I was going to write a follow-up to yesterday’s post. I’m going to wait till tomorrow now to do that, since I have a meeting scheduled with the city regarding the abject failure of the bus on a performance basis.
Instead, I’m going to dive back into the whole IEP thing, since that meeting’s a week from today. Continue reading
As we’re building up towards the Monster’s IEP meeting in a week and a half, we’re starting to discuss at home the things that we want to see included on next year’s plan.
Aside from the verbal issues – that’ll be a blog post on its own after I’ve had some time to collect my thoughts – this morning’s breakfast table discussion centered on handwriting. 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
As part of the Monster’s IEP, he receives speech therapy thrice a week – two pull-outs and a push-in – at school. This was (believe it or not) an increase from what the city schools had wanted to give us, mostly because we insisted at his initial IEP meeting that the twice-a-week sessions were not showing enough progress under his IFSP.
Another part of his IEP, as I mentioned last week, requires regular communications from his teachers so that we know what we can do to reinforce. When we went to school last Friday to get some traction on our issues with communication thus far, we discussed that we wanted more information from the speech therapist, especially in light of a recent evaluation that indicated that there had been regression on the speech front. Continue reading
A rare Saturday post, yes. I figured that after I got bogged down with real life the last few days, I owed you all an update on what’s going on.
So yesterday was the meeting with the IEP coordinator and a parent-teacher conference with his general educator. Continue reading
So the appointment is made – Friday at two in the afternoon. That’s when my wife and I are going over to the Monster’s school to talk to his IEP coordinator (and likely the principal) about our issues with the program.
Now, let me be clear about something. I’m not in a position where I think this program is horrifyingly letting my child down. This is not about my coming in to demand massive, extraordinary changes in his program for the sake of how I envision it should be. Continue reading
I’m sure this isn’t news to anyone who has a child on an IEP – if you don’t make sure that they live up to the goals in the plan, they tend to go by the wayside.
Going a step further, bear in mind that we live in a major city with a record of having issues living up to the IEPs. The biggest issue, really, is the lack of resources that the city has and their inability to really apply what they have effectively. This is clearer still when you notice that our city is finally owning up to just how much deferred maintenance they have – to the point that several schools will be closing over the next few years, and most of the rest going under serious renovation. Continue reading
Yesterday was our first conference with our Monster’s teacher.
I have to admit that I don’t know what I expected going into this – this is the first time I’ve been on this side of the table. I’ve been the one that was being discussed, and I’ve been the teacher. (Yes, Hebrew school, for about four years. Don’t look so shocked.) Continue reading
So we’re about a month into the Monster’s first school year. It’s time for us to start thinking about how things are going. Continue reading
So last night was the back to school night for the Monster.
I have to admit that I wasn’t ready for this quite yet – I’d figured that we had at least a year, maybe two, before we’d be doing this… but there we were, sitting in the gym of an elementary/middle school listening to the principal and whatnot. And it felt about as weird as we expected. Continue reading