And the Verdict Is...

...There is no verdict.

E. was here today. Though she was obviously very happy to be at school -- she was gently hugging everybody and saying "kissies, kissies" (her speech has exploded, not that I can expect her to speak in front of D. or on command) -- she was also very obviously not in "school mode."

But...at this point last year, she barely interacted with anybody but me and thought she was supposed to be away from all the other kids, to the point that she would remove herself to a corner. :-( So that's progress.

Boy A. and J. got into a knock-down drag out fight today. For no reason that any of us could see, A. just hauled off and hit J., who hit back, causing A. to howl like a wounded moose.

A. promptly lost his "green card" for the day and sat in a corner wailing for 10 minutes (which made M. cry real tears, but which E. handled with unusual equanimity). Of course, I think I also made Miss J. mad; she was hugging J. and trying to console him, when I came back to him and made him take his green card off for hitting back.

She gave me a wounded look at that -- but J. is an "if you give an inch, he'll take a mile" kinda kid, and if he so much as suspects that I feel sympathy for him (I did), or that I feel that A. deserved what he got (he did), he'll take that as carte blanche to beat the bejeezus out of the guy on a daily basis.

New Girl and Princess have bonded; New Girl realized that Princess speaks Spanish (New Girl's English is not good, and I suspect that that has caused at least some of her academic problems...which people are supposed to account for when assessing for special ed, but whatever) and chatted happily with her several times a day. New Girl was also fascinated with E. and brought her her Charlie folder without even being asked.

She reminds me of Grepsie, a girl in Patrick's class when he was little.

Splitting the kids up for recess worked wonderfully; I can see the fifth-sixth playground from the staff room, and saw E. (a sixth grader with Down syndrome who's fully included) figuratively dragging R. around by the ear while he reveled in the attention. (I sense a crush developing, actually, based on how they interacted waiting for the bus yesterday.)

M. desperately, desperately, desperately needs her pressure vest; I hope the OTs come by soon. After dealing with E's mini-meltdown (Miss J. has forgotten not to give her lots of "E, that hurt, don't do that") I had to take her into the office to wait for the bus, just to get her away from all the stimulation.

Tomorrow is Home School A's IEP to officially make him a middle schooler...but it's not quite as set as I thought -- A's been fully included throughout his educational career, though since he's been at my school, he's had time in an SDC as a fall-back. I guess the idea this time is to put him on the SDC's caseload and gradually increase his time in general ed. Of all times to try to get that by his mom, this seems like a good time, because the teachers at VV are very inclusion-oriented anyway...but who knows?

I'll feel better, I think, when we settle fully into our routine; we've been making classroom stuff (a book about our class) all week, and still have to make our Anti-Cheating Devices before our practice spelling test tomorrow.

I'm still feeling guardedly positive -- I've been reminding myself that after last year, there was little choice but to sense drama this year, but that doesn't mean it's anywhere near what it was when I had C. and A. and S. and R. and A. and C. and the rest of them all going insane at the same time, with C. in a corner howling and the other C and A running for the parking lot....