I asked history teacher if he will print DS' assignments and give feedback (i.e. let us know which ones he counted wrong) but have not heard back. He's suddenly getting much lower scores on his assignments. This is all pretty disconcerting.
What do we think of history teacher so far? Would he/she be amenable to a meeting?
That meeting would include expression of concern, desire to improve; and informal coaching on what the ASD diagnosis means. "We know DS has trouble with this kind of questions; can you tell us exactly what a good answer would look like so we can coach him better at home?"
This is part of establishing that DS is not lazy or stupid; he is struggling because of his disability. It may be good to give the teachers a chance to do the right thing, unless they have already sworn to do the wrong thing and kick DS out of school.
We are meeting next week after school, with DS. I told teacher I wanted to go over classroom procedures with DS, reinforce routines and expectations for behavior.
As for the teacher? I actually feel kind of sorry for him. Yet again, the district gifted admin (who makes hiring decisions) has hired a brand-new teacher (I don't even know what his certification is in) to work in this weird program with little to no mentoring or support. He didn't even have a curriculum to use until last week.
DS thinks the teacher is fair and unbiased (although difficult to read) and I hope he is correct! Until last week, all reports were positive regarding DS. When I asked for more detail in the planner (and cc'd the onsite coordinator--different person, not admin) is when I received the flood of ick. And it wasn't actually from the teacher. I'm not sure but it wouldn't surprise me if he was completely blindsided that his casual report to the coordinator was then communicated to me as if all hell had broken loose.
I showed my sister all this weird communication (I could write a novel, it was strange and indicated some bcc'ing going on, etc.) from last week and her take is, basically, that the coordinator is on the defense. I didn't mean for that to happen but I guess that's the way it goes.
I'm really worn out with it all. I think DS has been doing so much better this year, and we have one small problem that shouldn't be that difficult to fix if everyone just relaxes a little bit--while waiting to see if he can receive services. He clearly needs them--I've never implied that this is a problem with the teachers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't tweak things here and there if it makes life easier for everyone.
