I have all these stories stored like nuts in my fat, little chipmunk cheeks and I think it’ time to share them or risk exploding and spraying chunks of chipmunk cheeks all over the place! Ewww, nice visual. Also, welcome back!
So…I now have so much to say I don’t even know where to start. Let’s start where I left off…the IEP.
We signed the hateful thing. We signed it so we could get Monkey into a classroom at a school that does inclusion well. They are the model for ASD inclusion in our district. There are a lot of things to love about the school. It has an extended day so Monkey will be squeezing an extra school day into each week. Because of the extended day, they are able to provide the kids with a lot more individualized support and a lot more enrichment activities. ((He will be getting extra gym, music, library, etc.)) Awesome. The school also has school uniforms. Not a big deal for Monkey, he will wear a collared shirt if we insist, but probably not awesome planning for some of the kids on the spectrum. Not our problem, I guess. I did at least raise the issue in a “what if this is a problem for a child” way, and I got two responses…one was, “Huh. I never thought about that!” ((And she was the school psychologist at the old school)) and the other response was, “Well, we won’t force them if it’s an issue.” ((Right, because the one thing our kids need is another reminder that they do not quite fit in with everyone else))
So all is set, the IEP we signed calls for them to provide us with all of their data every two weeks ((Any information they gather on his progress, the class has some ABA aspects so data collection is a big part of it.)) and a full team meeting every four weeks ((Fine, it says four to six, we are just going to pester them to set them up every four weeks.)). At one of our final meetings someone said that they aren’t used to parents who want to be so *pause* “involved,” I thought that was a nice way to communicate what royal pains in the @sses they think we are. 😉
Wait, did I say all is set? Oops…there is one little thing that is not quite settled. We received two letters yesterday. One from the transportation department offering us a bus for Monkey and the other from the district assigning Monkey to his 1st grade classroom. Both letters indicated that he would be attending a general education classroom at his old school. Nice.
I’m sure it’s all perfectly under control though ((Dang, I have missed my footnotes! Does it show?)).