Duhdee and I have been talking the last few weeks about whether we want Monkey to go to summer session this year or not. We were offered the 6 week summer session last year as well but declined because he was transitioning from EI to school as it was and we really didn’t want to have 5 transitions in the first 3 months*. What we settled on last summer with the school district was that Duhdee would take him in for ST, OT and PT services but that he’d be home most of the time (it basically mimiced our EI set up.) It worked OK for us.
We knew that this would not be an option for us this year. This year our choices were 6 week summer session in a classroom with a different teacher, at a different school, with different kids, with different service providers or … nothing. Given how hard transitions are for him, how difficult our experience has been this year with getting him into a classroom each morning and the fact that our normal family vacation falls in the middle of the summer session, “Nothing” was pretty darned appealing!
We gained some additional information on Wednesday though. We’ve learned that we can simply sign up for 3 weeks of the summer session (so he will start after vacation, not 2 days before we leave, have a long break and then start up again.) We’ve learned that the summer program will be at a school he has been to before (for services last year.) We’ve learned that 2 of his current classmates will be enrolled. And, the biggest new piece of information we’ve learned is that, his VERY favorite teaching assistant will be leading the class! How cool is that?
I think we’ve done a complete 180 on this subject now, lol, which is very notable given how stubborn I am and how much I dislike changing my mind 🙂
*The 5 transitions offered by the school last year were 1) Into a “transition” classroom (non-inclusion class with a few hours spent with an inclusion class each week), 2) Summer break part 1, 3) Summer session, 4) Summer break part 2, 5) Inclusion classroom for the school year. Any wonder we turned it down?
Hmmmm. At first I was like you — NO WAY! But now it sounds like a good idea. I love that our preschool is year round. The notion of having to come up with a new plan for summer gives me the heebie jeebies.
I’m assuming your summer session is the same as our extended year. We too decided against it last year, but didn’t hesitate to do it this year. Ian will start in a week. We wanted it for several reasons. One of them is that he will be in the AM class in PPCD in the fall instead of the PM class that he’s been in for 2 years. We’ve never been brave enough to attempt AM’s since his nights can be so sporatic. But the AM class has kids more his age instead of younger. So, since we got him in the AM extended year, it will hopefully help him transition to the AM clas in the fall.
Here the extended year class is a substantially separate class room, they meet 11 months/year. There are no typically developing peer models in that class, we didn’t even consider that option. The only inclusive classrooms in our school district meet during the regular ed school year.
The summer session will only be children on IEPs. It’s not ideal, I do wish they had year round inclusive classrooms but they don’t. The summer session is a much less formal class that basically centers on the kids getting their ST, OT and PT in small groups.
Monkey has been in morning classes all along, our schedule was determined by the class they picked for him. We weren’t given an option, lol. He has had a couple really tough days b/c of lack of sleep but we warn them and they just have to deal 🙂