I have a 15 y/o severely autistic son in high school. He eats lunch in the resource room and then he just wanders around that room loosely supervised for an hour- he engages in a lot of self-injurious behaviours at that time (gee, I wonder why), so they put a helmet with a visor on him to reduce the impact of the self-harm. Last year I asked if he could join the minecraft club. The club is just a bunch of computer guys playing minecraft in a room. My son likes to play minecraft so that would be perfect for him. The teacher running the club didn't want him there and apparently they're not "legally obligated" to accommodate this, so of course they didn't (not really the "going above and beyond" types I guess). But I just started thinking this year, why can't he play minecraft in resource?
We had a really disappointing IEP meeting yesterday. His teacher is the head of autism education for the entire city, which you'd think would be good. But it's not because she thinks she knows everything there's to know about AUTISM and sees "autisms" rather than INDIVIDUAL HUMANS. Not a good start to the year. Anyway… Big surprise, she doesn't see how this would benefit him- that's the only reason she gave. (Really? You don't see how him not banging his head with helmet on for an hour doesn't benefit him? *resists urge to strangle*).
Anything potentially positive immediately gets shot down with an emphatic NO. Objective people: can you think of a good reason? I'm so disappointed.
Added (1). I have become more of a hell-raiser over the years, but it's not really me. I think it depends on the teacher. Some teachers, if they like you, they will work *with* you, but if they don't (because you went in with guns blazing) they won't (this is always what I hope for). But then other teachers (like this one, it appears), you need to go in with guns blazing to get anything done. I might have to put on my battle armour…