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This is a significant moment not only in my career as an educator, but also as a parent with a child just beginning elementary school.
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First hard conversation about our son's social behavioral challenges with his kindergarten teacher.
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Typically SST meetings include the parents, teacher, social worker, and principal. In our first meeting we all discussed both the positive aspects of our son and the challenges that were being experienced. In our first meeting we primarily focused on his violent behaviors and classroom safety concerns. These meetings were critical in getting the IEP for our child who is not below grade level.
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Begin offering several CBT strategies for our son to try to calm his body.
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Due to a planned sabbatical the class got a new teacher for the spring semester and with this change we experienced a big reduction in his violent outbursts. However, our son still struggled with participating in planned lessons.
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A very useful "group therapy" program that evaluated "temperaments" and offered strategies for working with children to support improved social behaviors.
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Over the summer very few physical outbursts were experienced.
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Luckily we visited his new classroom the Friday before classes started. Unfortunately, he got the stomach flu over the weekend and missed the first day of class. Rough start!
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For the first few weeks of school there were very little to no signs of anxiety or participation challenges.
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Shortly after the time change in October there was a marked change in participation and willingness to comply with directions.
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Class observation from a behavioral therapist who is not told why they've been asked to observe. Therapist's take notes and offer insight to what they notice. However, on the day of visit to our son's class he had a very big outburst that resulted in a turned over bookshelf. BAT knew exactly why they were there.
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On one fateful day the teacher and principal call me to pick up my son because his behavior has become unsafe and the schools resources were taxed. I arrive to find my son sitting in the office calm but obviously sad. He and I move into the cafeteria until the end of the school day. I am met by his teacher who brings me a pen and paper and simply says, "write the letter." I proceed to write a letter asking for an evaluation. I don't actually know what I am requesting.
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The letter I had wrote began the IEP process. Because I requested an IEP the BAT process was halted and we began the formal process of requesting services.
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On the recommendation of our son's therapist we began the CALM program through Kaiser that helped children with anxiety. However, after only 2 sessions the therapists voiced concern with our son's ability to focus and follow instructions and thus recommended he be evaluated for ADHD.
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All present: school psych, resource teacher, school social worker, teacher, both parents, advocate, and principal
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Between the initial IEP meeting and the second I wrote a requesting 4 revisions. It took me a few weeks to respond to the initial report and then once I submitted the request it took another couple of weeks for the school district to respond to us. Thus, the final meeting as 2 months after our initial meeting.
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