Thursday August 31, 2006
Zora had another check-up today since the doctor was concerned about her lack of weight gain. Everything is just fine. There was a substitute nurse there last time and, judging from her expression, mine is not the first kid that had concerning measurments (falling off their curve) that are just fine on a recheck. (with the usual nurse).
Zane started therapy at WSU today. It is a different dynamic than his current therapists. I like the people a lot, but I am already getting a sense that they have different philosophies than the SLP and OT I currently use. The supervisor in charge of the student that is working with Zane worked at Heartsprings for 14 years, and then at the neighboring school district that has a good repuation with autistic kids. She seems very knowledgeable and was already pointing out some of the things she is going to work with her student so that she can avoid some pitfalls of kids who will also pick up unintended things. (for instance, kids that only verbalize sitting down because that is the only way the speech therapist works). I think I am going to like them a lot, but in a totally different way. The people that work with him at Heartsprings are young and energetic, where here they are more mature and calm. Totally different personalities, but I love it because it will help him to generalize things better and I will see more easily if one style is significantly better for him or just different.
I can cross off the big Christian pre-school next to us…the only vacancy that fits with his therapy is to be the 16th kid in a 16-kid max room. I am not sure if that is a good situation for him, even with two teachers. It doesn’t really matter though because they won’t work with me until he is totally potty trained and only has accidents every once in a while.
I did notice that the private school that has a mixture of Montessori classrooms and Traditional classrooms has several teachers on staff that might be good…on paper, the best one is a teacher who has degrees in Speech Pathology (and experience in it) and Psychology. There is also a teacher that has worked in Rainbows United Inclusion room and another that has a Masters in Education specializing in Special Needs – Gifted kids. I have a call in there…Zach did well in a Montessori environment, the docter discouraged Montessori because he needs “more direction”, and I like their teaching philosphy and planned on doing Montessori if we didn’t homeschool. I think the right *person* teaching is far more important than the right *philosphy* though, but they look like they have enough teachers and experience to be able to make a good match.
BTW, when I was in high school, a million years ago, this school is one that we used to play (which means it was a 1A or 2A school, or “really small school” for those not familiar with Kansas rating system). We use to cream the heck out of them in sporting events…like our “B” teams used to run most of the game and we still would have embarrasingly large wins. However, they consistently beat us in academic/music/forensics/debate team contests and I remember thinking I wish I could go there. I swore I would never send my kids to a school/school district where sports were more important than academics & fine arts, and this would fit that long-ago wish.
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