How best to make the first Wednesday of the school year more painful then to also make it BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT??!! Yes, Day 6, August 17th, long, long day at school (complete with new student) and also Back to School Night.

Here’s an idea to make it more enjoyable for all. Let’s make BTSN a cocktail party! Or if not a party, how about if we start it off with Happy Hour?! No? Still not appropriate to encourage drinking on school campuses? Bummer. How about a pot luck? Something to make it worth the long, extra hours for the teachers, and let’s give them credit too, the parents. It’s always held during dinner hours anyway.

But I digress…Back to School Night is the night I feel the closest kinship to my Gen Ed colleagues. The formula is the same for all of us: This is Me introduction, complete with our education history and years of service; this is the classroom schedule and classroom rules and expectations; these are the curriculum standards an expectations of learning; and the kicker that always gets the parents attention…these are the homework expectations.

“WAIT?! I HAVE TO DO HOMEWORK WITH MY CHILD?? BUT THEY’RE IN SPECIAL ED?”

Yes, it’s true. I do expect you to read to/with your child every night, for 15 whole minutes.

“BUT I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT!”

Really, not 15 minutes? Because wait, there’s more! I also expect you to do 10 minutes a night of other, curriculum themed assignments that will reinforce what we are learning in the classroom as well as encourage learning that will benefit their IEP goals.

“BUT THAT IS WHY MY KIDS ARE IN SPECIAL ED. IT’S YOUR JOB TO TEACH THEM!”

Yes, it is my job to teach them, but in only 6 hours a day, I need to fit in lunch, recess, pull-out time with specialist, push in time with gen ed peers, curriculum lessons, IEP goal work, life skills training, and progress monitoring. So yes, I do expect parents to spend 10 minutes, 4 nights a week to do some homework plus read to them another 15 minutes a night….or less time spent watching a sitcom on TV!