On Monday, it was back to work and school, and Erin and I had a Zoom call scheduled with the school district to discuss Henry’s eventural entry into Pre-K.
As I wrote in previous posts, we did have Henry in part-time preschool, which was doing well for him socially, but he wasn’t getting a lot of academic guidan. We ultimately pulled him out for COVID concerns and after his diagnosis decided to keep him at home and focus on therapy, as we have been doing.
While we were exploring various service options for Henry, following his diagnosis, we connected with our local school district and found that they had quite a few resources and support available for kids like Henry. So we set up an initial screening, and had a great conversation with one of the district psychologists, which made us feel optimistic about sending Henry to pre-K at our neighborhood school.
Of course, with COVID, we’ve been hesitant to send the kids to in person school. Amelia is distance learning right now, and Henry is working hard with therapists every day. Still, we would like to get him into Pre-K at some point if possible. He would be set to start Kindergarten next August, so we’d like to get him some preparation before then, if possible.
We needed to set up a screening to see if Henry would qualify for an IEP, which is an individualized education plan. As we understood it, this set ups strategies and support for kids with special needs in school.
We had the assessment a few weeks ago, over Zoom. We shared some videos of him reading, catching and throwing a ball, and doing some other things.
Henry was monitored on the Zoom call doing a few play activities and answering some questions for a panel of psychologists, and they further interviewed Erin and me. From there, they would come up with assessment and follow up with us.
We received the written summary assessment over the weekend. I have to admit, it was sometimes a little difficult to read. Again, we’ve known for months about Henry’s diagonosis, and known for years that he is “behind” in several academic areas, but seeing it spelled out in hard numbers in a repot hit on a gut level.
We know Henry is smart. We know he has great potential. And we are still in early months of all this, and still learning how to understand and work with it. For a moment, reading that, it underlined the challenges our son faces every day.
But as I digested it, I began to see it differently. After all, this is simply a snapshot of the moment. We are just getting started. We didn’t yet see any information on the IEP and what we might do to bring Henry closer in line with his peers.
On Monday, that Zoom call was set up to go over the assessment and discuss just that. And I have to say, Erin and were both really impressed by what the team came up with. We discussed the draft of an IEP for Henry, and we were really struck by how well they saw Henry…his skills, strengths, and where he needs help…and developed strategies to help him in school.
It isn’t complete yet, but the basic gist is that Henry will be in a regular class and will get some support and help from a variety of different therapists and specialists along the way. They will work with Henry’s therapy team on consistent language and techniques, and will even have tools and strategies at the ready for the classroom teacher to help Henry be as comfortable and productive as possible in the classroom.
Again, we are just at the beginning of all of this, but we were thrilled to see such a high level of thought and care put into this process for Henry. We really feel great about sending him to our local public school, which both sees his potential and is interested in pushing him to meet his potential.
So let me take this opportunity to say that I have always been awestruck by the work that public school teachers, administrators and professionals do. Since having Amelia in school, that respect has risen even higher, and going through the first steps of this experience with Henry, it’s gone up even more. To anyone reading this who is an education professional, thank you for what you do. I know there are families like ours benefitting from your hard work and dedication everywhere you that you are.
From here, Henry’s plan will get finalized and approved, and we’ll get him slotted into school. We plan to wait until early next year to actually have him attend. This is in part because we remain concerned about COVID right now, and also we want to give Henry some time with his ABA therapy and give him a consistent schedule for a few months before we throw pre-K into the mix. That is the plan right now, situation allowing. For now we’ll wait and be thankful for the resources out there to help amazing kids like our Henry.
