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After a particularly difficult morning, I received a very welcome phone call. Miss C. wanted to touch base with me about Michael’s first day of school. We chatted quite a bit about the Open House this Thursday. I told her that Michael would be thrilled to come back to her classroom. He loves Miss C. She’s very kind, but firm, and she’s been teaching exceptional kids for 5 years. He was actually in her last year’s class, when he was 3 years old, but at the end of last year, we decided to keep him in his old classroom and transition him slowly to the 4 year old class. She believed that he wasn’t ready to be in the other class yet, and I agreed with her.

I told her over the summer that Michael had regressed quite a bit in his progress. My husband and I introduced him to making letters and used computer programs to keep his skills. I took him to the library at least once a week and taught him new songs. Yet Michael has one characteristic that makes this frustrating: he’s great at “departmentalizing” his experiences. In other words, “School stuff” is learned at “school” and “home stuff” is at “home”. So anything “educational” needs to be in a “school setting”. (This kind of thinking would be good at, say, scientific work or technology. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work when you need to transfer skills from one place to another).

“If we can document his regression, he could qualify for ESY,” Miss C. said. ESY is Extended School Year, year-round schooling for children with needs. I wasn’t surprised at the talk about ESY this early; better to get a head start on it, for space is limited, and you have to have buckoos of paperwork and documentation to prove your child really needs it.

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Let’s talk about it during Open House.”

“I want to come over for a home visit,” Miss C. said. “We can start the paperwork then. We have a staggered entry for pre-K and K…the first day for Michael will either be August 31st or the Wednesday after Labor Day.” The normal opening day for schools here is actually on the 27th, but Michael will have a few more extra days of freedom.

“All right. I’ll see you at Open House,” I said.

As I hung up the phone, I thought to myself, Your kids’ school careers are a lot more complicated. But at least we’re doing all we can to make Michael’s school days more productive.

[tags]kids, children, parents, education, special needs, growth, progress, analysis, strategy, strategies, ESY extended school year[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by foreversouls, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved