Off to a good start

Grant has been in the Kindergarten class an hour a day since Monday - it's going good! He's been following along, doing the projects, focusing, and all that good stuff. It's funny, we started the school year less than 2 months ago and this was not even a glimpse of a dream for us. It was completely off the radar. And yet, here we are.

We had our team meeting today with his teacher and the district clinical psych (his main para was out today). This is the last review before the yearly IEP meeting next month. As we went over his data, he's meeting almost every goal in the IEP. So now, over the next month, we need to start planning for the new IEP, coming up with the plan for the next year. What do we think he can accomplish in a year? What's doable? What's a stretch? Is there anything "out of the box" that we should be considering?

At each team meeting (3-4 times a school year), it is our practice to bring a list of "the good things" - about 10-15 things that Grant is doing in his home life that his teachers may not know about. We started this back in the early days when there was a little more contention between the sides. By starting off with the positive, it gets the meeting off on the right foot and seems to always bring the two sides together. In fact, it's been a couple of years since we've even thought of "sides". We really are a team.

Believe me, I'm not saying that we don't struggle with the district for services. We do, and that will continue throughout his education. But our team works together and we do trust that when we drop him off each day, he's getting their best effort.