School, School, School (or Why We Can't Forget About School and Just Enjoy the Summer?)

Samantha’s teachers have, on rare occasions, read my blog. I try to keep my work life and Sammi’s school life away from the blog so I definitely don’t blog about work (there’s not much to say about it usually, although the colorful cast of characters may make for good reading), and I think the only people from work who even know about my blog are the ones I have on Facebook (which are limited to, like, 4). School’s a slightly different story. I feel that I need to blog about school from time to time since this is primarily an outlet for what’s going on in Samantha’s life. Blogs are cathartic for me, as well as informational to others. I like to keep that going, and I hate to have to censor too much. My blog address and my Flickr photo site address are both in my personal e-mail signature, so unless I deliberately delete that from my correspondence, people get that information. While I was looking for a 2nd preschool for Samantha, I definitely didn’t include my signature lines in my messages to the schools, as I knew this was not information I wanted any preschool admins to have prior to Sammi’s admittance. Samantha’s current existing preschool teachers are a different story. I really like the fact that they have been here to visit. They’ve been kind of a dream team of collaboration and encouragement, and I feel very fortunate that Samantha has had the opportunity to attend school at CL.

We have decided, for this upcoming school year, to send Samantha to M (see my previous post about this). I called the director to thank her for showing us around and said that we would like very much to have Samantha attend school there. I made sure I was very diplomatic when I told her some of the reasons why we preferred her school to L (class structure and classroom style) but I’m sure she knew their shortcomings, as she injected her own obvious display of diplomacy in return. On her suggestion, Steve took Samantha to M yesterday morning to sit in on the class, which doesn’t follow the school system’s schedule and has structured classes year-round (hooray!). He reported that after some initial shyness and tears, she settled into their circle time and joined them in playing at the toy kitchen. He left the room for about 15 minutes and when he returned to tell her it was time to go, she didn’t want to leave. He said the teachers were great with her, and she fit in well with the other children (some of whom are older and will be moving on to Kindergarten next year, but some of whom have just moved up and will be in her class). Our paperwork will be going in this week!

At their request, Sammi’s teacher at CL called for a meeting last Friday to discuss adding a resource teacher to her IEP for the days that she’s attending class at M. I have heard the term before, but really didn’t know what a resource teacher was. Well, heck, I still kind of don’t, but I do know it’s to do with ensuring that Sammi’s needs are met. I sat down with the teacher and Vice Principal, who recommended that a resource teacher visit her at M for 1 ½ hours per day, which I think is great. Isn’t it? Or should I be concerned that time with the resource teacher will take away from the time she could be working on the regular class learning with her peers? Now that I think of it, perhaps I should have asked this question. Will she be pulled out? Will this teacher just aid her within the classroom? I definitely don’t want her to miss Spanish or math or reading. But again, I am glad for the additional 1 on 1 help. We wouldn’t have asked for this ourselves, as we didn’t know it was an option, and are grateful that it was recommended to us. In Friday’s meeting, the VP informed me that at CL they don’t make it a practice to tell parents they can’t do something, but they do make it a practice to tell them let’s see how we can do something. That’s truly the kind of environment I want for my daughter as she moves through the school system. CL is not our home school. Now I’m a bit torn. Do I want to have Sammi in her home school for Kindergarten on up so she gets to know the children from the neighborhood - the children she will be growing up with - better? Or do I want her in a different school where I know her needs will be met? I think this year will be calling for an awful lot of research to be done on our part. Is it common practice (or allowable) for parents to meet with the school administration of their home school to be sure that the placement there would be right for their children with special needs? How else could one establish LRE (Least Restrictive Environment, for those of you who have not yet had the good fortune of learning all the crazy, special needs acronyms) before the first day of school?

Sorry for writing a book again. Just airing the usual mush floating around and around in my head.