The bestest answers ever-2009-2010, first edition

So, the prevention coordinator came into my room for a bit (and she’s still going..) to talk about stuff she talks about, like cyberbullying and online safety. I gave a test to see if they were retaining anything…and here’s the best of the worst answers…spelling mistakes intact.

1. What is the main reason people try to get private information out of students? Correct answer: To get to their parents for financial information for their own gain

• bad answer 1: (a 6th grader)- They want to be friends to the end with you.
• bad answer 2: (another 6th grader) So they can find where you live and kidnap you.
• bad answer 3: (a 5th grader) They want to meet you and stalk you.

2. Name three things you should never do when messaging or sending email. Correct answer: Common sense things-no all caps, send it to the right place, no flaming, ect.

• Bad answer 1 (6th grader) go and see if they got it.
• bad answer 2 (6th grader) have a positive attitude

3. why is it easier to cyberbully someone instead of doing it face to face? What makes it harder for the person being cyberbullied to defend themselves online? Correct answer: Cyberbullying isn’t a face to face method. It’s easier to say mean things on line because you don’t have to deal with the face to face reaction. It makes it harder because you not only take the person’s safety away, the person being bullied doesn’t know who did it, or who started it. It’s hard to take action away from school.

• bad answer: (6th grade) They mite kill you or call the po po

4. List 3 things that would make a password hard for someone to hack.

correct answer: a combination of numbers, letters and symbols.

• bad answer 1: (6th grader) omegle, facebook, aim and myspace.
• bad answer 2: (6th grader) put ur name, numbers and something else.
• bad answer 3: (5th grader) your pet’s name.

5. list 5 rules for good messaging and emailing.

Correct answer: common sense things…

• bad answer : talk, read listen and press send.

6. What is spam, and why is it harmful?

Correct answer: non useful mail that is sent to your computer by companies trying to obtain private information. it’s harmful because it can contain viruses or items that can compromise your security.

• bad answer 1- I have no idea what spam is.
• bad answer 2- a food that comes in a can.
• bad answer 3-Spam is a website that can get people hurt. It is harmful because people can get really hurt.

7. Name three things you should never do when messaging or sending email. Correct answer: common sense things…

• bad answer 1- see if they got it.
• bad answer 2 tell them they looked hot in their clothes.

8. why should you never click on a pop up?

correct answer: It could contain a virus or a way to compromise your personal and private information

• bad answer 1-A dirty old man could be behind it.
• bad answer 2-a kidnapper sent it to you.

 

and thus concludes this edition of the Bestest answers ever! My thanks go to the awesome prevention coordinator, who I adore,  for making this entertainment possible!

 

Little Boy, Big School

Today was the first day of Kindergarten. The bus comes mighty early, so Isaac was ready, excited and all raring to go, way before I was.
He insisted on wearing his Darth Vader shirt-that’s my little Star Wars boy-and his new hoodie, and brought the red backpack that set off the first fiasco of the school year.

Then, we heard it-the distinct rumble of the school bus

and the little boy, who is off to the big school to begin all sorts of new adventures cheered!

Got on the bus like a pro, sat right behind the driver and went off.

No, I didn’t cry. He was too happy to go off to Kindergarten-snack, folder and red backpack in tow, to meet new friends, have new adventures and finally share what a neato kid he is with more people than just his little world.

So, my little boy is now a kindergarten kid in a big school-and he likes it.

 

The back to school roller coaster

There’s a lot going on around here. With school starting and the like, it’s been one heck of a ride the past few weeks.

When you have a special needs child that goes to kindergarten or even changes schools, it just becomes that extra bit of twitch factor that other parents don’t have. Add that to everything else, and you get a back to school roller coaster that just doesn’t slow down.

Personally, I’d like this coaster to pull into the station, but I know when it does, I’ll complain that life is boring again (especially here in E. Nowhere) and I’ll wish to be back on.

So, here’s the latest roller coaster set of moments.

Now that Broken Bed fiasco 2009 has ended with a successfully fixed bed, we can all laugh at the latest piece of delusion that came through my mailbox-
a card thanking us for our purchase.
No, not kidding.
a week of screaming, sobbing and being totally glad that the boys weren’t here so that the bed could get fixed in peace, and we get a postcard for a year old bed? What?
Whatever.
Will I patronize this store again? Most likely, at the location that gave us the most help. I, however, will not deal with the person who shares my name and her customer disservice.

Since coming back from the outlaws in Arizona, my darling shrimper has been nothing short of a pill. Massive pill. Rude, spoiled and entitled acting. That’s what happens when you hang with the outlaws too long. I spent the first week back retraining him that 1) being rude will get you nowhere but your room, with all priveleges revoked, like your television viewing, and 2) you may not have everything you see, control the agenda to your heart’s desire, or speak to me like I’m the hired help. Again, this will get you nowhere but your room, with no television.

And no, a 45 minute meltdown will STILL get you nowhere.

Charming, isn’t it?

Then, Shrimper thought it would be a good idea to explore the cabinets on the top of his wall. His room has built in cabinets, and these cabinets are almost at ceiling level. I get a call at work on my cell phone, and hear that he’s fallen off of the cabinets and hit his face. Yes, huge bruise and scrape on cheek and neck. Great way to show up to the first week of Kindergarten-bruises and scrapes. Joy.

And then, we had the biggest ride of all. The medication ride. Isaac’s ADHD meds are insanely expensive. Hardcore expensive. That’s even WITH insurance. So, we found a few coupons to cover at least one of the copays. That’s when the pharmaceutical companies began their rain on my labor day weekend. Our coupon was declined at the pharmacy, because we had used one, and it was one per person, per lifetime.

what? Really?

So, we come back, call the doctor and explain the situation. She comes back with a card that gives us 50% off of copays for 10 months.

Ok. we can get behind that.

so, I drive all the way down to the doc’s office, and then all the way back home so we can activate the card and get the meds, as we’re down to our last 2 pills and two pills and a bunch of days doesn’t add up around here, especially with kindergarten starting.

Let it be known that I disclosed what happened at the pharmacy to the doc’s office. They assured me that this would be just fine and work well.

Yeah, it didn’t work. So, I spent a better portion of two hours dealing with Shire pharmaceuticals and their idiot staff. Here’s how it all broke down…

First step-talk to customer service and explain the situation. Get an extremely rude rep, who makes sure that she lets me know that this is totally my fault, and that the doctor could NOT have told me that this card would work.
Finally, I get her to give me the number to patient assistance, and I thank her for her unhelpfulness.

Second step-Call the number that witch 1 gave me. Get understanding person who unfortunately confirms rude witch’s stuff, but hears me out and issues us a “second use” card for the price of the perscription. She informed us that the card wouldn’t get here until Friday. I also explain to her that the cost is prohibitive to us, even though we have insurance. She puts me through to patient assistance, where….

I get the most sarcastic, obnoxious rep ever. I explain the situation, explain the whole thing and he starts to get sarcastic with me. He tells me I have to fill out an application, and me, knowing that we’re almost down to our last pill for the shrimp, says “I don’t want to be filling out 80 yards of paperwork just to be denied.”

Jerk says: “well, if you mean one page equals 80 yards, than yeah, you’ll be filling out 80 yards of paperwork.” and then he laughed.

I broke into tears and told him he wasn’t funny.

THEN he had the nerve to tell me that this process could take at least 2 months, because since we had insurance, we’d be automatically denied, and we’d have to appeal.

Really? Automatic denial? What the…

So, since we can’t wait 30 days, I ask if he is the final word, because he’s refusing to do anything. He tells me that even his supervisor won’t do anything for me.

This is where I finally lost it. I told him the following:
“Too bad. Stuff gets overridden every day. You don’t say another word to me and I want your supervisor now.”

I get the supervisor and she almost gets her head taken off with the following statement:

“well, if you had called yesterday, you wouldn’t be in this situation! This is almost 7 pm on a holiday weekend…”

Everyone knows how well that line goes over with me.

Let’s review here…this medication is a SCHEDULE 2 CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE. This means you MAY NOT get it any sort of early. So, like the bed fiasco, how were we supposed to know that this was going to happen?

I very politely took her head off reminding her of this fact. I told her that because of the nature of the drug and their lack of any sort of urgency in this situation, that my child is being made to suffer. She then put me on hold.

She came back and they’re supposedly fed exing the card to me by tomorrow (tuesday). Should be interesting.

Meanwhile, we had our “booster pills” here, and we’ve been giving them to him, and we’ve kind of noticed something…

Shrimper’s disposition has changed drastically. We’d been dealing with the “whine monster” and wondering if it was just stress from changing schools, ect, or if it was the meds. With a 5 year old, it’s hard to tell.

So, Shire may have f’d up in our favor…letting us know that we had a side effect that we just chalked up to something else.

I’ll be on the phone with the neurologist’s office on Tuesday.

Then, the last piece is that of meet the teachers/aides/therapists. I’ve been trying to get answers out of the school all summer as to meeting Isaac’s aide and having him meet the teachers, ect. AND the biggest question-who is doing resource room for him. This is just what happens with a special needs kid. I’m still at the top of the hill on this wild ride with this one, so hopefully, these are only mini hills that will end on Tuesday morning.

 

Umm, is it really September?

Seriously, I don’t want to be in this month. I’ve got a kindergartener (EEEEEEKKKK!) and all sorts of things to get done.

Blah.

But the upswing of all of this is that I’m going to (for the second year in a row..) be late for the faculty meeting.

Can we say trend anyone?

 

Holy cow-the Supreme Court got it right!

I was parusing through the local paper this morning online and came across an article about how the supreme court ruled in favor of a set of parents who wanted reimbursement for a private education for their special education son.

I’m elated.

First off, the supreme court got it right-this is not for parents who deem the program that their child is pegged for to be inapropriate. For that, you still need to take the course of action described in the parent rights literature. This is for parents who are completely ignored by the school district, have not received a free, appropriate education for their child and have had to take their child elsewhere.

This is for the parents who have had the crap school psychs, teachers who ignore them and a system that is so broken that they had to pull their child to fix it.

In this specific case, the student was tested and the conclusion was that the child did not have a disability. Upon using their second opinion clause from the parent rights, the testing that the school had done was proven wrong, and the student was pulled to a private school for their education.

So, the parents sued for the cost of their child’s education, and who can blame them?

When a school district fails so miserably, they should reimburse the parents for the cost of educating their child. Private schools and therapies are NOT cheap, and can drain a parent’s income faster than anything out there.

Will the majority of parents need to use this recourse? I highly doubt it. This is an extreme step, albeit a needed one to keep the school districts in check and doing their job. I will say it’s nice to see that for once, the courts are considering the student and not the bottom line.

 

Kindergarten warning shot

I got Isaac’s IEP in the mail yesterday, and I was quite impressed by this, as I wasn’t expecting it until later in the summer. It had his summer pre-k IEP and his new Kindergarten one. I was parusing through the kindergarten one and came to the goals. Umm…these are not the goals that his current school sent. These are goals I hadn’t seen until I was peeking at the IEP. Some of these goals were the most garbage things I’d ever seen. Serious garbage. They didn’t even send these goals to me prior to the meeting to approve them or present them at the meeting, or I would have asked them to be tweaked.

So, I called the CPSE/CSE director and asked her a few questions (because there were some things I didn’t see on the IEP that I know we had said at the meeting-I just overlooked them…) and asked her where to go with the mediocre goals. she told me to call the teacher at the elementary school.

So, now, this is the time to fire the first warning shot that I am not going to accept mediocre IEP goals and all of that. They are going to learn today that Special Education is my training and that they better do it right or it will be kicked back to edit.
The sad thing? The director of Isaac’s current school basically all but spelled this out at the transition meeting. Guess they didn’t listen, huh?

 

Special Needs and Kindergarten, take 5.3

Here we go again…round and round and round and round…

So, I get a hold of the notoriously hard to get a hold of School Psychologist, Dr. C, and  it was on the first try! I was actually impressed! They are giving us what we want-regular kindergarten, a shared aide, a 45 minute resource period and almost all therapies outside of academic time, save for one push in group session.

Ok, I can live with a push in group session. It’s really not taking him OUT of the classroom and he’ll be a ton more compliant with that.

We’re now fighting the morning versus afternoon kindergarten session, because the school district here in E. Nowhere has half day kindergarten, even though we’re considered a “premier district.” Yeah, right. Without full day Kindergarten, that’s so far from the truth! 

Today is the big kindergarten transition meeting. I’m really kind of wacked out about the whole thing. Not sleeping, sick feeling, dying for some serious bagels…but after today, this should be over relatively quickly. We should know what we’re doing and what we want out of everything. I am going to try and nail them down for morning vs afternoon so I can fight for morning, as Isaac works so much better early in the morning. 

 

Now, we have to nail down the wrap program for Isaac-I’m really kind of torn-there are two decent programs, equally priced and I just have to see what we’re going to go with for him for after-k.

I think I’ll feel better after the meeting today…or I hope I will. I just need all of this kindergarten drama to go away. Seriously go away. I want my end of the year life back, which boils down to grading, trying to tie up loose ends and working on all sorts of end of the year projects. Bah. 

So, hopefully this will be the end of it, even though I’m going in loaded for battle.

 

The end is near!

When you’re a teacher, there are just some things that are universal truths-

One being that March is the longest month on the face of the planet, and the other being that the end of the year creeps up on you, and you have no idea where the time went at all. 

Right now, I survived March. That was brutal. But to be expected. Now, here we are the end of the year, and I’m fast trying to figure out how to get everything done by June 25! 

I’ve got a ton of things on my list that need to get done. As of right now, here’s the list:

1. Go through homework from 7th and 8th grade internet safety/cyberbullying units and grade accordingly
2. Log said homework into online gradebook
3. set up online gradebook for final grades for grades 1-3, enter grades for 4-8
4. Inventory the closet of software and books, put on to spreadsheet and make copies for principal and secretary as well as me
5. Clean computers, tables and chairs
6. figure out what stuff is coming into the lab from one of the recently closed schools for next year
7. Come up with end of the year awards for 8th graders and other classes
8. figure out how to get the scheduling person to split next year’s 8th grade into two classes (that’s one tall order. I’m NOT taking them as one group. NO WAY!)

Yeah, doesn’t seem like a lot, but it really is a lot to do. I’m 1/2 way through the closet, thanks to the detention kids-I’m so over making them write lines-they’ll be productive in my room..inventory that closet!  I’ve also got to really get down to working on that homework/classwork from the 2 oldest groups. So, hopefully, I can get it done this weekend. Who knows. 

It’s just all got to get done, and it will, but argh!  All of this just means another school year is on the downswing and it’s almost summer!

 

Kindergarten and special needs, take 5

Drumroll, please!

It’s time for…

THE KINDERGARTEN SCREENING! 

Please note: I did not bring my camera along with me to document the hilarity/fiasco/stupidity that would be ensuing. 

 

Isaac was #1 on the list, and allowed me to put on his compression vest for him (sensory support for proprioceptive input..) and wander into the gym for the screening.

Immediately he was nametagged, picture taken for reference and then immediately taken to the phys ed section of the test.

I was NOT happy with this-for cripe’s sake, they see the kid who is wearing a compression vest and a set of AFO’s and you’re making him jump and hit a target? Really? It’s just so stupid and pointless to make a kid do something that you know darn skippy well they can’t do. What is the point of this? I’d really love to know.

Then, he went to the other side of the room, that was closed off by the gym wall, and was given the rest of the screening. I was not privy to 90% of it, but saw the teacher of the classroom I visited…hrm…

 

So, I waited and waited and waited, and I heard Isaac give his ‘No thanks” statement a few times when he was asked to do things. that was quite hilarious. The screeners were saying “at least he’s polite..” well, darn skippy my kid is polite!

 

I did get a chance to talk to the PT and OT about Isaac, his needs and his sensory supports that he requires to be successful. The OT thought he could do more vest time, but I don’t know. He’s been quite successful with just the hour a day of compression time-I don’t know what increased time would do. It just doesn’t seem totally needed to me, but what do I know. 

The PT was very interested in Isaac. She kept calling him a “pepper pot” and trying to find solutions that would work to keep him in district instead of going to a private Kindergarten, because she wants him on her caseload. Imagine that-someone wants my child rather than wants to find a way NOT to deal with him! Go figure! 

And as of right now, she’ll probably get her wish. I’ve  been all over in my head about the payments for the private kindergarten we loved so much. It’s 212.00/week and I just don’t know if I can swing that. As much as we loved it, 8500/year is just almost too rich for our blood. We’re scraping to pay the tuition right now for aftercare. It’s almost exorbitant…but what can you do? 

If I sent him to where I work, the payments per month would be 310.month-that’s a 502.00 savings. Yes, you read that right. 502 per month. That’s just a lot of money. 

So, right now, we’re back to square one. Public school (where I’m not sure I want him..but we’ll see at the meeting) or private over at the school I work at-wonder what I have to do to get services out of the district that my school is in because it’s not our home district…hrm. Must look into that. 

 

So, the big IEP meeting is in just over a week. Am I in freak mode? YES. Am I going in loaded for battle? Yep. I don’t want a kindergarten repeater-this would be absolutely crushing to Isaac-especially if they let his therapy get in the way of his academics. With a half day program, and the head of the CPSE/CSE’s lack of wanting to give us a full day program, this is what’s going to happen. ARGH!

I so want this to end. Like I keep saying-it shouldn’t be this hard to go to Kindergarten. It really shouldn’t.

 

When Preschool and 8th grade collide…

This happened during a review on the tools in Microsoft Word, and the class was loud as all get out, and I was just in one sarcastic mode…

8th grade Student: “Mrs. F! I did it! I did it!”

me: “Ok, Dora the Explorer. Did you avoid Swiper?”

8th grade student: “Mrs. F, I’m Diego. Get it right. And I have a rescue pack!”

Oh, and did I mention this kid has (not kidding) 4 brothers and 2 sisters…and  his youngest brother is in the Nursery 3 program and his youngest sister is 1 1/2?