I had already made it known that we would be sending Autumn to regular Kindergarten at our home school so I wasn’t surprised to see Masha’s team at Autumn’s IEP meeting. What did surprise me was how smooth it all went.
We started off with Autumn’s current pre-K team sharing their perspectives on Autumn. I loved hearing how well she is doing. She calls her friends over to play with her. She sets up tea parties and pretend cooks, often making pancakes. She speaks in 2 and 3 word sentences as she acts out her elaborate play schemes. Circle time is 30 minutes long and Autumn can sit and pay attention for 20 minutes of that. Twenty minutes!!! That is Masha’s whole attention goal for this school year. I could see the look of surprise on Masha’s special educator’s face. Autumn is able to color and cut with scissors. She is managing the playground equipment. She is diaper free during her school day and doing great.
After we heard all about Autumn’s strengths, we moved on to setting up her summer program. Apparently the same teams had just had another meeting before ours, so in the interim they discussed Autumn’s difficulties with transitions and what motivates her. On one hand I am annoyed that conversations like that take place without a parent present, and on the other I am glad I didn’t have to hear anything that would rile me. She will stay at her preschool for the six week summer program with minimal decreases to her therapies.
Next we talked about Kindergarten. They already had it written down that she is going into Gen Ed with a fulltime teaching assistant dedicated to her. I am not sure why they are referring to her support person as a TA instead of an aide or a paraprofessional, but I was ok with the term so I did not even bring it up. Physical and occupational therapy both stayed the same as far as frequencies but now they are mostly individual instead of the couple group sessions she used to have. I asked if they will be pushing in or pulling out, and both expected to pull out. The OT said that was based on her limited schedule and inability to be available during art or lunch. She intends to include Autumn’s TA in the sessions so that this person can carry over techniques during those important OT heavy times. Then came speech. The ST asked for 4xI. I asked if she was going to push in for any of those and she said no. That was just too much pulling for me, and so I only agreed to 3xI. We can always look at this plan next October and tweak it then if necessary. Lastly she will get 60 minutes a day of direct special ed support, split into two 30 minute periods (to cover both math and literacy stations), with as much pushing in as possible.
And lastly, little missy will be riding the big girl bus with her siblings Masha (hopefully) and Jade. She is going to be super happy about this since she is already trying to get on the school bus as the kids are getting off in the afternoons.
We didn’t talk goals. We didn’t talk communication details. We didn’t talk specifics at all. I don’t why from their side, but from mine it was because I have learned that hammering all that out with them is basically a waste of time. I’ll take it as it comes next year. They have proven to be very flexible and we have a good relationship, so I don’t doubt we can tweak as needed. As for goals, Autumn is learning so fast now it seems silly to set detailed academic goals until I see what she knows in August.
That’s it. My baby is on her way!
One IEP down, two to go.
Leave a Reply