IEP

'Tis the season for IEPs. And Ellis is getting ready to transition to kindergarten next year.

No, that is not my baby going to kindergarten!!

Part of the process is evaluations. I was pleased about many aspects of the evaluation results, especially his reading readiness. I was also pleased to read that one evaluator noted that "one should not assume that just because Ellis doesn't respond doesn't mean that he doesn't know." It shows me that the people at E's school really understand him. E sometimes takes a while to process things, and doesn't always respond the way and the timing that you'd like. I just love our school.

One thing that does bother me about the IEP process, though, is that there are many tests by which to evaluate and score Ellis's spoken English language progress, but there are no tests to evaluate his ASL progress. I want to know how he's doing! I can't evaluate his ASL. I'm not a native signer, and probably only sign two steps ahead of him. It's not the school's fault that this kind of test isn't included, but it is a fundamental flaw in the system that I think needs addressing!! So i'll probably be talking to some people this week.

Hubby blogs----

Wow. What a week. Actually, it's been a week and a half. About the middle of last week, I was looking at a deadline. I knew I had to finish this particular project by the end of the week or so, though I did think I would have the weekend. But for the life of me, I could not get to that project. Whenever I tried, I would be interrupted by some new disaster at my other job. In fact, they owned me for about three days. So by the end of the week I turned to finish the other project.

I knew it would be a programming marathon, but I was determined to make it happen. After almost forty-eight hours without sleep, I had what I had. But I still was not where I needed to be, and my employer was -not- happy with my progress. I swear, thought I would lose my job.

So I worked through Sat. and Sun (I NEVER work on Sundays). And on Monday I was feeling comfortable that I could be done in reasonable time.

Then my other job called up. Disaster. Our client was -very- unhappy. Things had gone completely wrong over the weekend. And though it -really- wasn't our fault, we naturally had to share the blame. So it fell to me on Monday to be the one to offer a solution that would save not only the project but our relationship with the client.

In a moment of complete psychotic disassociation from reality I suggested it might be possible to put together a complete social networking environment in Drupal, within 24 hrs. We already had a template, which could easily be tweaked for the purpose. And once again, another forty-eight hour work marathon later, I was in the same situation as before: desperately trying to put something together in a pinch, hoping it would be good enough to buy more time to keep desperately trying to put something together in a pinch that would buy still more time. Only now I was doing it on two fronts, for two clients.

I don't have to tell you that as I sit here I feel like I've lived five years in two weeks. I'm just now remembering that I have a family, and I'm trying not to think about everything I have left to do. I'm trying to think of what to say to my wife to start getting to know her again. And I'm not sure that Ellis remembers who I am.

I did find out from talking to her today that Ellis had a rough speech therapy session, though not in the usual mode of rough. We've been struggling to keep him engaged during the sessions. The therapist thinks he should be making more progress than he is. So she asked a colleague to run this week's session, while she watched.

Second opinions can be just the thing for getting over a hump. Unfortunately, it seems that one of the reasons we are not seeing the progress we should may be that E has processing difficulties. He's struggling in ways he shouldn't, even given the challenges of being deaf. And maybe he is showing evidence of this processing problem in ASL, too. Only we would never have known it, because we could never get anyone to give us a proper ASL evaluation as part of our IEP.

So yea, we've pretty much had a normal week. What's new with you?

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).

One of the things that needs to happen before baby is getting Ellis's IEP squared away, which is scheduled for May 2.

So far, the IEP is turning out to be a much saner arrangement than E's IFSP (the 0-3 program). It's just us and two intelligent people who are easy to work with and are specialized in deaf education. With the IFSP, there's a weird arrangement of service coordinator (who is basically a paper pusher with no specialized knowledge), a representative from a contracting agency, a crazy array of teachers providing a variety of specialized services. I find it a little annoying.

Yesterday E's new speech teacher was accompanied to our home by the person from our county's intermediate unit who supervises all the deaf ed stuff. She's really great. They both are. I imagine we probably differ a little on a personal level in terms of deaf educational philosophy, but they are really supportive of us and have been extremely helpful so far. I knew this was our official Evaluation Sessions for the IEP, but I wasn't sure exactly how they would approach it. Essentially, E had a normal "speech therapy" session, they got some information from us, and now we can check that step off our list.

I know they are qualified to evaluate him from an entire language perspective, but most of yesterday's evaluation was focused on listening and speaking with an acknowledgement of his skills in ASL. I wonder if it would also be appropriate to evaluate from ASL only point of view, too. I think I will have to ask his Deaf teacher about that. Though I'm not sure how their evaluative rubrics would accommodate that, it seems that if we're being truly consistent with our educational goals for him that this would need to take place, too. Hmm. I guess I'm off to write some more emails.