The school year ends next week. At the moment, the last day is supposedly Wednesday, but the pre-K “moving up” ceremony is Monday, so we’re not entirely sure that the Monster actually has school after that.
It’s been an interesting year, that’s for certain. He’s been doing fine and keeping pace with his pre-academics, as they refer to the course load at his grade level, even if he’s not necessarily gaining much ground on the other skills that he’s delayed in. Continue reading
The Monster, being in a regular public school, gets the same rewards and treatment as the other children that attend his school, even if he’s not aware of what those things are.
We got a notice today that, as part of being in this regular school and having perfect attendance for the prior quarter, that he’s getting a reward of being able to see a movie later this week. They’re showing Wreck It Ralph for the younger kids (pre-K to 4), and a separate film for the bigger kids, with a note sent home for us to sign if we don’t want him to see it. Continue reading
With the school year drawing towards its conclusion, we’re starting our planning for next year.
The IEP’s essentially been agreed to for the moment – the one that we handled two months back for ESY placement (see my post The Non Event) – but the one thing that’s still in the air is where the Monster’s going to go to school in August. That decision was going to be deferred until later this spring. Continue reading
This morning, I woke up to an update from the Monster’s teacher, regarding how he’s doing in school.
We don’t normally get out-of-band updates from her – she’s very good about using the communication log to let us know when there’s something unusual that we need to be aware of or to communicate when things are going on in the classroom – so I have to admit that I’d been somewhat nervous about what she might be reaching out for. (Especially when the email simply has the subject of ‘update’.) Continue reading
New IEP or no (and at the moment, it is ‘no’), the Monster’s doing alright in school on an academic level. Continue reading
About two weeks ago, we got notification for the Monster’s IEP review meeting.
For those of you who follow my tweet feed, you’ve heard me whining about how the paperwork was all late. Maryland state law requires paperwork to be delivered five business days before the meeting to be admissible for discussion, and none of it arrived on time. Still, we had enough time to review the IEP with the Monster’s advocate, and felt adequately prepared for today’s meeting. Continue reading
This afternoon, we’re meeting with the advocate who joined us last year for the Monster’s first IEP meeting.
I think these prep sessions that we do with her annual are very good for us – it reminds us to distill down the laundry list of the goals we want to see him getting to, into something that fulfills those SMART criteria that make sense for the school to concentrate on. This year’s list was alright, I think, in retrospect, but we can do better next year. Continue reading
The Monster, like a lot of children with Autism, operates better with a schedule. Continue reading
The Monster’s IEP meeting is two weeks from Tuesday, so we’re starting to get our ducks in a row for whatever fight might be coming.
One of the interesting parts, to me, of the Monster being in a public school is seeing how he deals with the ‘real’ curriculum in his pre-K classroom. Continue reading
This morning was the Monster’s first day back at school in almost two weeks.
Over the vacation, we obviously didn’t keep him to his ‘real’ schedule for lack of having any way to do that. As I’ve mentioned, there was a very large issue with behavior, due to the order of his life breaking down with that regard. Continue reading