A good week- happy sharing

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

Thought I'd let you know about something good that happened this week...

Well, it didn't just 'happen,' it took major work.

You may recall from earlier posts that we moved from the small seaside town

of Carpinteria, just south of Santa Barbara, CA last summer to a larger, less

charming city, just north of LA. We left behind a very supportive school

team that we had worked hard to create to support in his full

inclusion setting. has the habit of bringing wonderful people into

our lives and his teachers, aides and therapists often became family friends.

Sad to say, no such positive attitude in Simi Valley. Our new district was

not responsive to our calls, letters, attempts at helping set up a good

program for even though we had an IEP meeting here in September and

all agreed to the same services and goals in the new IEP as we had had in the

old one (which was in May in Carpinteria, before we knew we'd be moving).

's IEP goals weren't being addressed and he had almost no time with

the inclusion specialist at his new school. His aides, though nice enough,

had no training. His deteriorating behavior showed all concerned that he was

desperate for structure, movement breaks, a circle of friends, everything

that his IEP acknowledged he must have in order to be successful. As a last

resort, just prior to threatening Fair Hearing (I wrote letters and left

phone messages that made it plain that that was where I was headed), I called

last year's inclusion specialist who is energetic, bright, creative, and

loves .

It took some doing, but we got her to come down this past Monday and spend

the whole school day modeling for 's inclusion specialist, classroom

teacher, and aides the techniques she used and found successful working with

in previous years. In addition, she sent off to by his lunch

with a peer buddy and spent the lunch recess explaining her strategies and

taking questions from the current team. Her approach to teaching

looks at his needs as a person with autism first. Her way works!

had the happiest, most productive week he's had all year.

The Simi Valley district was suspicious at first; why would her boss, the

Director of Pupil Services, let her take a day to train staff in another

district? Would they be expected to pay her? and so on. The Director in

Carpinteria told the Simi District that since had been a student of

theirs for four years, (K -3) and because they respected that the family was

trying to do the best for their son, they were doing this as a professional

courtesy, a sharing of resources, and Simi would not have to pay for it.

Wow! There are some fabulous people in the world.

What a relief. And is so much more verbal since he can see that for

once the grownups at school are back in control and appear to know what the

heck they're doing! He is happily doing schoolwork that he refused to ven

look at for the first half of the school year. Instead of crying over the

wasted half a year, I am choosing to celebrate that we got the team to pull

together and now it is working for my son.

Just wanted to share.

Best,

Jacqui

Mom to (10, DS, ASD) and (7)