It takes a village

Last week, we met with the special education team at Garrett’s school. I was blown away by the number of people sitting around the table—speech and occupational therapists, a psychologist, a social worker, the ESL teacher, kindergarten teacher, after school program director, four special education teachers—all told 11 people were there to offer their evaluations.

We found out that to qualify for special education services, a child has to score below the mean in two areas, which Garrett did (just barely, which means he’s not as far behind as we had thought). These services are only available to us for another 10 months (Garrett maxes out at age 6 years 11 months). So our hope is that by the end of this school year he’ll be all caught up. If not, then he’ll go through another battery of tests to see if he qualifies for additional services. Since I had a captive audience, I pleaded our case once again—restating that Garrett’s history makes his situation different from others. The good news? Not only did I feel we were heard but they also “got it.” Better yet, they were sharing the articles I had sent with each other. (Yaaay—I love educators, they actually read stuff so all my efforts were not in vain.) The meeting ended with the agreement that they'll write the IEP (Individualized Education Plan) and we'll hear their recommendations within 10 days. So this Thursday morning we'll find out what’s in store for Garrett.

Of course, I couldn’t resist posting more pictures of Garrett—here he is being a little monkey at the school playground.