Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Oh, Late Nights…the New School Year has Begun.

The new school year always starts out in a bit of a jumble. First of all, there is no permanent schedule. As every year, I wonder to myself why can’t they start working on the schedule earlier, and have it ready on time? I am sure there must be a good reason, but since I am not a teacher, nor administrator, I have not been let in on the secret.
When we do get the final schedule, I will need to slave several hours over the plan, deciding when she will be in class, and when out. Then I will have to make “communication” sheets for each day of the week, (like that shown below).

[The circles are points for good behavior. Subjects are at the right, pink being "in class", and light green "out" (private tutoring).All the blank area on the back gives the aide room to write what was studied, that Ricki didn't really get the smiley circle she drew for herself for science class, etc.]
But that is OK. What irks me is that the schedule we will receive in about a week, will only be the timetable for a few months, and mid-winter I will have to do it all over again. And meantime, I have to prepare each day a “communication” sheet, which has little to do with the final schedule. And this all adds up to a lot of uncalled-for work.
The second problem of the new school year is that I do not yet know the teachers, nor their phone numbers. Today Ricki has science, but I don’t have the faintest idea what the teacher will be covering in class. This makes preparation of materials impossible.
At least her homeroom teacher, who I did speak to, has agreed, at least in theory, to get her planned topics to me a day in advance. She sounds open to ideas, and should work out OK.

5 comments:

Casdok said...

Hope you get it all sorted! Good luck!

rickismom said...

Thanks! And anyone else checking the comments should go to Casdok's post from the 14th

http://motherofshrek.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-matters.html

for a great look at "the causes of autism"

Frogs' mom said...

Trying to coordinate with the school district is one of the things I don't miss since we started home schooling. Last fall, I did never got official word on what day Frog would start school (special ed pre-school classes always started later than the rest of the kids), if/when/where a bus would bring him home (I had opted to drive him almost to school, park and walk him the rest of the way as a sensory preparation for class), or who his new therapists would be - I had to sleuth and find the answers myself. It always felt like the district was flying by the seat of its pants.

Good luck with you school communication - sorry for all the additional work!

rickismom said...

Well, here homeschooling is illegal, I DID hiomeschool one year (no one really cared, cause they weren't paying. But she missed so much the fun of friends (plus benefits of copying speech/behavior), that I wouldn't do it again. I would be tempted to homeschool with another two parents, but, as I said, it is illegal here.

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

I thought for sure the teachers would tell you what they plan on teaching, otherwise how would you be able to figure out what she should learn.

They should have orientation before school begins so that you can get to know the teachers and talk with them.