The IEP Meeting

Ellis is a big boy now. We held his IEP meeting today in our home and drafted up a thorough Individualized Education Plan for when he turns three in a month and a half (eek!). Thankfully, we squeezed this in before baby.

The meeting lasted two and a half hours, and I'm satisfied with what we came up with. One of our biggest concerns was that the IEP take into consideration Ellis as a whole deaf person, not just a cochlear implant. The biggest implication for this would be where he goes to school (in our case, he will stay at PSD). But the smaller implications are in the details. If there are speech production goals, are there also ASL goals, for instance? The goals need to clearly reflect a bilingual approach and take into consideration growth and development in two languages, two modalities, with adequate support, instruction, and evaluation for both.

So we took a long time to hash through all the tiny details of both the evaluation report and the IEP draft.

The two women from the county working with us are really terrific. I imagine, on a personal level, we might not agree on everything about deaf education choices, but they respect our desires and philosophy of education and have gone the extra mile to help us get what we feel is best for our family. Ellis's Deaf teacher from the school also came (we invited her) and was great help in articulating ASL goals.

I'm really relieved that E will get to stay at PSD next year for the beginning of preschool. He'll go five days a week, which I think is crazy for 3 yos. But I'm not going to send him all day, which I think is even CRAZIER for 3yos. The program runs from 8.30 to 2.45! I'm bringing him home at noon, because he doesn't need to stay at school for a nap (LOL!) and a snack, you know? The instruction time is basically done by noon anyway.

It's kind of amazing to think that the first IEP hurdle is behind us. I kind of have to laugh at myself, too, because a few months ago, I was so obsessive about the big, scary IEP. But now I'm so absorbed with the immanent end to this pregnancy, that I kept forgetting that we had the meeting scheduled for this afternoon and almost went to get my haircut.

So now we're squared away for the upcoming school year. So far I much prefer how the IEP is set up in our county than the IFSP (the 0-3yo plan that we've been on since we started services).