School

The best IEP meeting ever.

Melissa

We just had the best IEP meeting ever.  Of course, given our history with these things, that’s probably not saying very much, lol.

The biggest issue about the meeting was the time.  Duhdee told me 2:30, it was actually scheduled for 1:15.  At 12:50 he called to explain the mix-up which left me NO time to get there.  I ended up running out of my office, e-mailing co-workers from the elevator and grabbing the first cab I could find.  He didn’t want to drive me there, it wasn’t far enough for his tastes!  I’ve never heard of such a thing…it’s not like it was a $5 fare, it was a $34 cab ride to another city!  ANYWAY.

The meeting went very well.  It was the annual review and it unfolded just as it should.  We did ask about the Therapeutic Listening and we’re still going to push for that but we’re going to pay for the equipment.  He would otherwise be put on a waiting list for the equipment that the district already owns as we’d been told before…we don’t want to wait 🙂

We did not need to bring up the voice output device, the Assistive Tech specialist had already spoken to the ST and the teacher and had decided that he needs one.  She is currently borrowing the Vantage Lite from the company and is going to ask to keep it for a few weeks longer to try it with Monkey.  She doesn’t expect any issues so that’s the device we’re shooting for.  She said she wants to try to get our insurance company to pay for it.  Ahahahahahaha *cough*cough*snort*hahahahah.  *Ahem* We wished her the best of luck and told her we’d get her whatever she needs from his pediatrician, etc.  She acknowledged that the school will be responsible if the insurance company won’t pick up the tab but this way we would own the device and we could take it with us if we leave the district.  If the school buys it we would have to give it back.  So…we’ll try this route.

And that’s it…no controversy, no surprise issues.  He’s doing well, they all see it.  They’re impressed with the gains he’s made and see that he clearly can do better.  Several times they took pains to acknowledge the fact that cognitively he is doing really well.  They can see that there is so much inside him he can’t yet communicate clearly and that’s really all we’ve ever wanted.   We don’t want them to look at where he is and think that this is the best he can do…we want them to look at him, like we do, and see how much better he can do.

IEP fun.

Melissa

We have an IEP meeting scheduled for tomorrow.  It is his yearly evaluation.  We should discuss his progress this year and set new goals for the next year.  Simple, straightforward.  So why, why, why am I going to potentially open not one but TWO cans o’worms?

1.  Therapeutic Listening.  His OT and the TL trained OT have said he’ll benefit but the school claims no money for equipment.  If we add it to his IEP the school will have to figure it out BUT I have no idea how the team leader will react…we don’t know her and we don’t have a clue how she runs these meetings.

2.  Voice Output Device.  He has assistive tech. written into his IEP and he’s been getting those services all year.  He does NOT yet have a voice output device however and we’re going to request one.  I don’t see how 1 hour a week is sufficient for him.  Granted he is getting more verbal but we know there is more in his head than he can express.  We want something he can use in school and at home.

They’ve balked at the few hundred involved in the TL…I can just imagine how they’ll react to the assistive tech request.

*Sigh*  Do we never learn?

Are you ready to rrrrrrrrrumble?

Melissa

We dropped Monkey off at school this morning and the teacher, oh-so-casually, mentioned that our invitation to his annul IEP review meeting was in his box.  Joy.

As soon as we’d punted Monkey into the loving arms of his teachers we huddled over the note in the hall.  It said there was an attendence sheet attached but there was NOT!  Mild panic…I wasn’t leaving until I knew who would be there so I sent poor Duhdee back in to ask for it. 

He came back and told me that all of Monkey’s therapists would be there as well as the teacher and the classroom staff and…dun dun dun…the school psychologist.  Before my eyes were fully filled with horror Duhdee told me that the teacher had quickly added that it was not the same one who made our lives hell at last year’s marathon IEP meetings.  Phew.

So Duhdee and I are actually debating about whether or not to invite our Ed. Advocate.  Do we never learn?  We’ve gone to exactly two meetings without her and we’ve had exactly two meetings blow up in our face.  In our defense, we have all already agreed that he will stay put in his current classroom for another year. 

What could possibly go wrong?

The right classroom.

Melissa

I’ve been going on and on ad nauseam over the amazing progress Monkey has made lately.  We are so proud of him.  I’m not sure I’ve given his teachers as much credit as I should because they are the main reason he has progressed so far, so fast.

On paper, the classroom he was in last year and the classroom he is in this year are not that much different.  They’re both integrated classrooms, they sit side-by-side in the same hallway in the same school, they have the same flourescent lighting, they’re across from the noisy, smelly school cafeteria.  There are 5 fewer kids (2 fewer on IEPs and 3 fewer peer models) and 1 additional staff member in the current class so the ratio is much lower which has made all the difference. 

In his previous classroom a lot of effort was spent managing the classroom.  The room was always busy and at times it bordered on chaotic.  It was not entirely the fault of the staff, they had a challenging group of kids.  They were in over their heads and their requests for additional staffing were denied.  The lead teacher was also a bit disorganized and it showed.  She often looked frazzled and you all know how much our kids pick up on these cues!

His current classroom is so different.  There is a picture schedule available in the classroom at eye level.  They discuss the schedule daily.  They consistently remove the picture of the current activity when they are all done and the kids know what comes next.  Every. Single. Day.  Every. Single. Transition.  There is a consistency that was somewhat lacking in the last classroom.  The teacher in this classroom is unflappable.  She is calm and warm every time we see her.  Even when she is correcting a student her voice is calm and she remains visibly relaxed.

Because of the lower student/staff ratio the kids get a lot more one-on-one time.  It frees up a staff member to focus on the sensory needs of the kids in the classroom as needed.  Monkey is the only kid with Fragile X in the room but he is not, by far, the only kid who needs a sensory diet.   Monkey is consistently wearing a pressure vest.  He is getting his brushing and lotion time (basically deep pressure using moisturizer which he loves.)  Everything is scheduled and predictable.  It took some time to get the right combination but now that they’ve figured it out he’s able to stay calm and regulated all day long. 

Another big difference between the two classrooms is the lead teacher’s philosphy.  In his last classroom if Monkey was having a difficult time consistently during a portion of his day they put in interventions specifically geared towards him at those times.  In this classroom Monkey was showing consistent difficulty during a portion of the schedule because they had two really challenging activities scheduled back-to-back.  Instead of pulling Monkey aside between those activities, as we suggested, they changed the schedule. They moved things around just a little bit so that he was not moving from one challenging activity to the next and needing to be pulled aside in between. 

The teacher wanted him to remain integrated into the group and not need to be singled out or pulled aside.  A few slight alterations allowed him to stay in the group as it moved from activity to activity without being pulled aside for sensory time of some sort.   That’s just a basic philosophical difference between teachers.  I don’t think either one is “right” or “wrong” necessarily it’s just differnt view points and I can see both POV.  As a mama, though, I am very appreciative of this flexibility.  Of course the other kids shouldn’t suffer for Monkey’s benefit but if a slight change (modification, to use the lingo) like this is possible without doing harm to the other students while benefitting another…I’m all for it.

Not sure what got into Monkey this week…

Melissa

but I like it!

He has gone to school, happily, every single day this week.  This has not ever happened to my recollection.  Previously, our best weeks were a whiney Monday, decent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and then a whiney Friday.  We were happy with that, anything is better than the fits we used to deal with, but now he’s really raised the bar!

He bounced his way into class this week.  The teachers’ reports say that he’s been very social and very verbal.  Yesterday, he played at the sand table with one of his classmates for TEN minutes with no adult intervention/support.  They stood there, together, playing and taking turns/swapping toys for 10 minutes.  

He has been loving Circle Time this week too.  He keeps requesting that they do the weather song and they have been obliging him.  Yesterday, it was one of the other kids’ turns to talk about the weather and he showed each of the kids the letter “S” for sunny and, when he got to Monkey, Monkey pointed and said “Ess” as clear as day.  The other kids were so excited to hear him talking, lol.

WHO IS THIS KID AND CAN I PRETTY PLEASE KEEP HIM?

Parent/Teacher conference.

Melissa

We had our parent/teacher conference yesterday afternoon. A few of the team members were unavailable due to illness but we still had a mix of teachers and therapists. We elected to spend the time just talking with each of the participants rather than reading the official report, at some point I should read it I suppose.

Monkey has now been in his current classroom for 6 weeks, which is just insane, it feels so much longer! They are seeing a lot of positive changes in him. The boy they are seeing sounds much more like the little boy we know. Of course they love him, who wouldn’t? They commented on what a sweet, gentle soul he is. They commented on how willing he is to work when motivated. They commented on how bright and manipulative he can be, hee. Yep, they were definitely talking about our boy.

This meeting was so much different than our progress report meeting last February. I actually asked Duhdee, just before we stepped into the room, “So, what do you think? Do butterflies just fly out of his butt?” That was the tone of our last progress report. The boy was brilliant and charming. He had met all of his goals and would be applying for Harvard by age 15! I’ve mentioned before that we went along with it because, really, what parent doesn’t want to hear that? After the cold slap of reality we received in June we had vowed we wouldn’t be taken in again.

We didn’t need to be so worried. This teacher just gets it. We heard lots of cute stories, we heard lots of talk about how well he transitioned into the classroom and how open he now is to learning. We also heard about the more challenging parts of his day and how they are addressing those challenges. We shared ideas, we asked for suggestions on things we can work on at home…it felt like an actual team. Stunning.

The teacher also wasn’t shy about discussing the “harder” questions. We mentioned that we were going to pursue another autism evaluation with a specialist who is familiar with both autism and Fragile X. She wanted to know how we’d feel if he kept that label after the evaluation.

She shared her concerns that his signs are still very much approximations and would not be understood by most people. We acknowledged that his fine motor delays are going to limit how effective he will be with signs and encouraged them to continue down the path of augmentative communication devices ((They’re considering the Go Talk, I need to research but is anyone familiar with it?)).

She asked how we were feeling about next year, we have the option of letting him continue in his current placement for an additional year or continuing on to kindergarten. Duhdee and I are comfortable with him taking another year in his current placement, which she agreed with but she also encouraged us to register him for kindergarten in January ((We need to register in January in order to be able to avail ourselves of the school choice options.)) so that the kindergarten option is still there for us if we change our minds in May.

All in all it was a great meeting. I did ask, just before the meeting broke up if there was anything in the report that would be shocking. I suppose I should have asked if there was anything in there that was contradictory instead since that was the issue last year. A+++ verbal reports and F written reports. The teacher laughed and assured us that there will be nothing surprising in the written report. Now won’t that be a nice surprise, in and of itself?

Don’t mind my bragging

Melissa

Sometimes we’re almost brilliant, if I do say so myself.  Check this out…

Back story:  Last year we had zero worthwhile communication with Monkey’s teacher.  Every child received the same handout (no individual comments) and we received the verbal “he had a good/great/challenging day” reports and the cute stories but when it came time to sit down last June to hear reports we realized we had not been given anything worthwhile all year!  According to the daily verbal reports he was the model student but when we had to meet to discuss placement for this year suddenly he needed to be in a substantially separate classroom, he was not progressing in his placement.  We were not happy with this for obvious reasons and we decided it would not happen again.

So…we developed, along with our advocate, a communication sheet.  Monkey’s new teacher filled in the schedule and the school behaviorist defined the numbering scheme.  It ended up looking like this:

communicationplan

Pretty nifty, no?  But wait! It gets better.  We finally sat down with Excel on Monday night and plugged in all the numbers and we used the charting tool to come up with line graphs for both regulation and participation.

Regulation:

Participation:

Cool, eh?  Already we can see that Monkey’s regulation (and thus participation) are falling off drastically after snack and not rebounding until playground.  We’re asking the teacher to work with the OT to put in some sort of intervention in the book/group work area to try to even out the drop. His art time have been improving a great deal over the last few days so we’ll hold off there and see how that shapes up.

We NEVER could have done this last year.  I am so pleased with how this is working out!