I waited all day Friday for the school psychologist to call me back. She didn't call and I forced myself not to obsess about it over the weekend. Today I called again and she called me right back. It turns out that she was out on Friday. We discussed the issues and she completely agreed with me that Abe needs to be taken out of the regular English Class. The only problem was that the connected Social Studies honors class with the teacher with a good fit for Abe was all full. The class with openings was with the teacher who isn't a good fit and the only reason I dropped the fight in the first place was because I didn't want him with a teacher who would stress him out. I think the school psychologist shared my frustration with the situation and she promised me she would try to work some magic and fix it. Amazingly, a couple of hours later she got back to me. She had convinced the social studies teacher to take him even though the class was full and the English honors teacher agreed to take him as well. He would have to change some other classes but would have the same teachers so it wouldn't be so bad. I couldn't believe it. The psychologist really listened and came through! Of course Abe doesn't want to change classes but we'll hopefully be able to convince him it is for the best. I can't believe that things worked out so quickly. I guess seeing a tantrum in action gets people to move to fix it. I warned that this could happen all last spring but it wasn't until they saw it for themselves that they really understood what I was talking about.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Sometimes it is frustrating to be right
I sit here a very frustrated parent. In middle school Abe was in honors English and honors Social Studies. The social studies teacher wasn't such a good fit and she didn't really implement the IEP accomodations but we had other fish to fry and I didn't really focus on her class. At the end of the year Abe still ended up with an average in the mid 80's. The High School honors program had an integrated social studies and English class and you had to be recommended by both teachers. The English teacher recommended him and the Social Studies teacher did not. I tried to work around it, speaking to everyone I could- the guidance counselor, the English Department chair, the psychologists, the behaviorist, the Social Studies Chair. I explained that to put Abe in a regular English class would not be good as he would be so far ahead of the other students (Abe was hyperlexic and was reading at age 2). Unfortunately the Social Studies Chair wouldn't budge. I found out that she was retiring and probably didn't want to bother. The HS school psychologist talked with me and said that the teacher who was teaching the social studies part of the class would not be a good fit so I dropped it. I had already learned that with Abe, having the right kind of teacher was the most important thing.
Fast forward to today. I get a call from the school psychologist that Abe had a meltdown in English class during a Jeopardy game. When I spoke with Abe he told me that the other kids on his team weren't playing competitively because they were picking the lower point questions and his team was losing. Given that extra credit was given to the winning team, this made Abe really agitated. It turns out that tonight was open school night so I went to meet all the teachers. By mistake I show up in Social Studies a period early and find out that the honors social studies teacher is the same one that he has for regular social studies (talk about serendipity). It seems that a change was made in the Fall. When I get to English class, the teacher tells me that she understand why Abe was so frustrated. He is so far ahead of the other kids that he finds it hard to be there. The teacher told me that sometimes it is just she and Abe discussing the book. She sees that he doesn't belong there. Of course, I am now really agitated as I told them this would happen but I'm just the mom-what do I know? So, tomorrow I start again, calling the school psychologist and trying to figure out what we should do. Of course, since Abe has autism and hates change, if we decide to change his schedule we will have to convince him it is a good idea. What I really want to say is "I told you so" but of course I won't because it isn't socially appropriate. The funny thing is the English teacher told me that when Abe says to his classmates things such as "The teacher already said that 100 times, how come you don't know it" she feels like agreeing with him. I guess Abe says things we would all like to say but don't.
Fast forward to today. I get a call from the school psychologist that Abe had a meltdown in English class during a Jeopardy game. When I spoke with Abe he told me that the other kids on his team weren't playing competitively because they were picking the lower point questions and his team was losing. Given that extra credit was given to the winning team, this made Abe really agitated. It turns out that tonight was open school night so I went to meet all the teachers. By mistake I show up in Social Studies a period early and find out that the honors social studies teacher is the same one that he has for regular social studies (talk about serendipity). It seems that a change was made in the Fall. When I get to English class, the teacher tells me that she understand why Abe was so frustrated. He is so far ahead of the other kids that he finds it hard to be there. The teacher told me that sometimes it is just she and Abe discussing the book. She sees that he doesn't belong there. Of course, I am now really agitated as I told them this would happen but I'm just the mom-what do I know? So, tomorrow I start again, calling the school psychologist and trying to figure out what we should do. Of course, since Abe has autism and hates change, if we decide to change his schedule we will have to convince him it is a good idea. What I really want to say is "I told you so" but of course I won't because it isn't socially appropriate. The funny thing is the English teacher told me that when Abe says to his classmates things such as "The teacher already said that 100 times, how come you don't know it" she feels like agreeing with him. I guess Abe says things we would all like to say but don't.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
A good beginning so far
This is my first posting on this blog. I meant to post earlier but it has been very busy getting everyone started at school. A lot of work went into preparing for 9th grade. Before school even started I hashed out the behavior plan with the behaviorist and she met with all the teachers. For some background, my son Abe (not his real name). has been in inclusion settings since kindergarten. He is high functioning and very intelligent but clearly is still on the spectrum. He has a 1:1 aide in school and is in all mainstream classes. He did very well in middle school and that is why we are giving regular high school a try. Last year he had a rough patch and we looked into a special education high school. In many ways I would have loved to send him there. He'd be safe and would actually learn some of the non academic things he needs to learn. Abe acknowledged how perfect the school was for him but he wanted to attend the local high school. As Abe gets older we have to take his wishes into account. I'm proud of the fact that he feels part of his school community and wants to go to high school with all of his classmates.
Abe is enjoying school and so far things have been pretty good. He's giving us a bit of a hard time about homework but I keep telling him that he is in high school and if he doesn't do it then he will have to deal with the consequences. Of course when it gets late and he's tired he starts freaking out about not having done it. A couple of times my husband has gotten him up early to do his homework before school.
One of Abe's issues is that he gets very emotional about sad material. All of a sudden he begins sobbing. People who say that autistic individuals don't have any feelings or emotions are way off. When Abe was little I read an article written by a person with autism in which the person claimed that people with autism have too many emotions and therefore shut down to defend themselves. I see this with my son. He was much more flat when he was younger but now he reacts very strongly. He can't protect himself from the flooding of emotions. Of course we explained this to the teachers before school started but the teachers really don't get it. Last week Abe gets assigned a short story that was really powerful and sad and all of a sudden he's sobbing while doing his homework. Just a week earlier the teacher was given the behavior plan in which we are supposed to be forewarned so we can prepare Abe. No such luck. The hard thing about H.S. is you can't have team meetings with all the teachers so easily so it is hard for me to get my message across. I don't know how effective the behaviorist was in letting the teachers know what they need to do. I contacted the school psychologist who was able to get me all the short stories they are reading this week. In middle school I handed out my email and asked the teachers to please use me as a resource but only a couple of them did. Those teachers who were good at communicating with me were so great. Any time an issue came up we were able to quickly resolve it. The IEP talks about home/school communication but I find that most teachers don't really want to communicate with the parents. A quick email could solve so many problems. In the HS they have a program where you can see the grades and can email the teachers but I don't know if the teachers check the email. Thursday is open school night so hopefully I'll get more information then.
Abe is enjoying school and so far things have been pretty good. He's giving us a bit of a hard time about homework but I keep telling him that he is in high school and if he doesn't do it then he will have to deal with the consequences. Of course when it gets late and he's tired he starts freaking out about not having done it. A couple of times my husband has gotten him up early to do his homework before school.
One of Abe's issues is that he gets very emotional about sad material. All of a sudden he begins sobbing. People who say that autistic individuals don't have any feelings or emotions are way off. When Abe was little I read an article written by a person with autism in which the person claimed that people with autism have too many emotions and therefore shut down to defend themselves. I see this with my son. He was much more flat when he was younger but now he reacts very strongly. He can't protect himself from the flooding of emotions. Of course we explained this to the teachers before school started but the teachers really don't get it. Last week Abe gets assigned a short story that was really powerful and sad and all of a sudden he's sobbing while doing his homework. Just a week earlier the teacher was given the behavior plan in which we are supposed to be forewarned so we can prepare Abe. No such luck. The hard thing about H.S. is you can't have team meetings with all the teachers so easily so it is hard for me to get my message across. I don't know how effective the behaviorist was in letting the teachers know what they need to do. I contacted the school psychologist who was able to get me all the short stories they are reading this week. In middle school I handed out my email and asked the teachers to please use me as a resource but only a couple of them did. Those teachers who were good at communicating with me were so great. Any time an issue came up we were able to quickly resolve it. The IEP talks about home/school communication but I find that most teachers don't really want to communicate with the parents. A quick email could solve so many problems. In the HS they have a program where you can see the grades and can email the teachers but I don't know if the teachers check the email. Thursday is open school night so hopefully I'll get more information then.
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