Happy Dance for our new IEP!
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| Tue, 10-11-2005 - 8:42am |
I had Weston's IEP meeting yesterday! it was so great! Thanks so much for all your support through the last year!!! by slowly getting all my ducks in a row and slowly but assertively telling them what needed to be done, it's done (or at least soon will be!). We'll have another meeting to amend the IEP and change his placement.
We went through all Weston's objectives and how he was doing last year and how huge a jump he's made from last year to this year. They were all just beaming-- but the person who had the biggest impact wasn't there (his 3rd grade teacher-- he's in 4th now). He has always been well above grade level academically, but he's getting better in the speach dept now too-- he has a long way to go and may continue to need ST in middleschool but he's catching up! His teachers find him charming (he's very honest and now starting to talk more in class) but his peers are starting to think he's plain weird! The teachers and autism specialist are going to present a program for his class to help them understand HFA a little better.
the district autism specialist was there-- yay!!! She had observed him last year and was astonished at his jump this year (but she observed him early in the year before the work load got tough). She felt that they were not serving him as well as they could and advised that we change his IEP to autism instead of speech because he wouldn't be lost when he no longer needs ST. They can also directly address his social skills needs in resource better than through the guidance counselor. He will have some individual social skills training and some w/ NT peers. They actually have a social skill curriculum that she will teach the resource teacher to use or see if one of the resource teachers already has experience w/ that.
The OT continues to work w/ him and has a consult w/ him once a month to teach him how to handle his sensory issues and also weekly cks in w/ him to see how his sensory diet is working. We are going to start doing even more at home to see if that helps. He's still getting speech 2x a week and it's by himself because no other kids really fit to work w/ him. WOOOHOOOO!
I'm so pleased that I just took my time and got all my ducks in a row! I think this is the best IEP we've had so far! I think it will serve Weston well!
Betsy

Betsy,
Good job! I'm glad it went well, and you got the best result for Weston.
-Paula
visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com
That is awesome betsy.
I am wondering, you mention another meeting to change placement? Why is that if he is doing well in his current placement? Do you mean changing his code from speech to autism? that isnt a placement change and should have been able to do that at this meeting.
Are they going to reduce the amount of classrooms he goes to? Just curious.
Glad it went so well. That is awesome to hear.
Renee
Hey,
I thought they could do the placement change w/o another meeting as well, however they have to have the district psych sign off on it and they have to bring in the resource teacher. Weston currently doesn't have any resource, only speech and OT w/ all other time spent in the mainstream classroom. He will have to go to resource for his social skills curriculum. My understanding is that he'll have some instruction alone and then they'll bring in nt peers to work w/ him as well, sometimes it will be done in his regular classroom as well. (I don't know if it will always be the same schedule though and i need to warn them that this will be a big deal!) After thinking this through I hope it works-- they only have 2 resource teachers for the whole school-- don't know that he will get the kind of attention he needs w/ an over worked resource teacher. I'm a little concerned about what they'll pull him from too-- they're pulling him from Spanish and computer lab for speech-- I don't know what else I feel comfortable having him pulled from (maybe PE-- but I'm not sure they'll agree) I don't want him to lose art or music though and he needs to be in the academic classes so he understands what happened and so he's able to understand the homework.
They are pretty pleased w/ the 3 different classrooms he is in (I'm still skeptical), and he's really doing pretty well with that as long as the schedule is ALWAYS the same. Weston will obsess about the time and is NEVER late, I guess he is the one that remindes all his teachers when they're talking too long or whatever. His homeroom clock has been on the fritz so his teacher had to rig something so he could get some work done (we also bought him a watch yesterday-- though that may end up being more distraction due to the sensory issues of wearing it). The homeroom teacher has learned that she must tell him at the beginning of the day if anything at all will change and they have to give him a physical copy of his schedule for the day. They are also aware that if they know in advance that there will be a sub he needs to know the day before!
Betsy