Revisiting the IEP...already - Part 1: Background Story

I'm going to do this post in parts because as I started typing it out I realized that it was going to be REALLY long in one piece. I've actually been debating blogging about the events of the past few months many times but never did, and I think part of that is because I had no solution to the struggles we were having. Now we are making some headway so I will start by catching you up with a bit of the background story leading up to the upcoming changes in Oksana's IEP.

In early October we had our second IEP meeting, after all of the testing, where we were ready to set some things in stone. I blogged about that here. I remember that when we walked in they handed everyone a piece of paper with the results of weeks and weeks of testing on it. All I saw were the words "Low", "Very Low", and "Not able to be recorded" all over the paper but I wasn't surprised by that and was ready to hear when they had to say. The meeting was full of energy. Everyone was captivated by the little Ukrainian who had entered their school and they were amazed by her sweet spirit, hard work, and huge smile! Despite her test scores there was much encouragement and hope for her future. It was this day that we decided things like how much time she would spend in the regular classroom, how much of each of the therapies she would get, whether she would need adaptive PE or could stay in regular PE with the rest of her class, etc. In the end I was amazed at the wonderfully high expectations they had for Oksana. This team didn't see scores, they saw potential and they gave us everything we had hoped for plus some that we would have been more than happy to flex on. At that time it was decided that she could stay in regular PE and that she would spend 76% of her day in the regular classroom with some time in each of her therapies, as well as some time each day in the special ed room. 76% of the day in the regular classroom is a huge amount of time and we were all very excited. There was an energy in the room and everyone expressed their desire to see how far and fast she would progress from there.

Fast forward to around late October. I started getting more and more notes home that she was having behavior problems. This was surprising and I thought maybe she was just finally comfortable enough to show some of her true colors and push back a bit. I started offering her an incentive. For 5 good days at school she would get to go pick out a balloon at the store (a HUGE deal for her). It worked for a little while but the struggle for good behavior was getting harder and harder. She was having blow out temper tantrums at school involving pulling hair, hitting teachers, etc. This is stuff we had not seen for a LONG time. I was struggling to figure out what in the world was going on. I had a theory though. About the same time that this all started I remember looking at the work that Oksana was doing and thinking that things had really stepped up. At the beginning of the year they were working on colors, shapes, letters, counting to 10, etc. and Oksana was right in there with them. They are now counting to 75 (we are celebrating that she has made it to 8) and starting to read (if i could get her to spell her name I'd have a party!). The gap was widening and fast. I suggested this to the para as a possible reason for the behavior problems and she assured me that she was adapting everything (we love her and she is doing a great job with Oksana).

One thing we had noticed is that it was not uncommon for these blowouts to happen during PE. They were happening in a variety of situations but PE was definitely becoming a trigger......

To be continued......