Good IEP meeting
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| Mon, 06-05-2006 - 8:12pm |
How bout some good news from me for once.
Had an IEP meeting for Mike to plan for next year. I love his teacher and I am loving his mainstream teacher for next year. The mainstream teacher (Mrs. W.) was Cait's 5th grade teacher and I know her well. She is also the teacher rep on the PTA and I volunteered in her class last year.
Anyway, Mike will start his day in the SDC for just 5 or 10 minutes until all the kids are in classes and settled in (Mike goes into his SDC early and reads. Currently he doesn't have to deal with the lines and crowds of the regular classes). Then he will join the mainstream class for about 3 hours and have it be the entirity of the language arts program until recess. Then he will return to his SDC class for Math and the remainder of the day. We will reconvene after 6 weeks and have his triennial IEP as well as review progress and decide whether to add mainstream math, stay the same or cut back.
We talked about ideas of where he may go in middle school as well.
Lastly, his teacher had an awesome sheet put together all about Mike to give to the mainstream teacher all about what works for him, what stresses him out, etc.
Renee


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Dear Renee,
Congrats on the good IEP meeting. It's great to start out with the ducks as lined up in a row as they can be.
Now with Malcolm in the slightly larger class (10) with slightly less supervision (2) at the new school, I do know that at this point it really would be too stressful for him to be educated in a larger mainstream situation. Sadly he would blow apart. It's very cool that Mike is able to do it.
All that information about autism specialist really is interesting, those of us who only have the parenting background don't have enough of en idea of what those backgrounds are!
Sara
Thank you....it was not too much info.....it was exactly what I wanted to know. Did your DH always know this is the career path he would follow or did he stubble into it? Did he start off going for education or psychology? Just curious.....it's all very interesting to me.
Christie
Kind of both, lol. He more stubbled on, I kind of knew all along. I saw a program on autistics when I was a teen and it was so incredibly fascinating to me.
DH and I both started in education and got our degrees in that about 16 years ago. Then after a year or 2 circumstances had us moving to massachusetts. I had worked in a treatment program with some special ed kids previously and decided I wanted to go into special ed. Then I found this job at a school mainly for autistics where you were able to get your degree practically for free (of course you didn't get paid diddly squat)and loads of ABA training. It was a dream come true. DH decided he liked what I was doing and got a job there as well. After working there about 1-2 years, Cait was born and I dropped out of the masters program but kept working part time. DH continued on and got his masters. Then we moved onto a home based program where we used a more eclectic approach to autism treatment and the rest is history.
Once he started at that school he found his nitch I think. We both loved working with individuals with autism (adults and children on a variety levels of autism from very very severe to savants). So he kind of stubbled on the first school but once it happened we were hooked.
Oh, and it didn't hurt having kids on the spectrum. Cait was diagnosed when we worked for the home program. Having autism in the family definitely brought our interest to a new level. I have met parents John has worked with in his district after they moved up here and even if they had a rough experience with the rest of the district, most have very positive things to say about him. I think that comes from the understanding of what it is like to sit on the other side of the table.
Renee
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