Ugh..... Is it August again? I don't think August has ever been my favorite. It just reminds me that summer is ending and school is starting. It's hot and sweaty, and Facebook so kindly reminded me today that it's been five years since Eli was diagnosed.
I didn't get a chance to write my annual post last year because we were in the middle of PCSing( moving, for you nonmilitary folks), living in a hotel, sharing a laptop..... You get the idea. I really wish I had written something though, because looking back, Eli had made so much progress in 2015. I wish I could have reveled in it, but like most things in life, you don't appreciate them until they're gone.
Instead of crying in my beer, and wishing for the past, I'm gonna try to put all this in perspective. I've seen two sides of what special education looks like for Eli now, and I definitely know the former was much more beneficial than the latter.
In the 2014-2015 school year at Fort Rucker Elementary, Eli started the year off in the PSCD(preschool child development) classroom with a clear plan to have him in the kindergarten general education room full time before he turned 6 in April. It started off a little rocky with a new aide who wanted to' hand over hand' everything. The school hired a new aide by the end of September and even though she wasn't a warm and fuzzy kind of gal I would prefer for Eli, she was exactly what he needed. Strict, rules were black and white, and she gave him tons of freedom to do the right thing. Eli was in the kindergarten room fulltime when they got back from Christmas break. It.was.awesome. He participated in everything; fieldtrips, music programs, lunch and recess. He was still being pulled out for one on one instruction, but that's what he needs.
Remember this moment?? http://letters-from-the-homefront.blogspot.com/2015/05/kinder-end-of-year-performance.html Yeah..... that was kind of a big deal!!! SO awesome! It was a huge moment for me because it told me he most definitely can do what his peers can do! He does not have to be held back.
Move forward to 2015-2016 school year. New town, new house, new school. Devin also came back from Afghanistan in June of 2015.... So, a lot of adjusting and getting use to a new normal. I knew this was probably going to be a bumpy road for a while.
Fort Belvoir Elementary took Eli's one on one aide away, assuring me that there were four adults in the kindergarten inclusion classroom. (I decided at the end of 2015 that Eli should repeat kindergarten since he didn't get a full year in the classroom. FRES wanted him to graduate to 1st grade, but I declined.)
It was a much different picture than what Eli had the year before- The classroom was much smaller, but with more kids, and there was a teacher, aide, SPED teacher, and her aide, but they were split between two inclusion rooms. So there wasn't really four adults in the room at all time.
The SPED teacher called after school everyday to tell me all the bad things Eli had done during the day. If he had a good day she didn't call. So while I waited at the bus stop every afternoon, my heart would start pumping and I would pray for no phone call. I think there were only two days the first two weeks she didn't call. It was a nightmare.( I use to be upset that his old school didn't tell me enough, and now they were telling me too much... Maybe I didn't want to know all the bad things?)
It finally got to the point one day when they 'evacuated' the classroom because Eli was pushing desks over and tearing things off the wall..... And then there was the 'Zen Room'. The Zen room was a room without windows, with fake clouds painted over the florescent lights. There was one black leather sofa in the middle of the room and an ipad playing soft music in a cage high up on the wall. It was anything but zenful... I didn't know his SPED teacher was taking him here until he got so upset one day and took off all his clothes and urinated on them. They couldn't get him dressed in time and he missed the bus, so they had to call me to come pick him up. As you can image, I was outraged! And thought I made it pretty clear not to take him to the Zen room anymore. The next week it happened again!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????
Eli had NEVER displayed these behaviors EVER. Not at home, not at his old school-NEVER. He was CLEARLY trying to tell us something. So back to the drawing board we went (AKA IEP meeting). His kindergarten teacher was very young and it was her first year teaching. His SPED teacher was an older woman, very kind and sweet, but SO clueless in how to deal with Eli's behaviors and now I really didn't trust her. The young teacher in the Autism room was a RBT studying to be a BCBA. I knew she would know how to handle Eli's behavior, but I knew the autism room wasn't exactly the best place for him. I decided to put him the the autism room fully expecting they would have him back in the inclusion room by the end of the year. Well.... that didn't happen.
After Spring Break, we had a meeting to update his IEP and discovered not only was he not back in the classroom full time, but they weren't even giving him his full inclusion hours that had been on his IEP the whole year!!! UGH. The hardest part of trying to get inclusion hours is trying to coordinate the schedules between the general education class and the autism room. (This is why a 1:1 is necessary for a kid like Eli- to have the freedom to take the breaks the child needs.)
The three of us sat down and hacked out a schedule for Eli and the rest of the year went much better. His Kindergarten teacher even took Eli on a field trip without an aide from the autism room or myself. His behavior had improved and his teacher and his classmates had gotten to know him and love him. I was finally feeling like we were making headway when his autism teacher announced she would be leaving at the end of the year. This was heartbreaking in so many ways. She had been a strong voice for Eli and understood him so well. I knew I was going to have to start all over again next year.
Once again, a summer full of therapy and schedules so Eli doesn't regress too much. And once again, I feel a summer slip through my fingers. When do the children play? We had wanted to move here for so many years and had been told Fairfax County was the mecca of special education and education in general, yet all I'm left with is disappointment.
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