I am sitting in my classroom about 45 minutes before the students arrive. Pandora is on the computer, through the big speakers I use for presentations in class…OK. “Big” is a little bit of hyperbole, but whatever. I’m trying to sort out all of the millions of things that are running around in my brain. That’s why I created this blog, so bear with me here.
Yesterday was Anna’s IEP meeting. It’s so hard to believe that she’s been in school for a year. She’s no longer my baby; she’s officially a little girl. The meeting was all about our plans for her for kindergarten. It was an odd meeting to sit through.
This time last year, I was in a different place than I am now. Anna was in a different place than she was now. She was behind in her speech and with no means of communicating, she had no way to let out her fears, her frustrations, her wants, her needs, her joys. There were days in the fall of 2010 when I would come home from school only to sit on the couch, holding her in my arms, while she would cry and scream and kick and push and bite. She’d held herself together for the longest time and couldn’t do it any longer. I was doing all I could to help her and love her, but it just wasn’t enough. So with some help from Jack’s kindergarten teacher (to whom I shall forever be grateful), we got her tested and on the road to something we prayed was better.
The testing was heart-wrenching. Watching her during the initial speech testing was torture. Not only was she not answering questions, but she was also using hand gestures that are common with children who have severe learning disabilities. The examiner was getting more and more obviously concerned and had pulled in another examiner to help and to observe. And then, getting the actual testing back was absolutely horrific. The psych evaluation came back labeling her as “borderline.” My baby was “borderline”? I knew she wasn’t. I just knew it.
So last February, she started school receiving many services. She received Adapted P.E., Occupational Therapy, and speech, both in the whole group setting and in one-on-one sessions. She started going full time this fall. Music therapy was added to that mix and there was a lot of individual instruction thrown in as the afternoon sessions she attended were smaller in size and there are several adults in the classroom.
Anna’s a changed child. She’s not the same girl she was. The change was almost immediate, too. She was happier at school. She developed some of those coping mechanisms that she had been lacking. By June of 2011, I had a completely different little girl living in my house. Not where she should be, not quite up to her peers, but so much better.
And now? And now…She’ll receive no more A.P.E services unless it is as part of the whole class schedule. When she starts kindergarten, she will be in a regular P.E. class. Speech is being limited to a 15 minute/month consult. While she’s still in pre-school, she’ll continue to receive whatever class-wide services are offered, but nothing above that. She will still receive O.T. services, but they will be limited because the only continued fine motor issue is her pencil grasp. She will also be receiving help with communicating her feelings and regulating them better. The content of the curriculum will not be modified in anyway. On the cognitive testing she hovered around average—right on the age target for most of the subtests. One or two were just below and two were definitely above.
Yesterday, the team deleted whole chunks of her IEP. It was liberating. I sat there and just hoped that I wouldn’t cry because I was so relieved.
The recommendation is that she go to kindergarten in an inclusion classroom. This means that the class will have some regular education students and some special education students. There will be more adults on hand, hopefully in the form of two special education teachers and at least one classroom aid, than in a mainstreamed classroom.
The problem with this is that they generally do not offer an inclusion kindergarten classroom in all of the elementary schools in the city. And there hasn’t been an inclusion class at Jack’s school. Next year, unless we switch Jack’s school (which I’d rather not do for several reasons), the kids will be at different schools again.
I panicked when they told me that yesterday. John told me to relax. The point was that she is getting better. We should concentrate on that and then deal with everything else when we have the information. We won’t know what school Anna gets into until late in the school year or early in the summer. We’ll deal with it when we can. Let’s celebrate the success we’ve had.
So we did. We took the kids to IHOP last night to celebrate Anna’s progress report and Jack’s absolutely stellar report card.
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