Toddling off to SPED

Finally, after many days of looking at the SPED teacher and SPED director and saying "squeak, squeak, squeak!!!" (the squeaky wheel, get it?), they finished up Toddler Girl's testing. And lo and behold, she turned up with a developmental age of just under 3 and an IQ that puts her near the bottom of the mildly mentally retarded range. And when I heard that I also heard angels singing in the background because this means there is no doubt she is going to qualify for services, no doubt she is FINALLY going to get an appropriate education instead of just stagnating in my room. Now we just have to get her mother to come in to the school and sign the paperwork, which may be an ordeal all in itself. See, mother will not answer the phone when the school calls (we are convinced she looks at Caller ID, sees our school name, and walks away!) and will not respond to any notes we have ever sent home. I have her scheduled for an entire hour's block at Parent/Teacher conferences later this month, so that we can go over all the test results and convince her to sign the paperwork, but am not at all sure she is actually going to show up!

I asked the SPED teacher what happens if Toddler Mom doesn't show up for her conference. She said, with some degree of assurance, that we try again to schedule an IEP meeting with her and that we send her notification via USPS and if she still doesn't show then we place Toddler Girl without her direct approval. I didn't know we could do that, but nice to hear! Toddler Girl is not the first lil' darlin' I've helped place in SPED but she is the first one where I think mother is going to fight us tooth and nail to oppose the placement.

So, as I understand the plan right now, once we get all the paperwork signed and in order, Toddler Girl will spend the morning with the SPED program. All of our really academic stuff happens before lunch - reading, writing, math, etc. She will join us for both recesses and lunch time. After lunch she will stay with my class for special classes (library, gym, art, etc.), story time, nap, snack, and centers. That allows her to get her academics at her own pace and level during the morning, but be with her age-peers for socialization during the afternoon. During her morning SPED time she will also get served by the speech pathologist and the occupational therapist (kiddo has lots of fine motor issues, related to an accident about a year ago). Sounds very reasonable to me, holding thumbs that Toddler Mother will see it the same way.

So that news was absolutely the best part of my week! Otherwise, not much to report, no major highs or lows for any of my other friends.