Every day, I hand-pick news items, blog posts, and articles from around the Web of interest to parents of children with special needs and put them in my Today's News and Views folder at the top of the Parenting Special Needs homepage. Here are a few of the stories that have caught my eye this week:
- The Special Education Law Blog shares two stories of school violence involving students with special needs. In the first, a campus police officer shot a 16-year-old with autism five times and killed him after the student stabbed the officer. In the second, a 16-year-old student with mental-health issues stabbed and killed his special-education teacher; the teacher had previously expressed concern over the student's potential for violence, but there seemed nowhere else to put the boy.
- The Great Falls Tribune reports on criminal charges brought against two special-education aides who regularly "took an autistic 14-year-old student to a classroom sink and held his head under water after he dozed off in class." You can read the story for additional and more upsetting charges.
- And if that's all too depressing, a few hopeful stories: a blind teen scores a touchdown for his Ohio high school; an Iowa high school has a special-needs cheerleading squad; and a 10-year-old with autism who learned the Heimlich maneuver in Cub Scouts saved his choking teacher.
For more good reading, check the Today's News and Views folder, updated throughout the day.
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The Scout tale is a great one.
And I am very interested in the cheerleading squad! Pipecleaner Dreams talked about Ashley and her friends participating in Homecoming.
But since when do you put water under somebody’s head after dozing in class? The only natural consequence I know that leads to that is when you are at the hairdressers/barber and getting your hair washed.