So Close

(The IEP was 95% fine; it turned out as I wrote it that I did, in fact, have all her goals planned...just subconsciously, like normal.  I'd even taken the appropriate data.  I love how my brain works.  The 5% not fine was that the parents were excited to meet the middle school teacher -- who emailed me to let me know that she has been put on bed rest for the rest of her pregnancy.  Whoops.)

Anyway.

Picture this.

You're a mostly-shy, mostly-retiring girl who doesn't really enjoy the spotlight of lots of people.  However, you are pretty excited to have a family gathering of both sides of the family to celebrate your sixteenth birthday.  You, by a large margin, don't want to be the sole focus of attention...but it's a fairly small gathering of very familiar people, and you're mostly okay with it.

Except...

...that five days ago, these two people, that you've never heard of, were killed in Brentwood.

And the suspected killer -- who you had also never heard of -- is driving his white Bronco down a local freeway at 35 miles per hour, pursued by every CHP officer in Southern California.

And everyone -- everyone -- is glued to the TV.

You find yourself thinking things like: I know I didn't want to be the center of attention, exactly, but this is ridiculous.  It'd be nice if people actually noticed I existed.

It's not that I'm bitter, per se, it's just --

Okay, I'm a little bitter.

And then I hear that California was going to start issuing same-sex marriage licenses on June 17, and I thought -- finally, something good for people to associate with the day (which, of course, cheerfully ignores that not everyone shares that opinion, but that's a rant for another day).

But then I hear that San Francisco county officials asked if they could begin after the end of business hours the previous day, and so now county clerks across the state have permission to grant same-sex marriage licenses beginning at 5:00 p.m. June 16th.

Dang.

So close....

Slow but Steady

Hmph.  While not the pulling-every-tooth experience of last year, I am struggling a bit with this one.

Of course, it could be that my eyes hurt with fatigue (yup, it's approaching that time, and, yup, I'm getting messed up now that Sleeping Beauty started her cycle too).

Or it could be that the middle school teacher wanted to talk about goals but never got back to me, and I'm hurting my brain trying to figure out what she would have wanted.

ETA:  Three hours.  That's a whole lot better than last year, which ended up being about 7, if you can trust the time stamps on the old blog posts.

History Repeats Itself

Or, rather, I hope it doesn't.

Exactly a year ago, I was writing Sleeping Beauty's IEP.  Of course, we got out of school later last year, so it wasn't so close to the end of the year.  It was not easy -- because I came into it knowing more or less what goals I wanted for her.

This year, I have no idea, so based on my IEP-writing history, it should be relatively easy.  Right?

Also?  And unrelated except that I'm watching an Extinct Attractions video, I miss Horizons.  And its music.

ETA:  June 10th is a depressing day.  Except for the last one...but that's a rant for another day.

Done

Okay, so the only goal I'm not too sure about is the math one -- I'm worried that Superhero's mom will think it's a step back, but it's not, really -- it's a functional skill that our CAPA testing showed that he's totally missing (counting dollars to buy something -- he can count, but when asked to apply it, he so couldn't).

Also, still no speech goal.

Anyhow, it's times like this that you think back to when he started -- as much as there are drawbacks to having kids for three years (I think, as much as he wants attention in general, Superhero is done with elementary school), it makes times like this kinda fun.

Like, when I was writing that he's not only completing familiar tasks by himself (his first year's goal was to complete 1, and his last year's goal was to complete 5), he's asking to and preferring to try things himself.

I stop and think of the -- very, very cute -- little 9-year-old who thought that if he just stared at me with that adorable grin, I'd think he didn't know what he was doing and do his work for him.

I think of the first day he finished his -- then very simple -- journal by himself.  All he had to do was color a picture, circle the matching one, cut a rectangle, and glue it in...but it was his Everest.

He may have driven me crazy this year, and I know teachers aren't supposed to say it, but that guy's one of my favorites.  Much as I adore Elastigirl, Superhero's got a special place in my heart.

Something's Fishy

More on Superhero.

So, I'm a procrastinator.  I'm okay with that.  In fact, I work best to a deadline.  Superhero's IEP is tomorrow.

But adding to my foreboding that DFT is going to either attach herself to a goal of mine (which, by the way, would be fine, as what he needs to work on in speech is exactly the goal I wrote...except that she didn't ask) or try to put him on consult is...he has no speech goal.

How do I know this?

Well, it's 8:53 p.m. and she has not added her goal to his IEP.  (An interesting side benefit to this whole online IEP thing.)

(For the record, all I have left is the math goal, which I'm floundering about....)

3 Years

...for three years I warned you this day was coming....

Oops.  Shut up, quote brain.

I'm writing Superhero's last IEP (for me).  I'm strangely not freaked about it -- mostly 'cause Mr. Voice's tri is next Tuesday, wherein I'll be yelled at for another three hours, and I know that Superhero's mom likes me.

However, I am gleefully (bad Spoowriter) anticipating her reaction -- as a Regional Center Case Manager herself -- to what I suspect will be Speech Person's DFT's attempt to take her son off of speech.

Her son, who is currently having behavior challenges because he can't communicate efficiently enough to interact with people to get enough attention from them.

Yeah.

I should not be jazzed about that.

But I am.

Does that make me a bad person?

The Old and the New

Who needs an external hard drive enclosure when you remember that your account is two arrows down and can log in without a monitor?

Add to that being able to browse your own network well enough to get an internal IP address for the old desktop without a monitor to ask it what its IP address is.

Add to that remembering that to log into a shared windows drive you have to use smb://ipaddress.

Et voila.

Now to write the scary IEP, while pretending I don't have a migraine.

(And while pretending that Program Specialist and Former Teacher RR didn't outright say CAPA would be harder again this year, because apparently "correlating with standards" no longer means teaching age appropriate topics at skill appropriate levels, and I should be teaching kids to sort leaves by type.  As in...toothed, compound, and something else.  Because we couldn't take the general, "Oh, fifth graders learn about plants" and go for, "What do plants need to live?"  Oh, no, we have to go straight to types of leaves.

Also...I've had kids go to fifth grade science.  They do not learn this anyway.  Eesh.)

When the OTs Need an IEP Goal

So, I'm typing up the stuff for Mr. Voice's 30 day IEP. I'm freaked, but at least his IEP will not now be a gigantic block of contradictory and unreable text.

Anyway, I'm typing up one of his goals. The annual goal is to do something 3/5 attempts.

For the record, 3/5 = 60%.

The last objective is to do something 3/4 attempts.

For the record, the last objective should be completed before the goal is due.

Also for the record, 3/4 = 75%.

So, Mr. Voice is supposed to exceed the goal before meeting it.

Yeah.

Also, and totally unrelated, I've gone through at least a box of Kleenex since Friday. Don't know what I'm so allergic to right now, but I haven't had an allergy attack this bad in nearly 5 years. I even had to buy Primatene tablets. Blech.

Diplomacy

Or, in fandom slang: my indignant, spluttering outrage, let me show you it.

All me to set the scene.

It's mid-December, and Speech Person DFT is asking me about Elastigirl's communication.  The conversation, at one point, veers off into the difference between "modeling," "prompting," and "cueing."

DFT:  So, you're saying that Elastigirl only communicates verbally after you model something for her?

Me:  I wouldn't call it modeling, in the sense that she has no idea what to say until I model it for her with the expectation that she repeats it, no.

DFT:  But she doesn't come up with the words on her own?

Me:  Very rarely, but generally not.  She doesn't respond well to outright requests, like "Elastigirl, say 'more.'"  But if you say, "Elastigirl, do you want more?" she'll say "more."

DFT:  So you're saying she's echolalic?

Me:  Not in the usual sense of the term, no.  To me, it looks like she has a word-retrieval problem.  Like, the word is there, but for whatever reason, she can't access it without the auditory cue first.

DFT:  Oooh, I don't think so.  I think it's just because her developmental level is so low.

Me:  (skeptically)  Okay....

Today, during Elastigirl's IEP meeting (in which she transcribed several of Elastigirl's most common phrases incorrectly, and did not know the name of Elastigirl's communication device -- which is not a surprise, given that I'm the one that located it and used PTA funds to buy it, because she wanted to give Elastigirl a Big Mack (a.k.a. the giant flying projectile that will bash someone's brain in) rather than her TalkTrac (a.k.a. the small and light device that can be attached to things)) the following exchange occurred:

DFT:  Elastigirl almost never verbalizes spontaneously but she will inconsistently repeat a verbal prompt.  Though (looks at me) I don't know that 'prompt' is the right word.

Me:  No, I don't think so.  Like I said when we were speaking before, it's not a prompt in the sense of "Here, Elastigirl, let me tell you how to do this thing you've never done before."

DFT:  Right.  In fact, (pause, then look of dawning realization, then direct eye contact with mom) you know, it looks almost like she has a word-retrieval problem, and she needs that auditory cue in order to retrieve the word.

Me:  *($R#(#$($*#*$(#*($ WHAT???????

(Okay, not really, but I did gape at her and mutter very quietly under my breath to Principal SDF, "That's what I told her and she told me no!")

I very rarely have actual issues with DFT -- she annoys me, and I see very little value in what she does with any kids who have any issues beyond just articulation -- but between what she did in December and first dismissing my opinion (while telling me Elastigirl does not need speech services because I know her best) and then using my hard-won observation to sound good is just wrong.

Don't get me wrong -- I know that the ultimate goal here is to help Elastigirl become a better communicator.  So in the end, it doesn't really matter whose idea it was.

But that's the thing -- it doesn't matter whose idea it was, so why pass that idea off as your own brilliant on-the-spot brainstorm?

But it was an IEP meeting, and I'd have hated it if she'd openly questioned me during one, so I let it go.

My diplomacy, let me show you it.

The Apple and The Tree

When I was in my credential classes, I heard lots of people complaining about the apple not falling far from the tree -- that is, the kids they taught had issues 'cause the parents had issues.

Generally speaking, kids with more severe disabilities have genetic stuff going on -- though, of course, that's debated with autism.  However, sometimes, like with Seventh Grade J, there's a lot of mom in the kid.

Well...there's a lot of PH in his mom.  Wow.

Plus, his grandma was scary.  She gave very little feedback -- verbal or nonverbal -- until the end of the IEP, when she suddenly said she liked the plan for PH and thought it was really good.

So the end result is that the IEP went fine.

Now to sleep for a long, long time.  (Yawn.)

First IEP

So, I'm halfway through writing PH's IEP. On the one hand, I can document a lot of progress from last year in academic areas. On the other, I have to figure out some sort of social/emotional goal that is basically, "Don't be a brat" without the goal actually being "don't be a brat."

'Cause, you know, that would be bad.

More later, maybe.

Busy, Busy

Things have been thundering past me so fast that I can't believe tomorrow is Tuesday already.  If the parents ever acknowledge receipt of the invitation -- which we sent certified mail after all my notes were ignored and the family's phone numbers wouldn't work -- my first IEP (boy J) will be this Friday.

The big news, of course, was that Aide T was back today!

Of course, Aide S was out, so I still have not experienced a fully-staffed day.

Still, E was out, so it worked out.  For a brief, shining moment, I had capable people handling both Superhero and Bulldozer, and I got to hang with M!  Now I just need a few precious minutes to assess boy J before his IEP.

(And to program specialist PM, who seems to think that it's easy to pull kids daily for a week to assess prior to an IEP above and beyond what you normally do, I say:  fine.  Come teach my class when one aide is out and two kids are melting down simultaneously, M is freaking out 'cause she has to go number 2, and Superhero is spitting on him, and we'll see how much assessing you get done.  So there.  :-p )

Plus, I seem to have acquired the "fatigue" portion of PMS -- though, in return, I also seem to have ditched the clockwork-like migraines -- and that's why I haven't been around for a few days.

However, I must share the Aide K moment of the day.

After science this afternoon, I had scheduled "catch up day" because nobody actually finished on Friday.  After agenda books, the second thing on the list is journals.

Knowing to whom I spoke, I made sure to say slowly and carefully, "This is only journals from last week.  They are at the BACK of the journal.  Do NOT do the ones at the front of the journal -- they are this week's."

Not five minutes later did she approach Aide J and ask, "So, is she done with this?  I can't find today's journal, and this one is tomorrow's."

I turn around from Bulldozer, who is having his first meltdown of the day (begun at 1:15! wow!), and say, "No, those are THIS week's.  Remember, I said the old journals are in the back?"

I kid you not, I got a blank stare, so Aide J takes the journal from her.  "The old ones are in the back."  Another blank stare.  She -- I swear to God -- flips to the back of the journal and shows Aide K.

"Oooooooooooooooooooh," she says.

I might have slapped my own head if Bulldozer hadn't been trying to do the same thing at the time.

The Saga that Never Ends

After three hours, which included a call to A's doctor because apparently 12-year-olds are now being encouraged to get a booster of one of their vaccinations that included a live virus, the end result of the IEP was a dramatic...

...nothing.

A's mom wants A to be there.  She has several good points, not the least of which is that most of A's friends from elementary school -- as well as his sister and sisters' friends -- are at VV now.  The teachers, on the other hand, are freaked because they have never had a sixth grader attend their SDC program -- which is where he would be placed initially because SBS believes (and I agree) that for the time being, he will need more support than an itinerant inclusion support teacher could provide.  The SDC program at VV is inclusion-oriented anyway (most of the kids are out more than 50% of their day, with some up to 80%).

The sticker is that the VV teachers, ultimately, don't want A there.  They are down 4 staff members and are convinced that the other staff members would be bitter that A would have his own private aide support (even though it's medically necessary for him at the moment to have contact with fewer people).

SBS is worried that when A's mom goes to visit next Friday -- to see, as the teacher put it, the program As It Really Is -- the teacher, N, will present her class in the worst possible light.  She's concerned that the kids will be held back from their inclusion classes and allowed to work up into meltdown mode so that A's mom will freak out at the confusion and drama and say "never mind."

Apparently, she did it before, when the district was searching for a placement for C, a kid from GG (the kid that resulted in the card we made for MN, Cat).  So SBS isn't entirely borrowing trouble that doesn't exist.

The other problem, of course, is that A is very, very attuned to when people don't want him around.  90% of his troubles in 2nd and 3rd grade were because he had teachers that didn't want him there.  I tried to warn N, and her new partner-teacher, about that, but I don't think they really took me seriously.

Of course, I also told them not to listen to anything ME said about A (the ME who used to work in my class and who could talk the bark off a tree) because she'd only ever seen him at his absolute, utter worst, and didn't understand the reasons behind his behavior, even then.  I also told them not to, under any circumstances ever, to have ME support A in class.

Ever.

Ever, ever, ever.

You know the sad part of all this?  Despite the havoc he can wreak when upset, A is a very cool little boy of whom I am very fond.  He's survived intra-uterine chemotherapy, a disease that killed 2 of his siblings, every infection known to man, and three -- three -- bone marrow transplants...the last of which being from a non-ideal donor.

It's a shame that his mom's reputation in the school district so colors people's opinion of him that someone would deliberately present their very good program in a bad light just to delay his coming to the school by a measly year.

In other news, I have an 8-year-old teenage girl in my class.  Yay me.

Permit me to elaborate.

J is a young lady with Down syndrome.  J is generally easy-going and agreeable, but can be mischievous and sometimes gets it in her head to...not be either.

Yesterday, after we finished News-2-You, we were to have our duly appointed Friday Catch Up Day.  That is, you look through your journal, your agenda book, and any other work we've done during the week, and finish anything that's not done.

J decided it would be more fun to climb around on our beanbags.

I redirected her.  I told her the consequences of listening to me (good ones) and of not (bad ones).  She eventually lost her green card and had to go sit by my desk and calm down.  She stuck her tongue out at me and kicked the wall.

Bye-bye yellow card.

She continued to kick the wall.  I employed my 3-2-1 warnings visual aid and she eventually got to the card that meant losing recess.

At which point she plants her feet on the ground, folds her arms defiantly over her chest, narrows her eyes and announces, "I call my mom!  I get recess!"

Ahem.

The saga continued over recess, but after recess when I engaged my own stubbornness and required that she did, in fact, write a letter to her mom explaining her actions (rather, she copied from a model which I then translated) and complete the work she'd missed before, she was appropriately contrite.

In fact, after she apologized to Miss J., she ran back to me with a huge relieved smile on her face and tried to hug me.

In other classroom drama, A hit Boy J twice yesterday; after losing his green card for retaliating Thursday, J showed remarkable restraint and simply howled for help.  He was prodigiously praised for that, and even earned an extra ticket for our principal's recess chart.  Given Boy J's personality, that was a huge display of self-restraint and self-control.

E. is still babbling away, repeating most everything she hears.  She even named the crayons she was using to color -- color! without throwing across the room! -- without prompting.  During News-2-You, she kept saying lunch, so I said, "E., you want lunch?  You must be hungry."

"Hungry," she repeated.  (I am not going to try to replicate her non-perfect pronunciation here.)

Later, unprompted, she said, "Lunch.  Hungry."   Complete with signs.

Whee!

Of course, she shut up like a clam when DFT came in...but I would expect nothing less.

All of this drama resulted in me sleeping like a rock for 12 hours, hence the lateness of the post.

Oh!  One other mind-blowing development.

During lunch, 2 of my aides thought it necessary to accompany the 2 remaining fourth graders to recess, leaving 4 fifth and sixth graders -- which included M and R! -- on their own for recess.  (Miss J had E with her while she supervised J.)

Not only did no one run up to me yelling "R licked me!  R licked me!" -- all four of them were quietly lined up on their appropriate spot when I went to pick the class up after recess.

All four of them.

I was so shocked that I completely forgot to mention to the aides involved that it probably hadn't been the wisest distribution of resources.

I was...flabbergasted (in a very good way) doesn't even cover it.

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....

It's Over

Life, I suppose, is all about compromise. Nobody gets exactly what they want, but everybody gets something.

I compromised today to keep the peace with the administration who, after all, is in charge of me. I get that -- I do. Miss T. was happy. The middle school teacher was happy 'cause her life is not inconvenienced by providing curricular modifications or aide support for J to spend extra time in general ed beyond what her program provides. The OT and APE people were happy because she was moved to consult (a decision I actually supported, as her handwriting and sports skills, like everything else, improved around her peers after years of direct service doing not much).

I did put in a plug to get J in clubs at lunch time and after school extracurriculars.

I don't think mom was 100% happy; I wasn't 100% happy.

But it's over.

Mom signed, and if J. has another period like in 3rd grade where she lost lots of skills, no one can say I never warned them.

It's out of my hands. It'll be someone else's Drama.

Meanwhile, I just realized that I left the ice cream K. (a fourth grade teacher) was kind enough to bring back for me after she went out with the other 4th grade teacher and the science teacher, in the freezer at school. :-(

I have more thoughts, but I actually have to get some work done, and I feel a headache coming on. (Ignore this if you're leery of TMI.) I've had my monthly migraine twice in the last week, but the result of that has not happened yet. I wishy my hormones could decide which of my girls to sync up with -- I thought we were getting there a couple of months ago, but either one of the girls is getting irregular and I didn't notice, or one of the other girls is fixin' to start and confuse my poor reproductive system even more.

Anyone else ever wish that the "pregnancy substitutes" in Huxley's Brave New World actually existed?