Now I may have said before- the hardest part is NOT knowing what the heck to do. Not knowing resources, not knowing which direction is best, not knowing what to ask for.
Another difficult part is the frustration. I'm so tired. Mentally, emotionally and at times it gets physical. I want someone to tell me what to do. I want someone to tell me what's best. I want someone to tell me "these are the 2 or 3 options, pick what you think is best for him."
I sent this letter to his teacher today. If this doesn't show a glimpse of the stress we're dealing with, I don't know how else to describe it other than crying in front of you and having you watch a day in our school life.
Mrs. XXX,Yes, I broke down crying writing it, then re-reading it. I'll cry more today. Because he has several semester tests to do and we're way behind on what is supposed to get done for the week because we didn't have time to do anything yesterday unless we decided to do it during dinner.
Hello. So I'm not sure if you're the one to answer the questions, or if you even have the answer to my questions, but I figured I'd start with you and go from there.
You have been great at trying to help us find balance with Eli's school work, and it has improved somewhat from the beginning on the year, but it's still SO much. When we went over attendance hours he has almost enough hours for a full school year. He does over 3.5 hours of class connects per week, that doesn't include weeks like this week with 2 extra one on one class connects. The writing class connect had a writing assignment with it that took us 2 hours to complete- and yes we could have done that over several days but it's still heavy work for Eli- and yes a typical student could have probably gotten it done in about 30-45 minutes but Eli isn't typical. We didn't do all of his accommodations (typing and dictating) because I'm worried about push back from that teacher who isn't as familiar because she's not his homeroom- which maybe I should just plan on pushing back more. I want to do things right. I want his portfolio to be "right". I want the portfolio to show that he's trying. But maybe that's the wrong attitude. The mark 12 program is amazing, but is at a minimum 2 hours a day- and we honestly aren't even doing everything we're supposed to based on his scores, we haven't done a single composition page and stopped doing the extra literature work at the end because we're already doing it 3 times a week! He gets multiple things multiple times a week- which the repetition is great, but once again it takes so much time. He gets reading, writing and literature in Mark 12 program, then does literature and writing classes, and class connects for them, and then remediation class connects for them. Is there any way to take out Literature and still get credit through it through the mark 12 program? Or writing? Or both? Or maybe when we get done with this Mark 12 textbook pull him out of intensive reading as his "elective" (which is a complete joke and I know it's not you, but the one class he wanted to take this year was music and we were denied because of this class). I feel like we could do the normal course load with his accommodations if we didn't have the Mark 12- the trouble is he has progressed so much with the Mark 12 last year, but we only had 1 hour of class connects each week and didn't double/triple assignments (for example- the writing paragraph we're working on in writing we've already done in the writing program.....just a different topic. And once again I don't mind the repetition and he does get something out of the writing class connects, especially doubling up because he's more confident for the second one and participates and it's so good because he has the memory problems so the repetition is great....but we doubling up the work on top of the work we're trying to get done.)
We're also supposed to be practicing testing strategies because he is going to have to take the FSA and has to practice asking for help, clarification, breaks, etc, but I'm so overwhelmed and over it just trying to get the work done each day that I'm sure we're going to run out of time to practice before his testing dates. I have links to practice tests I can print, but how can I do even more extra work to practice taking a test? When we're both tired and don't care any more and have no patience and it doesn't even count as any class time and doesn't get things done. And when we have doctors appointments, his speech and occupational therapy- there goes more time. And he really needs more occupational therapy for his sensory issues but we don't have time. And I'd love for him to do homeschool PE or STEAM classes at the library or anything....but we don't have time. And they don't count for his school requirement. I fight with him daily to do school work, but literally yesterday he wanted to "play" homeschool. He wanted to read books of his choice, do math worksheets that are in workbooks he had left over from school when he was in public school last year and do spelling words which we don't do because of Mark 12.
I'm not 100% if you can make that call, or if I need to talk to the counselor for the county virtual school and see if she can reduce his course load? I've even started looking into if we change from county virtual school to homeschool and go through FLVS if we can just pick and choose courses because there is literally so much we just breeze over and don't spend the time to make sure he understands or even somewhat masters it because we're trying to keep up with getting the courses done and I feel like it defeats the purpose. What's the point if we get the lessons done when he doesn't really know it? Then when he reads books that he actually likes I can count it as school work. When he randomly does math worksheets I can count it as school.
He did his follow up testing with the neuropsychologist, and we'll see what they have to say. We had a lot of testing refusal again but the IQ/WISC V score they did first so hopefully he cooperated and gave a complete picture. I think I'd need to talk to the county if he ends up with a very low IQ again on what to do for intellectual disability accommodations- if that can be done with virtual school or not.
I know this is mostly just my venting my frustrations, but we are working so hard and being so frustrated and spending more time working on school work than his sister in high school. I just don't know which direction to take that will be best for him for the long term, and hoping you can answer/address some of these things and help me make sure we're on the best course for everyone.
So I guess the main questions are can you change his courses or are they set by the district for requirements? Should we talk to the district counselor in March when we have his test results and do his updated IEP goals to see what we can cut out? Do you know much about the FLVS homeschooling- if I can basically pick and choose the courses that would be most beneficial and say heck with the rest for now?
Thanks for any answers or help you can provide me. Like I said, you've been great so far and so much help- I hope you'll be able to help me some more.
Sarah
Do they have respite home school teachers for special needs kids?
Blessings....
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