High School and Dyscalculia
During the spring of my daughter’s 8th grade year, I began looking into the options for high school. I was curious about how my daughter would navigate high school with a little-known learning disability, dyscalculia.
For the three years prior, we had been learning math together at home, using books and materials we were finding out of the UK specifically for dyscalculia. She had been experiencing great success with gaining a sense of number and quantity, and advancing in her math understanding. She would have math class at home and then take the rest of her classes at the local middle school.
The setup had worked great, but going into high school my daughter wanted to have what she called the "high school experience." She wanted to be at the high school all day. Also, now everything mattered for high school graduation and college after that.
(Note: I know that these options we explored are not available or are different for everyone depending on what state you're in. We are in Washington state and so there's a lot of flexibility on combining different school options.)
Some of the ideas I wanted to look into were: What would it look like for her to have an IEP (an individual education plan or program) at the high school and receive her math education there? So as I began to explore this possibility, I set up a meeting with the high school psychologist and counselor, and we talked about what this option would involve.
I learned that my daughter would need an updated educational evaluation by the psychologist, which I expected, it had been more than three years since her initial one. So she would need to have that done as soon as possible.
The second thing I learned in this meeting was that at this particular high school, she would need to enroll in a special IEP class that all students took no matter what their IEP was for. This was sort of a catch-all class that was required for every semester that you had an IEP. I felt really resistant to this idea. I asked what the class involved, and it was a lot of study skills. This might be great for a student who struggles with study skills, managing their time, getting their work done, being motivated. Those did not fit my daughter. My daughter loved school, she loved learning, she was often bored at school and desired more challenge. This is part of her twice-exceptionality (2e). She's very gifted in many areas, while also having a learning disability. This class did not sound like a good fit, but it was required if you were going to have an IEP.
So after that I set up a couple of additional meetings, one with the special education teacher who taught this special IEP class, to find out more about it. What did this class involve? If we had an IEP, would this be a good fit? Another reason I did not feel this was a good idea was because if my daughter took this IEP class she would not have room for the electives that she wanted to take. She would not have room to take drawing and design or painting, or psychology, theater, or any of the other electives she was interested in. That was a bummer, because one of the priorities for us was a strengths-based approach to her education as a twice-exceptional student. We wanted to support both the difficult classes like math but also support the parts of her that were exceptional, and where she thrived. So that was the first difficulty about the class.
The second difficulty was the actual class. I went to tour the class while it was in session. There were a few students in there, and I met with the teacher while these students were taking a test. I felt so discouraged by our conversation and quite honestly cried all the way home after because of how discouraging it was. I know all special education classes are not like this, because we had been in special education for three years, but this particular class was so terrible. The teacher’s presence was negative and disparaging of the students. While I was there, this teacher responded to the students’ questions with sarcasm and annoyance. I thought, ”There's no way I'm going to put my kid in this classroom!”
Furthermore, the teacher had no understanding of dyscalculia. I remember asking her, "So how many students have you had that have come through with a math learning disability?" Knowing that from the numbers at the high school and how big it was, each year would probably have at around 75 students with dyscalculia. Her response to me was, "One. We've had one student and we were NOT required to use any special curriculum for them." Just in case, I was wondering, or if that was going to be my next question.
So I left feeling a bit hopeless about this option, and also deeply sad for all the students who had IEPs and who were stuck in that class with that teacher, receiving that kind of treatment, and being denied the ability to take classes that they might really excel in. That really discouraged us from pursuing an IEP.
My third meeting was to meet with the math teacher that would be teaching special education math if my daughter had an IEP in math. While this teacher was much more warm and welcoming, it was clear she didn't have any training on dyscalculia. That is not surprising, because there's no universities in the US, that I know of, that are teaching classes on dyscalculia. I asked her which experts she followed and she mentioned Jo Boaler, who's great, but not specifically for dyscalculia. She's a good math mindset expert and she has great ideas on creative solutions in math. But even though this was special education math, this teacher was not aware of the nuances of dyscalculia and what it meant to lack an innate sense of number and quantity.
So from these meetings I knew that if my daughter had an IEP, she would 1) Be denied elective classes that she was excited about. 2) She would be in a special IEP class that would feel like a waste of time, plus be with a trauma-inducing teacher. 3) She would have a math class with the teacher who was kind and warm but who knew nothing about dyscalculia. For these reasons, it just did not seem like a good fit.
Another meeting I set up was with one of the regular math teachers who taught a algebra-for-real-life type of class. I wondered if maybe our daughter could survive the regular algebra class. Even though the special ed teacher told me, after looking at our completed dyscalculia books, that our daughter’s recent math progress was only through “fourth grade.”
This regular math teacher was great and had some experience of teaching students with multi-sensory materials. He had concrete manipulatives that he had created with toilet paper tubes and rocks from the beach and he showed me some algebraic equations with those physical items. We talked about the students in his classroom and how to join the class students had to have a history of struggling in math. When he talked about their common difficulties, I told him, "You probably have a class that is almost all dyscalculic students!"
That was a meeting that was slightly encouraging, to find a teacher who was warm and engaging and trying new ways to teach algebra, including multi-sensory. But it was discouraging because he didn't know about dyscalculia.
I did not know what we were going to do. We could always go back to the option of continuing our home education math class with the rest of the day at the high school. That option was still on the table. But this wasn’t what my daughter wanted and she felt pretty disappointed about the lack of options to support her learning.
Then our advisor from our old school suggested I meet with a nearby small high school, an options high school it was called. Instead of 1500 students, this school had around 100. So I met with the counselor there and talked about an option of, "What if my daughter attended this school?" Even with no understanding of dyscalculia maybe the smaller setting would fit and work better. That counselor was the first person in the whole process who said to me, who asked the question, "What do you hope for your daughter’s experience, in her first year of high school? What do you hope that looks like?" I thought, wow this is the first person who I feel like is focused on my student and interested in hearing what she might need to thrive. We ended up applying and enrolling at this school.
My daughter still does not have an IEP, but she's making it through her freshman year, with “A’s” in all her classes, even in Algebra! We both feel so surprised at how she’s doing in math! But we’ve discovered that she has been able to take all the information that she learned in middle school from our home learning with the specific dyscalculia materials, and apply that to her math class. The number-sense she developed in those years has helped her successfully navigate Algebra, something we didn’t know was possible.
She has a 504, which are accommodation. She has a list of accommodations she receives not only in math class, which is where she especially needs support, but also in her other classes. Because her dyscalculia impacts her social studies and history class with her understanding of dates and periods of time and numbers. It impacts her science class and her ability to measure and quantify things and record. So these accommodations help her be successful in her other classes as well.
I hope this helps you a little bit. This is just our journey on trying to figure out high school, and it is ongoing because we are still in the middle of ninth grade and figuring it out as we go along!