Another school year gone. Time flies way too fast! It's been a great school year. The kids both had good school years and we are getting ready for a really special summer vacation - we are Going to Disney!!! We leave next Tuesday and I can't wait! Hopefully the kids are as excited as I am!!
My last posting was about the tough decision we were facing with Faith's school choices for next year. We ended up deciding to move her back to our neighborhood school, Cougar Run. There were a number of reasons, but it ended up being the only choice! I suppose we still had other choices, but let me explain... Last fall, in October, we had a mid-year IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting - to review where Faith was at after missing the last 5 weeks of 1st grade the previous spring. We wanted to regroup to see where she was at about a month or so into 2nd grade to see if she had lost much from being out for that long. At the time, they explained Faith's primary disability was being changed from a Hearing Loss to a Physical disability based on her syndrome and her jaw issues (with a hearing loss still being her secondary disability). This made sense to us as we've always known that with her hearing aids (BAHAs) she has close to normal hearing. She continued to remain in the DHH (Deaf, Hard of Hearing) program at school because she was still on an IEP and clearly still needed support. In fact we decided she needed to be pulled out of the mainstream classroom for individual support for both Math and Literacy for 3 hours a day, when we initially thought she would need less support this year and would only be pulled out for Literacy. So, when they decided to move the DHH program, her Teacher of the Deaf and her case manager (Karin) who knew we wanted to eventually move Faith to her home school for years, started to rethink how they should be supporting her. Karin realized that because her primary disability is now a physical disability, her needs could be support by the regular "Mild/Moderate Needs" program that is at every school and that she did not need to be in the center-based program to get the support she needs. So we had Faith's final IEP meeting for this year a couple of weeks ago and finalized the decision to move her to Cougar Run with support from their Mild/Mod Needs group.
The bigger decision actually ended up being that we decided to have Faith repeat the 2nd grade. I was initially very opposed to this idea, but with moving her to a new school where she has to make all new friends anyway it is a good time to do it. We realized during the meetings to discuss our options for school that Faith was actually a full year behind in her reading level and with being the youngest in her grade level (we were basically pushed to put her into Kindergarten when she was 4 turning 5, just because she was no longer eligible for the pre-school services she received from the county for the previous 2 years) and with having missed some fairly significant chunks of time for surgeries and illnesses over the past few years that it just made sense to give her some more time to catch up on her reading skills to be at grade level going into the new year instead of possibly falling further and further behind. At first the county resources were pretty opposed to it as well, telling us that research has shown that retention does not typically result in closing educational gaps and that they usually only recommend retention for social maturity concerns. We thought we were going to be in for a bit of a battle when we finally decided that would be the best decision for her, but the principal at our neighborhood school really pleased us by saying that clearly we and her teachers from Summit View knew her the best and they would let us make that decision. Both of Faith's teachers from Summit View (Karin, her Teacher of the Deaf and her 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Graeves), felt like Faith would definitely benefit from another year of focusing on learning to read so that she would hopefully have a better foundation for the transition that happens in 3rd grade when kids go from "learning to read" to "reading to learn." We talked with Faith about whether she should move on to 3rd grade or repeat 2nd before coming to this decision as well and she was fully supportive of it, feeling like she will now be one of the older kids in the class and will have an advantage in knowing some of the stuff they will learn ahead of time. So, we really did not feel like this would be emotionally difficult for Faith - in fact, I think she is quite excited about all of it. She will finally be going to the same school as Anthony after all these years!! He will be going into 5th grade now and she got to go to lunch with him last week when we went in to meet with the principal (Mr. G) and the whole team that will be supporting her next year there.
Of course saying goodbye to the DHH team at Summit View was really hard this week and we will miss the regular interaction we have had with them over the last many years. Thankfully I know we will stay in touch with Karin, who is so special to us. Not only has she been a great teacher and a great role model having a hearing loss herself, but she has also had to physically take care of Faith in 2 emergency situations to re-insert her trach when it accidentally came out at school. The first time was in Kindergarten, when Faith's trach was still very critical and the 2nd time was this past December at the mall when they went to see the Signing Santa. It wasn't a real emergency since Faith's trach has been capped during the day all year and she can breathe through her mouth and nose, but it was still pretty intense being on a field trip when it happened! Karin had to calm her own nerves both of those times and push her self to perform quickly and calmly as well as having to calm Faith down to keep her trach stoma from tightening up! Karin is just an amazing woman to us and I hope she knows she is part of our extended family now! ;)
Thankfully Faith will be able to continue participating in a couple of annual DHH events - the field trip for Signing Santa at the mall and the DHH track and field day held every spring. It is still important for Faith to have access to other peers with hearing losses, because even though Faith can hear very well with her hearing aids, that is still something very different from all the other kids she will be around in our neighborhood school and it's important for her to still have time with other kids wearing hearing aids and to maintain relationships in the deaf community. Out of the 5 kids who all started in the DHH program together in pre-school (Elodie, Jahnavi, Sean, Sophia and Faith) none of them were still in the same grade level and the DHH program - last year Sean and Sophia repeated 1st grade and Elodie move to her neighborhood school, and this year Jahnavi and Sean are both moving to their neighborhood schools too. So only Sophia is still at Summit View and in the DHH program there. It's been sad to see that group of adorable little kids split apart as they've each gone their own ways, but hopefully through some of these programs, they will continue to remain connected along with another sweet little girl, Maddie, who just came to Summit View this past year.
Time for some sleep since I want to get up early to go running with my group in the morning! Will plan to post pictures of us at Disney during our trip (June 10-17!!)
Thanks for reading and for your comments!!
Robin
