By Al Friesen (they/them), district helping teacher, Surrey

If you’re a classroom teacher in British Columbia, there’s a very high chance that you have a child in your classroom with a designation. A designation means that a child has a medical diagnosis or some form of physical, mental, or emotional difference that makes school more challenging for them. It also means that the child has a case manager in your school whose job it is to support you and the child, whether that’s behind the scenes with planning or on a daily basis in your classroom.

But did you know that some children have two, or even more, designations? How would you know? How does funding work for children with multiple designations? How does this change their individual education plans (IEPs)?

Let’s go through a concrete, and entirely fictional, example. Jas is a child in your class who has the letter G beside their name on your attendance sheet. That means that they have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by a medical professional. However, a school psychologist has done some testing and concluded that Jas also has dyscalculia and dysgraphia, which are both types of learning disabilities. That would mean that there should be another letter beside Jas’s name, Q, which is the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care code for a child with, you guessed it, a learning disability. You know this because Jas’s case manager told you this at the beginning of the year when they were placed in your class. (How did Jas’s case manager know? They might have learned this from one of Jas’s parents, or maybe they saw the dual designation in Jas’s confidential file in the office.)

The reason why your attendance sheet or MyEd only shows a G designation is because, usually, only the highest funded designation shows up on paperwork and counts toward additional funding from the provincial government. There are different levels of funding for different designations: categories A–H (from “Physically Dependent—Multiple Needs” to “Students Requiring Intensive Behaviour Intervention or Students with Serious Mental Illness”) receive additional funding compared to categories K–R (from “Mild Intellectual Disabilities” to “Students Requiring Behaviour Support or Students with Mental Illness”), which only receive the Basic Allocation funding all students receive. Funded doesn’t mean that schools directly get more money; it just means that there is additional funding that goes from the Ministry to your school district. They use that funding in a variety of ways, including paying for district-level staff as well as school-based staff, like resource teachers or learning support teachers.

However, for a student with more than one designation, the district only gets funding for the highest funded designation: a student with A and H designations only gets funding for the A designation, for example.

Some children with ASD also have intellectual disabilities. If a child with ASD has a mild intellectual disability, then most paperwork would only show the G designation. However, if a child with ASD has a moderate to profound intellectual disability, then the only letter that you might see would be C. Knowing that child also has ASD would allow you to consider their specific sensory and cognitive needs in addition to their academic needs—you’d be missing a huge piece of the puzzle otherwise!

The same goes for students with behaviour designations: sometimes children who exhibit complex behaviour have learning or intellectual disabilities, and sometimes the entire reason why they exhibit complex behaviour in the first place is because they have difficulty accessing curriculum. Knowing that might change how their teacher works with them. Even having a gifted designation, signified by the letter P, doesn’t mean that life is simple for that child: in addition to the complexities that come with being gifted, a gifted child can also have a learning disability, or have ASD, or have a health condition that affects their schooling (that’s a D designation).

Sometimes, a student can start with one designation and end up with a different one. A student might have complex behaviour (H), and the school team could later find out that they have been diagnosed with ASD (G). Depending on the district, they might keep both designations, or the H designation might be removed because the ASD explains why their behaviour requires intensive intervention.

It is also possible to have three, or even more, designations: a student can have an intellectual disability (C), a visual impairment (E), and ASD (G), for example. It’s pretty rare to have even two designations, let alone three, but as a classroom teacher, you should be aware that it’s a possibility.

It’s important for staff members to know about multiple designations because that affects how we support students. If you know that Jas has dyscalculia and dysgraphia, you’d need to take that into account when planning lessons for your class. When you write an IEP with Jas’s case manager, it’s important to take both designations into account: instead of just creating goals around Jas’s ASD, you’d also want to create some academic goals related to their learning disabilities. It would also be important to leave notes for teachers teaching on call that explain this, so that Jas can be supported while you’re away from your classroom.

All these complex names, diagnoses, and letters can sometimes be confusing, even overwhelming. Despite everything I’ve written here, no matter what designations a child has, it’s important to treat them as an individual. No two children are alike, and that’s as true for two children with ASD as it is for two children who are gifted. Taking the time to build a relationship with them and their families is incredibly important—nothing can replace that. Knowing a bit more about your complex students will help you with lesson planning and class-room management, but without focusing on a strong relationship with your students, your job as a teacher is going to be way harder than it needs to be.

If you’re struggling with a student, regardless of their designation, make sure to get help: that includes the child’s parents, your school-based team, your administrators, and district-based staff. At the end of the day, designations are like little flags for you as a classroom teacher to take a closer look at that student, but you’re never going to be expected to figure everything out on your own.