Progress update
13 Dec 2013, 1:19 pm
The permanent placement IEP finally happened Wednesday (it got snowed out Monday). He's going to be in resource classes for all the core curriculum type classes, and then go to art and computer lab mainstream. They are going to place him in a period that has smaller class size for the art and computer labs. One of his current teachers was concerned that if they are on the other end of the building that he'd need an escort to class, because he tends to get disoriented in the maze of identical looking hallways. In one of his classes a couple of weeks ago, they had to move to a room on the 9th grade end of the building, because the normal room was being worked on, and he got lost. He reacted pretty much exactly like I told them he probably would--he got confused and froze in indecision until the next teacher sent a kid to find him and escort him to the class.
Everyone loves him. He's sweet (seriously, every professional that has ever worked with him since age 2 has felt compelled to mention that he is sweet). They said he is getting along with the other students pretty well, and seems to be doing better socially than when he started. His handwriting speed has improved a little, but he is still the slowest writer in the resource classes. I don't know about socially, but I think that if he could overcome the slowness that he'd be able to do mainstream classes. As is though, he's spending up to two hours doing homework for the resource classes over stuff the other kids are finishing in class. And it's not really anything they can reduce, because the resource homework is pretty stripped down to bare necessities of what they need to take away from the class.
He is going to start resource history next semester, along with the art and computer lab. They are somewhat concerned about him being in that class. They think the teacher will love him. I didn't meet that teacher, but it is a co-teach situation, like most of their resource classes, and his current language arts teacher is the co-teacher for history. She was there at the meeting. She said they do a great deal of writing exercises and note taking in the history class (considerably more than in any other resource class), and she is concerned that he'll end up bringing most of it home and having a lot of homework, but that she knows he loves history, so he should like the class otherwise. She said she helps the slower writers take some of the notes during class, but she'll have four very slow writers once he joins the class, so she has to split her help between them.
He's going to continue in the adapted PE class. They've actually split their adapted PE into sections with the more severely and physically disabled students in one section and their group of high functioning (but not mainstreamed) Aspies/Auties in the other section. Most of those kids are in a more restrictive than resource classes setting where they only switch between two rooms and three teachers all day, so they may actually be moving what time the group goes to PE (because the group doesn't have a lot of restrictions on it's time), so that my son can keep going, because they agree that he fits very well with the group. Since they split the group into two sections, the higher functioning section is going to PE at the same as the resource history class, but my son has told me that none of them are happy with having it at that time, so he hopes they trade and put his PE before lunch like it used to be.
His language arts teacher had to tell me an anecdote of something he'd done in class that day. She said that about every 5 or 6 weeks someone in one of her classes will do something to get into trouble on the buses and it will end up being brought up for a gripe session. One of the boys had gotten it started and it was getting wound up into teenage angst of this is so not fair, when my son who had been doing his work and just wanted the rest to shut up so he could concentrate, spoke up and said, "Actually, it is in the handbook, section 2, subsection 1, paragraph 2 that you are under school rules from the time you get on the bus until you get off the bus." Then he went back to work, and the rest were so stunned that they just kind of gaped for a minute and then went back to work themselves. She was proud of him for short circuiting their gripe session.
The funniest thing is that as soon as I got home that afternoon, he was all excited to tell me about that too. Only he had made up all that bit about what paragraph and section it was in! He knew the rule was in the book quoted exactly the way he said it, because I made a point of reading that one to them (mostly for the middle child's benefit) five or six times and making them repeat it back to me and paraphrase what it meant, but I had never bothered with section numbers and all. He had taken the teacher in with it as well! I'm pretty sure I can remember a movie or two where someone liked to quote the rule book by sections like that to give him the idea, but it was very well executed.
Anyway, just a general update note about our progress this year. I've been really happy with the Junior High team and how they've handled him. He's happy at school. He's around other kids that generally match him very well for personality and social skills and interests. The work is challenging for him without being overwhelming (so far, we'll see how this history class goes). And I'm just overall rather happy with the decision that we made to put him public school this year (and that we didn't do it last year and deal with the Middle School! Them I am not happy with at all, but that's another non ASD child's story)
13 Dec 2013, 2:42 pm
Is there any way he can get the lectures typewritten and highlight important information to "take notes"??
If they're teaching from a book, would it be possible to Xerox the chapter, enlarge the print (it's really hard to scan all that tiny text, at least for me), and give him a cotton-picking highlighter he can highlight whatever the teacher talks about with??
I'm sorry-- I'm so darn ignorant, and I don't even remember all the specs of y'all's situation because I'm so self-absorbed.
But-- seems like it would work. I remember my hands being so sore I could cry between taking notes and doing homework in junior high. And I didn't even have any fine motor issues or muscle tone issues (at least, not that anyone knew of).
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"Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar." --TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
