Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments IEP dropped, looking for new advancement

We had our triennial IEP meeting for DS10 today, and the consensus is that his IEP can be dropped and the tiny remaining bit of services he is getting can be moved into his ALP. He has made such amazing progress with his behavior that nobody feels he meets the criteria for IEP anymore, although obviously he will always have Asperger's. It just doesn't interfere with his education now.

On the other side, he advocated for himself to get more advancement to middle school classes, and we are trying to figure out the options to make that happen. He told the counselor that he wants to stay at the middle school until lunch because the whole morning bores him out of his gourd. His words. Right now, he starts the day in 7th grade math and then comes back to his 5th grade class for the rest of the day. Morning is reading, writing and social studies.

The options are now either to find a way to get him reading, writing and social studies (and of course the math he already has) at the middle school and not miss the parts of 5th that he likes, or to skip him totally into 6th (with his 7th math).

Nobody, including DS, wants him to skip totally right this instant and leave all the people in elementary that he's grown up with. He says, "no, I'm not ready to say goodbye here yet, that's for my 5th grade graduation!" I don't want him to lose the teacher he's waited so long for, and I don't want to jump straight into a new support team partway into a year. I would like to gear up for skipping some of middle school.

So we're all working frantically to figure something out -- they don't necessarily want to rush, but the new quarter starts next week, so it's a good transition point if we can make it work.

I think I have a solution worked out, where he would take reading and writing and social studies in the morning at the middle school, have half an hour of art (with the same art teacher but 6th instead of 5th),go to lunch with his 5th class, then "specials" (PE, Art, Computers, etc., alternating) with 5th, go to 7th math -- different class, same teacher -- and back to 5th for science at the end of the day. Whew! On the other hand, there are always factors that somebody doesn't think of -- our counselor had a schedule figured out going into this meeting today, but then the MS counselor showed her something about the schedule at the MS that wasn't obvious from looking at the blocks of time, and that flew out the window. Another possibility looks good on paper but the class in question is too big and rather a delicate balance and the math teacher doesn't want to move him into that situation. So I hope my solution on paper works as well in life!

Very very cool!!

Excellent news that there has been so much progress!

One serious word of caution - some elementary schools are notorious for transitioning high functioning special Ed kids out of special Ed before midschool. They tried to do this with my son as well. Then once they hit midschool with all of the new transitions, larger classes, multiple teachers ... these kids can founder without the supports of the IEP.

Is there a way to not transition him off the IEP but have maybe only one intervention of having a support person check on him once a week or a month - just so the legal document is still in play in midschool?

I've found the teachers in midschool to be less tolerant of the quirks associated with Aspergers - the literal interpretation of rules, etc.,

Yeah, we discussed that for quite some time -- I wanted to make sure that he would be able to get it back if it became necessary again, say with the pressures of middle school and getting older. He still has the elementary counselor that he checks in with every day when he gets back from math class, and she is an absolute angel. The MS counselor is part of the team now, and she will be working with the elementary one the rest of this year.

I was concerned about his going to so many teachers in MS, ones that don't know him, but they actually team things up so that the kids in MS may have seven classes but only three different teachers, so it's not such a shock to their systems. And when we think of it, DS has more teachers than any of the other kids already, with his pullouts and his MS class, and he may end up with more than that if we send him for other MS classes this year.

But they are ready to reinstate his IEP if he comes up needing it again, so hopefully it will be ok!

Well, the schedule that I came up with actually worked out, so he starts on Tuesday. They're out of school on Monday.

DS10 will have 6th grade writing and reading and homeroom, all in the same classroom, then 6th grade social studies, then that class walks over to the elementary for art, which is the same teacher he has now except a 6th grade class instead. He will have half an hour of that (it's an hour class) and then leave for lunch with 5th grade. After lunch, he will have 5th grade specials (PE, art, music, computers, etc.) and then half an hour of homework time because there is no class that fits quite right into that space. Then he goes to 7th grade math, and then back to 5th grade for science at the end of the day.

That's only two new MS teachers in addition to what he's had already.

Next year, since he will have had all the academic subjects except science at the 6th grade level, he will go straight to 7th grade except for math which will be 8th grade. I am going to lobby hard for him to have 6th grade PE, as he will then be two years younger than his class instead of only one. And he's a skinny thing anyway.

My only real concern other than that is that he will be missing 3/4 of the year of 5th grade social studies (Oregon Trail project, which I've been looking forward to, and the start of the Revolutionary War, among other things) and also all of 6th grade science. They are getting me the curriculum for both of those so we can try to pour some of that into him when he's not looking.

All in all, a great move which really heads where I was hoping we could go in this process. I remember middle school, and the more we can skip of that, the better. Of course, we've lost the class of 2020 now, which was a cool moniker, and we're into the territory of being 16 for the whole senior year (15 for the first week or so), assuming we stay on this path. One thing at a time.

Another good thing is that MS uses Power School online so we can see all his assignments and due dates, tests, and grades.

This has been my general experience as well. Middle school can be like a dress rehearsal for The Lord of the Flies. Rather than cancelling an IEP, perhaps it would be a better idea to put all his therapies and ESE input on "consult" until the first semester of sixth grade is over. We generally call it "transition planning", especially necessary given the average Asperger's kid's success with transitions.