ABCs

I've spent all day in mind-numbing CSE meetings, which have totally worn me out. Come Monday, there will still be a pile of paperwork to finish in order to set up all these students' Individualize Education Plans (IEPs). Note to self: never schedule a full day of CSE meetings for a Friday!

I plan on writing another blog post about one of today's cases later, since it was an interesting one, but I have to share this gem. Normally, I share cute/amusing things kids have said or done, but today, I come bearing a nugget of amusement from teachers.

One of the students we classified today is behind academically because she has never attended school before this year and has SEVERE speech difficulties (like, I could only understand 45% of what she said during the evaluation). The student is functioning at a kindergarten level (which makes sense, since she never attended kindergarten and is now muddling through 1st grade), cannot recite numbers to 100, and does not have the sound-symbol knowledge to make words. When my colleague was discussing her achievement testing and showing her teachers and speech therapist that the child wrote down random letters when attempting to make a sentence, there were gasps from the three educators. While I thought they were blown away by how poor her writing was, I was mistaken...

"Oh my goodness, look at that! Those are actual letters!"
"She wrote in a straight line! The spacing is so much better!"
"Her writing is so neat! Look at how small and well-formed her letters are!"

Sometimes, you have to take the small miracles, even when you're looking at something that makes no sense.