Dr. Frank Einstein (9 page)

     
I went to the district headquarters to personally submit my credential.  I walked in the narrow credential office.  It must have looked the same as it in the sixties, save for the pcs.

  
   The young male clerk, who I had never seen before, looked at the credential and said, “This won’t change anything, Mr.  Berg you’ll still be terminated at the end the year. “Wow, I must be quite the topic of gossip at the water cooler.

   
  I did not respond to him.

   
“I’m going to submit this but it’s not going to change anything.”

     Oh, yes it will, I mused in my mind.

      Around the end of June I was summoned to the cluster superintendent's office.  It was an out of the way mobile office on a high school campus.  I sat opposite him at his desk.

     “You’re right, Mr.  Berg,” he admitted, “you can’t be terminated. However you won’t be going to back to that class.  Mr. Macintosh will continue there for continuity.  You’re to be assigned to a general education first grade.”

       I said nothing, shook his hand and left.    Knowing the ropes,   I knew never saying anything but let the union speak for me. I went to my union area representative.  He was one that represents me at evaluation meeting where principal had lied thus throwing out the evaluation.  He was an attorney –the qualification for the job.  When I just started with the union five years previou
s
 
Anthony 
villaraigosa
had
been also an area representative.  He became mayor of Los Angeles after Riordan. Riordan sent the police to beat me up at the Democratic Convention.

      He shared an office at United Teacher of Los Angeles headquarters.  I plopped on his visitor chair.  He needed to know all the harassment to members.  He knew that I could not get terminated.

      “I’m one of the few special education fully credentialed. Hardly any of the teachers in these special education classes in the district is fully credentialed in special education.  Yet they prevent me from teaching special education.  I’m a special education teacher. I have taught special education for four years but never had a general education class.  To put an unqualified teacher over a credentialed teacher in my special education class is illegal.  “

    
“Yes, it is.”  He responded in agreement.

    
“I’ m going to file state charges.”

  
   “We could look into that.”

      On July first I became a first grade teacher.  There is nothing wrong about being a first grade teacher. A teacher is a teacher is a teacher.  So it does not matter what   “We could look into that.”

     I had all requirements to teach this class because I had multiple subjects credential (this is the credential for elementary school in the state of California).

     Elizabeth consisted of a ninety three per cent Hispanic representation in its population.  It had a year round calendar.  My track had three other young female teachers who spoke fluent Spanish.  Therefore they taught English as a Second Language (ESL) classes and I taught the English only class.  

  
General elementary was different than special education in the district in terms of qualifications.  In the sixties, California school districts hired massive amount of teachers. But in the seventies and eighties, districts rarely hired teachers.  Around nineteen nineties a mini baby boom occurred, the first since the one that ended in nineteen sixty two.   Also proposition two twenty two passed by the Californian voters.  This proposition required that grades k to three must have a maximum of twenty students.  These caused another massive hiring of teachers.  As a result the school had an experience gap.  Many teachers were in their late fifties, fully credentialed, with thirty years of experience. On the other hand, many teachers were young, maybe credentialed or close to it, and had a little experience.  Very few were in the middle.

  
   I had twenty students age six year olds at the turned of millennium.  This was year we made seventy two thousand United States Dollars and lived in mini mansion in Carson.

  
   I liked all my students. I had an African American boy; a red headed boy with an Irish name but was still considered Hispanic.  Then the rest were Hispanics. Born in America they were native English speakers though some spoke Spanish as well.  Most of their parents were born in the states. Their mastery of English and the fact that they had been going to school, in California, since the age of three caused them to be far more academically advanced than the students in the other three classes.   All but four came into first grade phonically able to read.  Those four would leave first grade with the phonically reading skill.  They were really an easy class.  A bright boy exuded rambunctiousness.  Another seemed toast out his frustration of not getting the academics quickly.   One girl grasps every concept and never got a card pulled from her pocket on the behavior chart the whole year.  Amanda endeared herself to me.  One of the top students in the already above average class she only had one warning card in her pocket the whole year.  She sobbed when it appeared from behind the green good card and put in front of the green one.  However she nodded letting me know that she acknowledged that she did wrong.  I then assured her, “even though you've made a mistake you’re still a good girl.”

     
Each day we went from one activity to another without stopping for a pause.  The pace kept the students behaving. At the end of each day I would get out my guitar and sing a closing song.

     
The rambunctious boy needed the sanctions of the cards. Such as being benched for recess and lunch recess. He always did his work but fooled around the classroom. He would jump on a chair then go back to work.  He would dance around and then go back to work.  Make noises and then go back to work. However, he soon improved his behavior because he liked recess.

     
In September and October, we had our off track vacation.   In February I filed state charges at the California State School Board against the principal for placing an uncredentialed teacher in my old class instead of placing a fully credentialed teacher, such as myself.

     
A new child enrolled in my class, Magdalena. She had HEMIFACIAL MICROSOMIA. 

      However, she had undergone an excellent facial reconstruction surgery.  She had an endearing personality. She demonstrated sweetness and appreciation at all times.  She had the most difficulties with the assignments.

   
  I enlisted the students who already had mastered the work to tutor Magdalena.  The class contained many students who had mastery.  So I rotated them.  To be a tutor was an honor for them.  Magdalena greatly improved her work because of the tutoring.  

    Mrs. Buenrostros supervised me.  She was one of the two assistant principals who ran the elementary grades.  The principal had no interest in the elementary grades.   Our ages were about the same.   She acted this age but looked much younger.  She had been a teacher for fifteen years.  However this was her first year as an administrator.  She had a no nonsense quality about her.  At my evaluation she gave me helpful constructive criticisms.  Between the choices of satisfactory and unsatisfactory she mark satisfactory on it.   Of the seven years I worked for the district this was one of two evaluations that treated me fairly. They graded me as satisfactory. They were the only two that were not thrown out.

  
  There came talk that I would keep the same class for second grade.  However the state of California determined that principal had violated the law by removing me from the special education class. They ordered my reinstatement.  I went back to where I was supposed to be, my old class.

    The majority of my students have been English as a second language (ESL) students.  I have a California Multiple Subject credential and a California Special Education Moderate to Severe credential.

  
  I have done many Individual Education Plans for my students over my career.  I am adept in the assessment of the student and its tools.  I can derive from these assessments the appropriate goals and how to achieve those goals to develop an Individual Education Plan for the student.  I integrate the Individual Education Plans in a life based curriculum. As well as develop the appropriate use of physical and occupation therapies.   I have used MOVE and Community Based Instruction. 

    The way I used Community Based Instruction was that I took the students into the community.  We would go to a store to learn how to buy things.   We rode the bus to learn how to use the bus.  We went to a restaurant to learn how to properly use restaurants.

       Community-Based Instruction is the individualized instruction of Community environments and target skills. These are selected for each student by the evaluation of their individual needs.   While in a bus I would assess each student's original ability to use the bus. Then I would determine the next step of learning.

       The Los Angeles County Profiles is the tool for this.  Also what was learned is based on recommendations made by students, parents, guardians, and other
teachers.  Community-Based Instruction is direct, planned, continuous instruction. Community environments are visited repeatedly in order to provide instruction for the target skills. We might go to different stores but do the same things. Instructional procedures are determined and materials are secured prior to entering community sites. Modifications to the sites, instructional materials, instructional cues, are made, as appropriate, and opportunities are also made available for reinforcement and maintenance and of the mastered skills.

      The seven of us stood at a checkout counter of a Pic and Save with a small pile of items on the conveyer belt. 

      “Yenaltte,” I instructed my student, “if the total of all these items is three dollars and seventy nine cents and we give her five dollars; how much change are you gonna get?”

      “Ah,
I don’t know.”

     
I diagramed the problem.   I have done this so many times.

      “Write here
five O O.  Underneath we write three seven nine.  Zero is less than nine so we make the zero a ten. Like this. So it’s one in the ones place. Leaving the number nine in the tens place.  Ninety minus seventy is twenty in the tenth place.  Four hundred minus three hundred is one hundred in the hundredths place.  Put a decimal point just after the one.  So answer is one dollar and twenty one cents."  

       Community-Based Instruction is incorporated with the belief that every student, regardless of the severity of his or her disabilities, is capable of living, working, and recreating in the community. Community-Based Instruction should cross over community, domestic, recreation/leisure, and vocational domains. Community-Based Instruction is not a field trip.   Community -Based Instruction is not simply exposure to environments.  We rode the lift of the Los Angeles Rapid Transit Bus.  The lift carried my students because they had wheelchairs.  They learned about timetables; waiting for the bus; asking the bus driver for assistance; paying the fare.  We went the shopping mall and strolled around it. 

      One Community Based Instruction (CBI) Domains is domestic.   This domain includes the skill areas of self-care, personal grooming, wellness and nutrition, and home care, such as housekeeping, cooking and meal planning.  This is why we had lunch during class time. Second is vocational.   The focus of this domain is to develop employability skills, such as being on time, staying on task, following rules and calendar skills related to work. I taught how to tell time as a first step in preparing the students to use time to get them to work on time. Third is community.   This domain includes the skill areas of accessing transportation and community sites, such as libraries, grocery stores, shopping centers, the post office and restaurants.  I repeated going to stores, traveling on the bus, strolling the mall and dining at restaurants. Forth is recreation and LEISURE.  The focus of this domain is to learn how to utilize public recreation options, to plan personal leisure time, and to participate in recreational activities. 

      Community Based Instruction (CBI) is designed for students that need intensive instruction in Functional and daily living skills. Community Based Instruction (CBI) is educational instruction in naturally occurring community environments providing students “real life experiences”. The goal is to provide a variety of hands on learning opportunities at all age levels to help students acquire the Skills to live in the world today.

      Community is defined as the school, home and city community environments in the location the Student lives. Students with cognitive challenges have difficulty generalizing or transferring information. When instruction is conducted with the actual materials in the natural environment where a functional skill is expected to be performed or the activity would occur, students’ progress at a greater rate. Community Based Instruction provides natural opportunities for Adult Living skills practice that is meaningful to students. Concepts and skills that are introduced in the classroom are applied and practiced in natural environments in the community using CBI. Community Based Instruction experiences allow students to see, hear, smell and do things in real life settings as opposed to simulated or artificial settings that are very abstract. Doing things in the natural environment is concrete, reinforcing, and assists in providing educational relevancy for the student.