Hi All, As many of you know my son has an IEP for EDS/anxiety and probably adding to that dysgraphia (or as the school likes to call it "disorder of written expression") as well as a gifted iep. Anyway, despite our differences re iep, accommodations and other issues as to whether DS "really" had a disability, etc. (and to be fair, I am not sure how much of that was the teacher and how much the teacher was doing at the behest of the administration/principal). I thought DS's 1st grade teacher was a decent fit. DS liked her and what was the most important thing was her willingness to be flexible. She also seemed to like him. I am not so crazy about DS's 2nd grade teacher. She is more into obedience, more rigid and chooses "teaching rule-following" over doing what actually results in learning. DS is okay with her but not they don't click. I don't think she gets him at all. The 1st grade teacher over-emphasized the positive - to the point of masking disability. The 2nd grade teacher, however, tends to over-emphasizes the negative. One weird example: she is doing "on task/organizational chart" with DS in which he gets stars for being able to stay on-task and do all of his organization tasks without being told over and over again, etc. Well, he's being doing really well with it - his chart is on average 28 stars (sometimes 27, occasionally 26 - I think once or twice he got 25 - no more than twice). Well, at the P/T conference she said "he's doing well staying on task and organized he usually gets 25 stars." I had copied the daily start report and just was like "yeah , it seems to be going well ..."and then I sat and read off each daily total, which were overwhelmingly 28s and higher. Just to, in a non-confrontational way, point out that actually he usually gets 28 stars and higher. I know it seems trivial but that's how she is, ykwim? She likes to take him down just a touch - downplay his strengths or accomplishments. She even does it right to him. Like DS said to her something like "I am a good reader, right?" And she said "well, you need to work on your fluency." He's the highest reader in the class AND all of tests show that while his fluency isn't as high as his comprehension it is very strong for his grade level. I mean couldn't she have just said "yeah, I appreciate your hard work - it pays off, doesn't it?!?" or something like that. Did she really have to use that as an opportunity to "take him down a peg." She was the one who was trying to argue that DS didn't really have a good command of particular math concept because he got a particular word problem wrong (she spent a phone call trying to convince me DS wasn't as good as I think he is in math, basically) and it turned out that SHE had the math problem wrong and my DS had it right. She is also the one that gave the really bad BASC report. And when questioned about it, she had made a lot of assumptions (negative) about DS and just over-exaggerating negative behaviors, misinterpreting what the BASQ was asking for, etc.
Anyway, I digress. My question is ... since we have all of these meetings all of the time and an iep, I would think I could probably at least have some say or we could have a discussion about who DS's teacher will be each year, no? Which of the five will be a good fit? I never bring it up and just sit around hoping all summer he'll get a good fit. I am not sure I want to keep doing that anymore. I have been asking around and looking up the 3rd grade teachers' backgrounds and I want to at least have a discussion about who DS gets next year. Or who he will not get, at least. Do others here do that with their 2e kiddos and school? How do I approach the school about it? or would I be over-stepping if I did that? I want to approach it in the right way.
