Free Articles from Interaction 28 Issue 2 Choice does not equal “informed choice” ... | Page 2

interaction : v28/2/’14

We were tourists and each sector was a rudderless ship. Some ships were plain and
without frills, some had bells and whistles. They were all doing their best to get us on
their manifest…but ultimately there was no talk of a destination. They all believed
their way was the best — though some pointed out that our daughter was clearly not
cut out for what they had to offer.
Eventually, we ended up choosing the local government school around the corner
from our house. A constant theme from our research was that government schools
had by far the biggest pool of funding and, in the absence of a reason not to go
there, it seemed as good a choice as any. The school had an Education Support Unit
(ESU), although we were not overly clear on what that meant. We felt however that
there were professionals with years of experience teaching children at risk who by
now must be pretty good at navigating the ‘system’ — and surely they had to know
how best to teach a child like ours. We were very willing to collaborate, to offer all
of the support we could, to learn from them and we hoped they would reciprocate.
Our first two years at school were reasonable, but not without problems. Importantly
though, Sofia was in the mainstream class and was adored by her classmates. She
loved going to school and her teachers were generally capable and enthusiastic.
Sofia’s Kindy teacher in particular was very approachable, very willing to work with
us and great at sharing information - which made the world of difference.
Interestingly, she was in her first year of teaching.
When Sofia started Year 1, we were told it would be best to move her into the ESU.
Our preference was for Sofia to stay in the mainstream class full time, but it was
stressed to us that she would lose much of her support and that the school would be
less willing to extend its best efforts on our behalf. Inexperience and fear got the
better of us and we reluctantly agreed.
The year started with Sofia’s name being left off her Year 1 class list. It may have been
an innocent oversight, but it certainly set the tone for what was to come. Sofia was
“allowed” to spend afternoons with her mainstream peers. Initially the seating was
carefully arranged to include her within a group, but very quickly she was shifted to
a corner desk with another ESU child, an Education Assistant (EA) and none of her
mainstream peers. Sofia began to withdraw from interactions with her old classmates
and preferred to spend playtime with other, mostly older children from ESU.
As the year went by, we got increasingly marginalised. Information around how
Sofia’s day had gone, what kind of work they had done and how she had responded
to it was not forthcoming. There was no opportunity or time allocated to discussing
Sofia’s week, never mind her day with teachers – mainstream or ESU. We were
inst ructed to not approach the EA’s with questions and they were in turn forbidden to
provide any information to us. If there was anything to discuss we were asked to
make an appointment with the teacher.
There were justifications and reasons for the way things were done but, no matter
how rational, the feeling could not be shaken that Sofia was in the wrong place.
!22

Australian Institute on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities