Category Archives: School
A Mom Talks with the Director of Special Education
This is so funny, in a sad, sad way. Must watch!
A Mom Talks with the Director of Special Education
Icky Inside
Why do I always feel icky after those meetings at school? I think it’s because I don’t like the person I have to become to fight for my twice exceptional kids.
Individually, I really like all who attend… teachers, principal, GT rep, Instructional Coach, etc. I believe that they believe they are trying hard to help Zoolander. But I also think that if I don’t continually push and push, and sometimes get ugly, Zoolander will not get what she needs to be a successful learner. That is what I have learned.
What I want to tell them is this… “I’m sorry I sometimes have to be unpleasant in these meetings, I like and respect you all, and I know you work hard, but I don’t trust you anymore and when I say ‘you’, I mean the ‘system’. I got burned before and my child suffered for it and I’m not going to let it happen again.”
When Lily started having difficulties in school in 2nd grade, I was assured that they were working on it. They did a full evaluation and started an IEP for her. As a twice exceptional student she qualified for an IEP because of her ADHD. I was completely clueless and just signed on the dotted line. I had no idea I could offer IEP input and even if I had, I wouldn’t have known what to do. I trusted that they knew what to do.
Lily’s difficulties just got worse, but I was assured that her case was being discussed at higher-levels. She was visiting an ADHD Coach, but seeing no results. By 4th grade, Lily’s teacher suggested I get her evaluated privately. She had a twice exceptional college-aged son who had similar challenges and she had done the same. That’s when I started to wise-up.
We then spent more than a year gathering info on Lily… with extensive (and expensive) outside testing, evaluations and therapy. When I was ready to go back to the table with the school to get Lily the help she needed, I was blown away by what hadn’t been done for Lily.
Not one person was looking at the big picture. The district had done testing, but no one had analyzed it looking for clues. Her IEP goals, written by the school, were way off-base. I was struck by the fact that up until now, Lily, herself, had been blamed for her behavior and no one with the proper expertise had bothered to figure out what was actually causing her behavior.
Eventually, it was our outside experts who pieced together the causes of her behavior, which I brought to the school and to the district. I was then frustrated to discover that no one really knew what to do to help. I demanded that the district provide the resources to come up with a plan, but in the end, again… it was our money and our outside experts who provided the answers.
So, even after all that, even after trying to educate myself as much as possible using wrightslaw.com, even after using the services of a knowledgeable advocate, I still feel like there is so much unspoken at those meetings. There are resources that aren’t mentioned, protocols that aren’t followed, procedures that aren’t discussed, tests that aren’t done and unless I know to ask, no one will tell me.
Makes sense, because if a parent is unaware, why would the district volunteer their limited resources? That’s their biggest advantage in a negotiation—they know and you don’t. Another common tactic that really gets me is the subtle vibe–’we’re calm professionals and you’re a crazy mother who is overreacting and imagining problems and expecting too much.’
So, in conclusion… that’s where I’m coming from at these meetings and that’s why I am forced to be… (nothing personal, of course)… a mistrustful jerkwad.
My Muffin Plan
The muffins are in the oven and that’s not a euphemism, it’s a bribe. Well, not a bribe… just a thoughtful gift for the school Problem Solving Team. We’re meeting tomorrow about Zoolander and I’m hoping banana-chocolate chip muffins will pave the way for detente between the two sides.
I know it’s supposed to be a lovey-dovey cooperative effort between parents and the school, but almost every meeting I’ve been to like this has been filled with unspoken tensions.
I can’t help but steel myself before these meetings. I’m on their turf and there are hidden agendas, invisible rules and they all speak a foreign language. Should I try to be knowledgeable and tough or passive and undemanding? I know what happens when you’re nice. If you don’t go into those meetings with a clear idea of what your child needs, you ain’t gettin’ nuthin’. If you don’t ask. They don’t tell.
It doesn’t help that Zoolander doesn’t qualify for an IEP, a 504 or even the 2nd tier of an RtI. Why? Because she isn’t sucking enough at school. And why is she not sucking enough at school? Because she’s using her cognitive gifts to compensate for her weaknesses.
That’s the difficulty with Twice Exceptional kids. It’s hard to get them help because many times, from the outside, they don’t appear to need it and they have to be doing really poorly to get action. It especially helps if they do really poorly on state assessment tests.
I still believe that’s the only reason I got real help for Lily, because her scores on the state assessment decreased from 4th to 5th grade. Well, that and I wrote a few firm emails to heads of departments. Oh, that AND I paid thousands of dollars to have outside experts assess Lily and provide the school with suggested accommodations and interventions.
Oops, wandered into Bitterville there. Anywhoooo…..
I’m anxious about tomorrow’s meeting. I’ll have to post more background on the specifics of Zoolander’s 2E learning issues at another time. That’s at least a 3-parter, maybe 4. Don’t wanna miss that!
Zoolandia-The Sensory Eval Pt 2
I passed Zoolander’s Sensory Eval on to her school and to our private Occupational Therapist. Zoolander began seeing our OT once a week and our OT began working directly with the school district’s OT to implement some of the suggestions from the report.
Zoolander loves her time with our OT. They usually start the session with some kind of swinging activity, followed by work on cursive handwriting. Our OT noticed that Zoolander had a difficult time, even with cursive, because her letter formation is far from automatic. Sometimes cursive is supposed to be better for visual-spatial kids because it’s more fluid and artistic.
The beauty of visiting this OT is that she’s wonderful and really gets my twice exceptional kids, plus she’s close to our house, but… insurance won’t pay for her services. Insurance insists that we can drive 20 miles to the nearest OT who specializes in grannies with arthritis and who have no training in working with kids who have difficulty with Sensory Processing. So, there you go.
Luckily, our OT understands the expense and gives us lots of ideas to try at home, plus she tapers off her sessions once she feels the child is improving. The books, The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder and The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun have lots of great info and activities.
It’s also very helpful that our OT works quite often with the school district’s OT. That takes me out of the middle of things. They talk. The school’s OT observes and then makes adjustments and provides any sensory tools that they might need in the classroom.
Zoolander now has a special balancing chair, which she says helps her concentrate because she can move around more. She is also allowed to use a laptop for written work, which she says makes writing much easier.
I know the team at school takes care with Zoolander’s placement in the classroom, making sure distractions are minimized. They are also conscious of the fact that if Zoolander is fidgety, she may need a Sensory Break, which could just be running an errand to the office or erasing the white board.
Zoolander has shown improvement since these sensory accommodations were made, but I still felt that there was something else that was getting in the way of her learning. So, I put her on the waiting list for a Learning Evaluation.
Brainhugger 