Second Quarter Summary:
Achieved: Outbursts, Follow Directions, Short Passage, Sightwords, Safety Skills, Task Completion, Vocational Checklist, Academic Checklist, Initiate Interactions, Respond to Questions, Money ID, Filing, Vending Machine, Typing, and Gym.
Progressing: Complete Sentences, Conversation, Intelligibility, Math, Answering Phone, Placing a Call, and E-Mail.
Not Progressing: Vocational Tasks, Meal Prep.<\/p>\n
Language Arts\/Reading: (Achieved)
“Nat has reading skills at the beginning first grade level…Nat currently reads a short reading passage out of a level-appropriate book….Nat currently reads directions on a worksheet and completes the appropriate tasks…Nat currently identifies sightwords that he would find in recipes in a cookbook.”<\/p>\n
Communication: (Achieved)
“Nat is a very quiet student and will only have a conversation when spoken to. He needs to choose a topic that he would like to discuss and initiate a conversation with another person.”<\/p>\n
Math: (Achieved)
“Nat has a variety of math skills…He has learned to complete simple subtraction, addition, multiplication, and division worksheets using a calculator…He currently follows the Touch Math Curriculum where he is learning to add and subtract without the use of the calculator.”<\/p>\n
As I read through this Quarterly Report of Nat’s IEP, a whole range of emotions tumbled through me. First, I had my oldest feelings, a welling-up kind of sadness, where I said quietly to Ned, “Poor Natty.”<\/p>\n
Ned looked up from his computer, “Huh?”<\/p>\n
I said, “His brain is so fried.”<\/p>\n
Ned did not seem to hear, and I did not persist.<\/p>\n
The television buzzed and flashed in the background. I kept reading. It wasn’t long before my feelings morphed into something quite different. The more specific description that I absorbed about how Nat spends his school days and all the tasks he is speeding through, the more the sadness gave way to a lump in my throat: pride. “Wow,” I said.<\/p>\n
Ned looked up. “Huh?”<\/p>\n
I said, “He is doing so much!” As I continued to read, I felt energy pulsing through me and a strong desire to call his teachers and shout my praise. Soon I was flooded with a sense of wellbeing and excitement. Who knew what Nat could be capable of? The sky’s the limit! I put the sheaf of papers down and stretched out on the couch happily and watched the stupid T.V.<\/p>\n
A bit later, Ned put his computer away and sighed.<\/p>\n
“Huh?” I said.<\/p>\n
“I just wish Natty weren’t so closed up,” he said.<\/p>\n
I thought about it, and wondered what to say. In some ways, Nat is more closed up than he has ever been. It is very hard to get him to initiate with us and tell us even the most basic thing, like asking for the salt. He’ll just stare at his dinner for the longest time without saying a word, without eating. “Yeah, I know,” I said.<\/p>\n
But I also thought about this afternoon, sitting with Nat while he watched Dumbo. During “Baby Mine,” where Dumbo is visiting his jailed mother, I, of course, started to cry. Nat looked at me in alarm; he hates it when I cry. I said, “Dumbo’s mommy loves him. He’s her baby.”
Nat said, “Yes.”
I said, “Who is Mommy’s baby?”
Nat said, “Nat.”
I jumped up and hugged and kissed him.<\/p>\n
Conversation goal achieved.<\/p>\n
I looked at Ned, whose face was very tight. His eyes looked wide and a little blurry, as if tears were close. Then I remembered that he had woken up very early this morning. “You should go to sleep,” I said. “And read this thing soon. You’ll get a better idea of how Nat is really doing most of his day.”<\/p>\n
We went to sleep. I think that rest will restore Ned’s natural optimism, and I hope that reading the IEP Quarterly Report will take care of the rest. If not, I’ll have Ned watch Dumbo with Nat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Second Quarter Summary:Achieved: Outbursts, Follow Directions, Short Passage, Sightwords, Safety Skills, Task Completion, Vocational Checklist, Academic Checklist, Initiate Interactions, Respond to Questions, Money ID, Filing, Vending Machine, Typing, and Gym.Progressing: Complete Sentences, Conversation, Intelligibility, Math, Answering Phone, Placing a Call, and E-Mail.Not Progressing: Vocational Tasks, Meal Prep. Language Arts\/Reading: (Achieved)“Nat has reading skills at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-n4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}