At this point in time, I’ve been a Special Education teacher longer than I’ve been a parent. So when my husband and I decided to have our daughters, who were premature, evaluated for early intervention, I was pretty sure I understood what would happen. What I didn’t realize was how weird it would be to be the parent in the scenario instead of the person making the recommendations.
One of our daughters qualified for services and the other didn’t. So I went to the meeting and the person running the meeting asked me what my goals were for her. I was surprised because they were supposed to be the experts on development. What does a realistic goal for a six month old ( four month adjusted) baby look like? I was told that parents usually focus on walking and I countered with there were a lot of steps (pardon the pun) between rolling over and walking and shouldn’t we focus on that. At the school level when writing IEPs, we are to write goals that are attainable, so then we develop new ones based on the child’s progress. So I figured that would be what happened here. It wasn’t, I’m glad that we came up with realistic goals that she could meet in that time. What I wasn’t so glad about was that I recently went for the annual review and they did not update the goals. How is this possible? They are supposed to communicate with the provider and update the goals regularly. But it did not seem that this was the case here.
I generally try to be agreeable with this situation because I know ho wit can be with difficult parents. And I also don’t always tell them I’m a Special Education teacher unless it comes up in conversation because I don’t want to throw it in anyone’s face, I just want them to acknowledge that I understand the rules for what they are doing.
Case in point, our physical therapist was going on leave and I called her agency to ask about her substitute. Her supervisor was nice, but not really definite on anything until I asked whether this would put my daughter’s paperwork out of compliance. When I said that, she became much more clear and we worked something out. I don’t want to create a reputation for myself as the know it all mom, but I also want it understood that I know what’s going on and don’t cut corners when it comes to my kids (they shouldn’t be cutting corners at all, but you get what I mean). This is just my first experience on the other side of the table, but with nursery and elementary school to come, it’s a place I h ave to get more used to occupying.
Meditations on Literature and Literacy...Continued 