Things of Interest (to me, at any rate)

Yesterday we had a visit from the new school psych. Or, one of several. We're getting school psych services from SERC (the psych works for SERC, SERC contracts with the school districts). She was nice. Some of the kids mistook her for me because she has red hair and freckles. ("How come you got those on your face?") Anyway, it's time for the three year re-evaluation to see if the kid with Down Syndrome still qualifies for SpEd services, and that's part of why she was here.

She did the IQ eval for him, and he scored quite high in the reasoning section. Probably in the mid-high 60s. 70 is the cut-off for Mental Retardation. Two things. She said he should have scored higher on 1 of the subtests, but that he made a small error. He then went on to do several more bits correctly. He also, she believes should have scored higher on the memory subtest, but that he was too distracted.

With the communication I have gotten from him just in the last few days from the PECS system, I'm no longer surprised. I've known for a long time that there's more going on in his head than we can access. But now he's starting to figure out that he can talk to us, and I think that we're going to see a huge improvement over the next year.

It is possible that the next time we do a re-evaluation for this kid, he'll score above 70 on at least one section of the IQ test. (He would still qualify for services, even if we show that he's not MR, but wouldn't that be a hoot?)

As for the PECS - On Thursday of last week, I introduced the idea of him putting together the sentence "I want X" and giving it to the person he wants X from. On Friday, he was able to do it correctly with me, and (with a prompt from me) with one of my aides. He was absent with stomach flu Monday and Tuesday, and yet, yesterday, he was able to do it correctly with the school psych with no prompting from anyone. And he came late, so I didn't work with him, yesterday.

Let me say that again.

He was able, with 0 prompting from any source, to correctly put together the sentence "I want pencil" and hand it to the school psych.

He did this when she tried to give him a fancy gel pen. After he gave her the sentence strip, and she gave it back, he added backpack (which I hadn't even introduced, yet, but he found in his book), and got his backpack from by the door, got his pencil from his backpack, and sat down.

Damn, but I wish I'd known about PECS two years ago.
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The PECS people say that some huge percentage (that I can't remember just now) of autistic kids (for whom the system was designed) actually end up speaking, even though that was never the intent of the system. I don't know that my student has the physical capability for speech, but maybe he'll decide to sign expressively.

In Other Good Work-Related News

I gave my entire Reading class the End of Level Assessment, and 3 of 9 passed the whole thing. One was absent the second day, so hasn't finished yet. And four of the others passed 2 of the three sections. The last one passed 1 section, barely. We've got a lot of work to do, and hopefully she recognizes that, now, and will start doing the homework.

So, Go Team Go!

Also - Got cookie dough ready to bake again, after a 3 week hiatus from baking. The two students who stayed to do the work today were just great. One of them is well known for being a smart ass. He gets in trouble at least once a day. If I had a different personality, he'd be in trouble in my class all the time, but I just play the game and then tell him to knock it off. He just needs attention. I mean, really, if there's a kid out there who fits the "is acting out because he wants attention and doesn't care if it's positive or negative" profile, it's this one. I complimented him on his cooperation, this afternoon. He was just fabulous, helping the other student to measure, and helping wash the other's dishes when he was done first.

The other student was awesome, too. He had to get his bag from a classroom after school, so I unlocked the door. The kid didn't just grab his stuff, he straightened his desk and put up his chair, as well.

And - D got his Big Purple Cast off, over the weekend. So we counted his toes, today, to see if they were all there. (They were.) And he showed his mom that he knows all his colors. So cool. He wanted me to push his wheelchair down to the cafeteria when it was time to go. He's such a nice little boy.

I like my job.