the kids, being creative and having a sense of like ridiculousness, I find often gets the best results.

Um, you know, things like games like the floor is lava is an absolutely ridiculous game, but actually in terms of a game that you could play very, very easily, you could change it to like, Oh no, the floor is a river. And there's like, Oh, let's swim in the river. And then you could kayak in the river and then you could surf in the river. I think those kinds of games where there's a lot of activity and a lot of chance to use verbs and adjectives. And for me, role play is a big, big part .

So any , any activities where you could introduce role play or pretend play would , um , would be my suggestion. Great.

And actually I've found so often if, if I inject a bit of humor in that situation, I provide an opportunity for that student to express what it is they need, the stubbornness seems to operate . And I think, I think stubbornness at this has the opportunity of being labeled as a character trait. And I don't think it's about our students. I think it's , it's a , it's a, a coping strategy. It's I don't, I can't handle what's going on. So I'm shutting down. Yeah .

I think if we misread that it comes out as why is the student so stubborn and actually no , we need, how do we need to rethink the situation? So yeah. Humor , if I can get a smile, I'm like ha ha

We really liked hearing your insights because we don't often get to talk with anybody sort of behind the scenes on how education is set up from a school's perspective, where are those challenges were ? What things are easy from the school's perspective in terms of integration or inclusion. And it was really lovely to talk to you. Thanks for coming. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you next week,

So like you said, working just on joint attention or taking turns and copying each other, paying attention to each other is huge before you can so that they can learn to even just be paying attention to you to copy the way that you make sounds or when you use words, what you're actually referring to . Yeah.