Completing the 504 Plan

So, we met with the Social Worker, the Principal, and MJ's teacher on a Friday to write up a list of goals on the 504 plan. If you aren't familiar with what this is, it is basically a binding contract between the student, parents, and teachers as to what goals are to be met and how each person is going to contribute to making these goals happen. On one side is the goal, and on the other side is what each member of the team will do to aide in this goal.

As we sat together, it was interesting as I realized me as the parent probably knew the most about what was to take place and what should be established. I was impressed that the social worker and the principal had been researching into Asperger's and they had several articles they had pulled up on the internet, and the Principal referred to a book about Asperger's. So it was good to know they were actually interested and wanted to to their best.

Anyway, here is what was established:

They set up 3 main goals.

1-Organization (to help him get more organized, i.e. having teacher sign planner and review that he has actually gotten his stuff in his backpack to go home for homework)

2-Maintaining Personal Space (help him when cued to back up or give people more space)

3-Placement of Written Work on Page (using graph paper, limit written work, more oral type assignments)

So this was it for them, and being a good advocate for my child, I did not sign it, but told them I would take it home to review.

During the meeting the teacher kept saying there was a lot of things that she already incorporated with MJ in the classroom, but I felt that it would be best to have a legally binding document to keep her doing these things, so after a bit of extra researching and studying up on 504 Plans for Asperger's, I added 3 more goals and brought it back to the school. I added:

1-Executive Functioning (saying the teacher must monitor in class work, use direct and literal instructions, and give preferential seating close to the teacher)

2-Speed in Completing Assignments (allowing extra time for any tests or timed tests as needed)

3-Communication (cueing MJ to slow down or talk louder or softer depending on the given situation)

So, in the end, we had 6 goals for MJ and we all signed it and I was pretty happy with it being that they accepted everything I requested.

I was excited to see how this would make things more smoother for MJ and us. Hopefully now he wouldn't be coming home everyday with homework assignments, but not the homework. And hopefully he wouldn't be failing assingments because of these timed tests that were too fast for his processing delay. Hopefully he would be understanding more instructions that were literally directed to him and he was going to have a happier year.

Of course the only problem was that this was the middle of May, and school was basically over for the year, so we would only hope that starting out next fall that things would go smoothly. MJ was going to have the same teacher next fall for 4th grade (he's in a full time gifted program that joins every 2 grades together), and hopefully this year would be better.

The Start of 3rd Grade

MJ was entering 3rd grade and would have a new teacher, so the first week of school I emailed his teacher asking if I could meet with her to discuss his Asperger's and kind of give her a "guideline" to working with him. She emailed back and set up a meeting on the Friday of the first week of school.

Before this day the school had a "Back to School" night where you can go and meet the teacher and they usually give you handouts and explain class policy and curriculum. It was here that I found out some interesting things she demanded of her students.

Now during the summer MJ had been assigned to practice these timed math tests called 36's. This is where they have 36 math problems that they must complete before a minute and 30 seconds. When we worked with him during the summer, he never finished any of them. I tried them and finished OK, but my husband, the computer programmer barely did. I figured it was no big deal that MJ wasn't finishing them, that is was just to get them to go faster, but when I went to the Back to School night, I found out that she required these to be done in a pass or fail.

Now, when I heard this, I immediately raised my hand and told his teacher that I didn't agree with it and why must they be timed---if they knew the math, wasn't that good enough? I told her how we had timed myself and my husband, and if he, a computer programmer, could BARELY finish them, then how did she expect an 8 year old boy to? She proceeded to tell me how it wasn't that bad and that they work on them for a long time and eventually everyone passes them off. I held off and told her I would discuss more of this with her when we met on the following Friday.

Friday came and I was ready. I got on the internet and printed out a copy of the Oasis Guide for Teachers for teaching kids with Asperger's. It is a great resource and great to give to teachers. you can find it here. I went through it and highlighted the things that more pertained to MJ, and I wrote little add ons and suggestions, as well as writing a list of things very particular to him and how she could handle it.

I thought I had a pretty good resource and guideline/outline sheet for her and it would help her and MJ alot. When I met with her I proceeded to tell her how he was pretty much an average kid, but there were a lot of differences that might cause him problems.

I explained about how he had to be cued for almost everything. I explained how he had problems with transitions. I explained how you had to be extremely literal. I asked her if she had noticed the way he walked or the little jerks and hops he did. She said she had picked up on that from day 1. I explained to her what they meant and how to read MJ in a sort. We discussed his terrible handwriting and spurts and repetitions in his speech. (She would ask a last opinion from the speech therapist that worked with him the previous years if she wanted to continue that.) And then, I began to explain his processing delay and asked her how was he to do these 36's?

She said she would work with him a lot and take him aside, and even have him pass them off orally. But here I am thinking what difference is that going to make because his processing is delayed from brain to mouth or brain to writing. It's not like it's going to be faster orally. I didn't say anything toward that, but I figured I would wait and see, and hopefully something would be worked out.

Mostly the meeting went well, and she seemed very helpful and accepting of MJ's differences, and I was glad she was so open as far as communicating with us.

Things seemed alright, at least the first couple of weeks, but then they began to change and we would soon see an up and down rollercoaster of events to follow.

Once we had thought he had "grown out of" this Asperger's stuff, and maybe he had adjusted or matured, but we would soon learn we were mistaken.

Speech Therapy and Inability to Summarize

So, MJ was in speech 2 days a week. I'm not sure really what it could do for him because it seemed to me that it was more of a part of his brain functioning and processing delay that caused him to speak in chunks or spurts or to repeat the same phrases over and over. But I figured what would it hurt, so I let him go to speech and read things to the speech teacher.

He would get little reports home from the speech teacher saying how he was improving with his reading with "smooth talking" as she called it, while I was thinking she needed to work with him more on spontaneous things rather than reading because that's when he seemed to have more problems.

But anyway, this is when I found out something quite incredible.

For years I had known that MJ had this super memory and was really smart. I remember he would always be reading some 500 page book when I'd take him to the store or wherever, and I would cringe when people asked to tell them about his book because I know he would tell them word for word the entire book chapter by chapter! Well, not quite, but he would start telling them detail per detail about almost everything and it would take a good half hour minimum for him to answer. I know they were probably looking for "it's a book about this boy and a dragon" when he is going to tell the entire storyline to them. I guess I find it quite funny now.

But anyway, MJ would bring these speech homework sheets home where he was supposed to read this page long story and then in his own words tell me back the story using "smooth talking".

Now these were maybe 5-6 paragraph short little stories, and I'll emphasize that he was supposed to summarize in his own words, because it just amazed me what he would do.

There would be a story about Bob and his grandpa and how they went fishing and the boat wouldn't start and how they were scared and blah blah blah.......etc.......until they figured out what to do and got home. Anyway, Micah would read it just once for the first time, then I would take the paper away and wait for him to retell me the story in his own words.

The only thing was he couldn't do it. Now, I don't mean he couldn't, but he could not summarize in his own words, and it was somewhat amazing.

Here I was holding this paper and MJ would retell me the story almost word for word EXACT to what I was holding in my hand. Like he was doing the speaking part and even saying "said Grampa" and something something something, "Bob cried". It was as if he had the paper and was just reading me the whole story all over again, but this was from reading it once and it was memorized or something. It was incredible!

So, I began taking notice that really this was a part of MJ that if you asked him what he did today, you wouldn't just get the "we went on a field trip and I played outside", but instead you would get a layout of everything he did from the time he hung up his back pack to come home from school.

Maybe it was our fault for not explaining exactly what we were expecting, but that's a part of this whole Asperger's thing. It's like you asked me the question, now why don't you want to hear me answer? (Don't worry, I'll get into this a little later.)

Speech went on and I suppose maybe MJ got a little better at his talking, but I'm not really sure. I didn't know if it was something that could be fixed like that of a lisp or a natural stutter.