The Most Recent Background

I began full time teaching as a semi-permanent, my phrase, substitute in 1990. I worked in the middle school special education classes, specifically learning disabled, for about two years in various districts. I had subbed in various social studies classes and even phys. ed. once or twice (I hated nothing more that that). I did, though, find my niche in the LD classes. At the time I was working for a special education camp in Lake County called "Camp Sue Osborn." This camp was run by the East Shore Special Educational Resource Center, which has since been re-named to make sure no one knows about "Special Education."

I worked with and learned from some of the most dedicated and brilliant people I had ever met. The camp brought kids from all over the county together in a special education only setting. We had kids with Muscular Dystrophy and other degenerative diseases, severe mental retardation, traumatic brain injury, gifted kids, kids with learning disabilities and, my favorite, those deemed SBH. The term has since been politicized as have most, but Severely Behaviorally Handicapped is pretty self-explanatory in my book. I learned more in the three summers I worked those camps than at any other time during my formative collegiate and beginning teaching years.

Through my connections at the camps, I met a Superintendent in a small Southern Ohio district. New Lexington City Schools was my first full-time, salaried, contracted position and Clyde Metz was my mentor. As soon as I began in New Lex, I was put into a position that had me flying by the proverbial seat of my pants. The middle school was new as was the LD unit, so I had to create something from nothing while not really having any idea what I was doing. I had begun taking special education classes at Ohio University and Kent State, but hadn't even completed one yet. They learning by full immersion is the best way to go. I am not sure if I agree, but it did force me to come up with a plan pretty damned quickly. I had a superb mentor in Pam Melragon whom I still keep in touch with regularly. She and I went to many a seminar to see what was going on in our SPED world. I spent three years there.

I then spent two years on Put-in-Bay, South Bass Island, as the SPED Director. There were only about 90 kids in the entire K-12 school but I was the only SPED person, so I was able to be named director. This position afforded me the ability to attend State Directors of Special Education conferences in the State Capital of Columbus and various other events furthering my knowledge of the Special Education world. I was also a member of the CEC (Council for Exceptional Children), which was once the definitive organization for SPED professionals, for most of the 1990s.

Needing to leave the stifling confines of the island as well as the prohibitive nature of travel in the winter, I took a position as a part-time LD tutor in Parma at Valley Forge High School. From Parma I spent four years as a middle school LD teacher in the Cleveland Municipal School District under the Barbara Byrd Bennett regime. That did me in for about four years. After my stint in Cleveland, I felt totally worthless. I felt that our entire system was too far gone to ever make a difference. Thank God, the years away re-vitalized my need to help kids find wroth in themselves. My work is just beginning, but, as you all now know, I do have some background giving me the right to voice some of the opinions herein being discussed.

A change MUST come and soon. We are losing our greatest asset at an alarming rate, and the tide must not just be stemmed it must be reversed. I have some ideas and would love for you to take them and use them to help me help the world.