The IEP I’ve Been Waiting For
This was The Boy’s calendar picture for April. I love the umbrella. There have not been many showers this month in Cali, but I suspect we will still see flowers nonetheless. In fact, I’ve received my first bouquet of virtual flowers from none other than The Boy’s recent IEP meeting.
Last year, at The Boy’s IEP meeting, I was very frustrated by the triennial review. What bothered me was the school psychologist’s assessment of The Boy. It was as if she was talking about someone else. Her assessment of The Boy was so foreign from the Boy as I knew him, and I honestly suspect it had to do with the first time she met him.
The first time she met The Boy was when he’d just started preschool and was still scared of attending. Not so unique, right? Plenty of kids go through a transitional period. The difference between The Boy and typical kids, though, is that he has severe eczema. And when he gets upset, the first thing he does is scratch. Everywhere. Face, arms, legs, anywhere he can touch, he will scratch. The first time the school psychologist met him, he was crying and scratching nonstop. I admit, it didn’t look good.
So at last year’s IEP, they recommended Special Needs Kindergarten. I debated back and forth on whether I was going to sign the IEP or not, whether I would fight for General Ed Kindergarten with a shadow or the Collaborative Kindergarten where half the kids are General Ed and half the kids are Special Needs. After meeting with the Special Needs Kindergarten teacher, I decided to agree to their recommendations. This is partly due to the fact that a personal friend of mine who was a teacher at the same school gave me the dish on the Special Needs Kindergarten teacher and how amazing she was and how she’d had students from the Special Needs Kindergarten with better handwriting and reading skills than General Ed because of just how wonderful this teacher was. Strong words, no?
So that has been this past year. Special Needs Kindergarten with the woman who turned out to be the world’s best teacher. I love his teacher. I hope all future teachers are just like her. And what I like the most about her is that she sees The Boy as I do. I just attended The Boy’s annual IEP, and she said she’d read the assessments of The Boy from the previous IEP and felt that they didn’t sound like The Boy as she knew him. The rest of the IEP was just like that. The therapists, the teacher, and the General Ed Kindergarten teacher, all saying what I’ve always seen: The Boy is in league with his peers and doing well. His test scores aren’t topping the charts and he is a tad slower to complete a task than his peers, but he is academically on par and with that in mind, they recommended he mainstream into General Ed the rest of the year.
The Boy came home from his first day of General Ed talking up a storm about his new teacher. I emailed the new teacher to see how things went, and he said it was no problem and that The Boy just dove right into the new class full of people with no hesitation.
Fittingly, The Boy camped at Joshua Tree National Park over the weekend with Y-Guides and among other things, climbed to the top of some very big rocks. I am reeking of Proud Mama because, well, look at him:
Stand tall, son.
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You made me cry. Stand tall, Mamma!
Hey Girl!
I love the pics from Joshua Tree! You’ve done such a great job with him! (I just can’t believe he’s almost done with kindergarten….where does the time go?)
I LOVE that umbrella. I want one just like that, to cheer up these cold grey days.
And GO, The Boy! What great news. And I’m so glad for awesome teachers that care about their students and students who make great progress. You have every right to feel proud.
Yay for the teachers that do their jobs! I don’t know if I ever told you this, but when I was student teaching, I thought a child had a reading disability and recommended her to be evaluated. She could not even recognize letters in groups. It turns out she failed her vision screening. I was very excited. After I graduated and started teaching 4th grade in the same school that child appeared in my 4th grade class, I realized this child still was NOT reading. I looked in her folder and the same request that I had put in her folder from 2 years earlier was still there. No one had ever followed through. Since I was just a student teacher, I had no legal right to sign the evaluation, unfortunately I was the only one who cared. I threw a fit in the office (since the principal had been there the whole time)and got her failed vision test reported to her family, who immediately bought her glasses. She began doing better right away.
I am so glad that Josh had such a good teacher this year. It can make all the difference. I hope you bought him something delicious like non-dairy ice cream!
The teacher made all of us in that profession proud!
You made me cry!
Josh made my day!
What a wonderful story!
I am so glad that he is doing so well! What a good momma you are. I’m so glad that you have wonderful supportive teachers–what a blessing!
I loved both pictures. One of my sons had an IEP and we found it very helpful in that it gave us a more individualized approach. I thought every kid should have one. After the first few years there was no sign that my son still needed it except for the fact that every year we could specified that he not be required to give oral reports. That little stipulation made him feel so much safer.
That is just fabulous. The picture is the icing on the cake. I’m so happy for you.
Cheers
And proud you should be! I just adore his umbrella — wish I had one of my own with such a spectacular array of colors
So glad to hear he had such a spectacular teacher, she sounds like a gem, as does your son.
~Michelle @ 5MFSN
Wow, look at all those colors! I’d be a proud Mama, too! =) I love the picture of him on the rocks!
Love the pic. Magic Marker Monday Rocks. RYC: yes, a snail it is.
Oh, wow - what a moment. As a momma who once heard her child would probably not mainstream, but lived a different reality, I identify just a little bit with this. Congrats to the boy! What a moment for y’all!!!!!
beautiful.
So glad he has had a wonderful experience! Awesome picture!
Well crafted post in many ways. As a teacher of 10 years, I have been in on many IEP’s. Sometimes there literally is just nothing we can do for the kid. We get creative and sometimes even create a “program” but they can be sad sometimes. This is an example of what we work for: mainstreaming in the least restrictive environment. It sounds like the Boy is on his way to that goal.