IEP progress: so far, so good

This is the fourth year T has been enrolled in a cyber charter school (which means he's still schooled primarily in the house, but someone else picks the curriculum, and he has a different teacher for each individual class). This is the first year T has said "school doesn't suck." And it's all because of baby's first Individualized Education Plan.

With educational psychology evaluation in hand, and after fighting to proove that T was not at grade level despite mostly all A's on his report cards, we had our first IEP meeting last June. I knew the real test would come after the school year started, and now that we are almost at the end of the first quarter, I have to say that I'm impressed.

The school has MOSTLY done what they said they would, and most importantly, T doesn't hate school for the first time in four years. YIPPEE! In fact, he's ALMOST enjoying it. Now I know that school doesn't exist for the sheer entertainment value of it, but still, being happy while you're learning I think improves the quantity of what you explore and the quality of what you retain. Anyway, T is working hard and learning a lot, and I finally have a NORMAL amount of contribution as the official home facilitator.

The biggest provision T has is a reduced course load to accommodate his low processing speed. Instead of 8 or 9 classes, this year he has only six; in fact they offered him only five and he ASKED for a sixth. Basically it boils down to he has only two core courses instead of four (language arts and math but no science or social studies), two foreign languages (german and spanish, and he's studying polish, latin and eperantu on his own), something called career awareness (which I thought would be a total mick class but isn't), and a Resource class (which so far IS a mick class). He is supposed to have assignments modified for him if they are too long or ambiguous, and so far that's turning out to characterize his assignments in his career awareness class, but no modifications have been forthcoming. Don't care. He had originally a college prep language arts class, but it was over his head as the materials dealt with complex social issues, so they bumped that down to a special ed class, same grade level. He LOVES it.

So far the teacher asks simple questions about fables and greek myths, and he can handle most of them on his own. She also gives simple prompts for creative writing, and so far T is her favorite pupil in that area. I have to admit I think his stuff is really good, and he has had an enormous challenge in prior years in this area. BIG sigh of relief. I think this class will supply the missing steps or gaps in knowledge or bridge the delays he had, and since he will have extra time to complete high school, he will most likely "catch up" before he graduates. HURRAY!

On to the gifted area - algebra 1. Did I mention T has been completely self taught in math since he was born? So far it looks like he will complete the entire year's work during the first semester, so now I have to see what the school will be willing to do, maybe give him geometry or something during the second semester. Pretty impressive. Some of the credit has to go to the online interactive math curriculum otherwise known as ALEKS. T wasn't picking up the more complex stuff from lectures or text books, if we didn't have ALEKS, I'm sure he'd been behind schedule, not even current much less ahead.

The languages are the most dramatic evidence to me of the gifts of asperger's - the school didn't want him to have two foreign languages at once, but I begged and whined until they gave in, using the rationalization of a balanced schedule or some such nonsense. The truth is he just loves them so much that I wanted him to have them. His assigned resource teacher has been really great and somehow she managed to get the ball rolling.

Officially he has a "resource" class too, but so far this has turned out to be lots of requests for students to check in and discuss any challenges they are having in their other classes. Not too taxing. Probably not worth any credit. Who cares. I'm just glad he has the resource of the teacher, though the IEP itself is taking care of most of T's previous woes.

The career awareness class has very cumbersome assignments with ambiguously worded directions, and the teacher who has it is absolutely outstanding but spread way too thin this year. T keeps emailing him with questions, but they go unreturned. And the resource teacher hasn't been able to reach him herself, so the modification option hasn't been exercised either. I am highly in favor of any course that makes the kids contemplate the future, but so far this one isn't working out real well. You can't have everything! But I would be much more distressed if he wasn't doing well in any of his other courses, the ones that really matter as far as I'm concerned.

But so far overall, the ten to twelve hour days are a thing of the past. T is supposed to have occupational therapy too in order to deal with his dysgraphia, but the only provider they've offered so far is almost an hour's drive away, and that would make him miserable. I've never tried asking his doctor about motion sickness, but I think the school should do better than an hour drive anyway. That is just unreasonable. But that seems like a minor quibble. I am still trying to figure out what language skills to have him evaluated for, I know if I don't ask for just the right thing, I won't necessarily get what he needs.

I was also supposed to be working on getting wraparound services this fall, but I've been so freaking busy with dd's transition to college and continued CBT, not to mention I just barely filed our taxes before the extension deadline a week ago. With all our medical bills from my stroke plus shutting down our non profit ministry, things were a little trickier with our return this year than what I was used to. The good news is that we consulted a tax attorney who also has a daughter with a learning disability, and he has a specialty in fighting schools to compel educational services for special needs kids. Yay! Never know when we might need that.

A couple days ago I was also fortunate enough to meet with a mommy who was an attorney in her previous life; she now runs an LD podcast/blog, and she gave me a million great ideas. If I could figure out how to put links in blogs I would do it, but if you can copy ldpodcast.com into your browser, that should do the trick. I'm getting so much information from it. It was also nice to have grown up conversation without needy children around for a couple of hours too.