Locked Away: Read Seclusion Room Logs From Ohio Schools

The above notes are absolutely disgusting and not because of the grammar ( I think grammar correction has a time and place but it is not in this circumstance). The reasons they are put in are unbelievable: “disrupted”, “said No”, “said you’re mean” are ridiculous reasons for being placed in isolation. I would be hard pressed to find ANY reason to be isolated. If the rooms were set up as they are SUPPOSED to be (safe, happy, calming, providing a distraction so the child could calm down…all under the supervision/guidance of a trained (not just a holding a degree) psychologist….all the while with the door OPEN) that would be one thing (but even that is a near impossible situation because something will inevitably happen (psych isn’t there, situation wasn’t dealt with properly, the use of room as abused,etc, etc). But the way these rooms are used, the reasons they are used and the duration they are used is barbaric, sickening and archaic. The fact is that as far as our society has come with equal rights for African Americans and women it has decades of catching up to do for people with disabilities.

Locking a child (or adult) with disabilities away in a room as a TIME-OUT for 40 minutes or longer (there was one log note above that DIDN’T even have an exit time) does nothing but increase anxiety, promote phobias, increase tension, increase fears and feelings of anger/sadness/fear for the child isolated. It does decrease some things though: it decreases the need for education/training of teachers, it decreases inclusion rights of these children, it decreases feelings of acceptance, tolerance and equality (for the teachers, typical students and disabled students who will see this isolation as a punishment and therefore the thoughts of how the disabled student is ‘bad’)

Many teachers will say that we don’t understand their perspective. Guess what? I was a teacher and I had students with disabilities (including undiagnosed ones) and what I did for those children was show up early and stay late every day to ensure they were at the level they were supposed to be academically and felt comfortable to come to me with any social issues they had with other children.

Now I have a son on the Autism Spectrum so I understand what it’s like to have someone that blurts things out, doesn’t learn quite the same as most people, can’t always adequately express what he wants and sometimes doesn’t want to do the things I ask him to. Oh wait, that sounds a lot like being a child. On that basis then let’s lock up ALL the children who have said/done those things they mentioned above. I hope they have an isolation room that will fit 99% of the student body.