IEP Season

Even when things are going well with my child's school placement, IEP season is always stressful for me.  From what I hear from other Moms, my impression is that this is a fairly common situation. There is never a sense that the schools or the school districts can really be trusted ... not really.  Every time things go well, it is like it's miraculous!  

I'm really happy that we had, overall, a wonderful IEP meeting.  Of course, there were a few little "moments," but none that really mattered.  Unfortunately, those moments still "stick" in one's mind.  There's the school psychologist who doesn't seem to understand why observing in only one class, and choosing, as that class, a less-preferred subject doing a least-preferred activity when the teacher is out, so the class is being taught by a substitute teacher, might not yield a tremendous amount of useful information.  He, of course, thinks he's gaining insight.  Everyone else at the table, who actually knows the child, knows that they could have predicted everything that occurred without his brilliant "insight," and he was bringing nothing new to the table.  Then there's the galling statement that no speech and language evaluation was necessary for the Reevaluation Report because it wasn't required to determined eligibility.  Seriously?  Did they forget the part that the RR is supposed to drive the IEP?  And that the findings of the RR are supposed to guide not only whether the child receives services, but also the type, frequency and duration of those services?  Sigh.  Of course, I did request (demand) that a speech and language evaluation be done, and it will be done next year, before next year's IEP meeting, along with a psycho-educational evaluation, which was conveniently not done (because ... ??? it wasn't necessary either?  because children don't change enough to warrant a new evaluation three years later?).  

I'm in luck, because the SLP who works primarily with my son is incredible, and she knows him well enough, and does interim assessments when necessary, so she doesn't need to rely on a formal evaluation.  But at the back of my mind is the worry -- what if she leaves?  Then where will he be?  And that, at the bottom, is the real reason for a good solid evaluation, and a good solid IEP, when you have a great situation in a great school; it's for the "what-if" situation.  When things are going well, you don't need it.  Things are humming and life is good.  I feel, almost, like an observer in the education of my son.  It's almost (almost) like having a typical high schooler.  He chooses his classes, to the extent that he can, and then I find out about them.  He chooses his research topics, and either I find out about them or I don't.  Sometimes I have to get more involved, and that's okay.  It is truly wonderful, however, to be working with a school that understands my boy, and to see the great strides he is making.

As I sat in this IEP meeting, I kept thinking about those who are committed to inclusion for everyone, and thought about how wrong that would be for my child: he would never have been able to come this far in an inclusion setting, because he needs the security and the intimacy that the small setting of his current school affords him.  Could he have thrived in an inclusion setting of a small private school that was not for special-needs only students?  Perhaps; maybe even probably (assuming they had the supports he needed).  However, the public schools are not likely to provide that kind of option, and that's okay with me.  The opportunity of being with other students more like himself has also been an excellent one for my son.  I am not saying that all students would necessarily benefit from this, but for students like my son, it is a truly normalizing experience.  But beyond that, he is in a school where the principal is able to form enough of a relationship with him to know that her position as principal is not enough to elicit from my son, any sense of a need to cooperate with her demands.  For him, he needs to have a relationship, a sense of respect for the individual.  Titles mean nothing to him, and he won't do something just because someone "in authority" tells him he "must."  Meanwhile, the adults in his school are teaching him about the realities of the world "out there," and the importance of getting past his rigid sense of how things ought to be, so he is more able to function in the world as it is.  It's working.  And isn't that what education is supposed to be about?  Not political agendas, not advancing various theories of how to teach, but to actually teach what needs to be taught?