Knowing When to Advocate for a Student

Today, I got a laptop. Not for me. For Aeesha.

Let me flash back to about six weeks ago. A team meeting took place around a table in the science classroom, completing the annual discussion about Aeesha’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP).  

In eighth grade, Aeesha still struggles with basic mathematics, with written expression skills and with decoding text. In many ways, she is an elementary school student trapped in a middle school student’s adolescent body.

Aeesha struggles more than most students on our interdisciplinary team. Actually, I would place her in the top three.

I am sure she held that “distinction” last year. And the year before.

Maybe even since kindergarten.

Anyway, the team of teachers, a counselor and a parent were sitting around the table. “You know, we have students with far less severe disabilities who carry these fancy laptops with all of this cool software to help them,” I pointed out.

As an after-thought, I asked, “Why is it that certain students seem to get everything and others sit with nothing?” 

I already know the answer. And I know that the question is loaded. Some students benefit from savvy parents, parents who know what services are available. They are parents who will ask question after question, who will fight to ensure that their child is fully equipped with technology, with dozens of parent-teacher meetings, with everything.

Then there are other parents. Uneducated? Unaware? Meek?

I am weary of this reality, this inequity, as it manifests itself in countless ways. How can we ensure that students, regardless of their parents’ know-how, receive an equitable distribution of resources? 

Our team plans another meeting.

Do I realize that most students in our country survive without laptops? Of course I do.

Will a laptop be Aeesha’s panacea, the tool that allows her to cross some threshold, to develop some skills, to be more independent? Maybe or maybe not. But it’s time to be bold. 

So, last Friday morning, together with a technology specialist, we selected software to install on the laptop that Aeesha will now carry from class to class and then home.

I peeked over at Aeesha. She smiled at me.

I leave the room, cheering this simple victory, a victory that took a grand total of 45 minutes. 

I asked. She received.

But as I drive home tonight, my brain in reverse, I consider all of those students for whom nobody ever advocates. Not the parents. Not the teachers. Not me.

I picture faces from years past.

And despite this morning’s triumph, I feel like weeping.  

Baker is a middle school language arts teacher in Missouri.