'It's not easy being green' said Kermit the Frog.
And right now, I quite agree. It's not easy being who I am. I'm glad I'm me, but it isn't easy at times.
A few weeks ago, I started getting suspicious that school was not going well for Pyrope. Socially, he was doing fine. Academically, I was concerned. Some of the comments he was making, and how homework was going was not pointing in a good direction. When I learned that there were going to be 3 'classrooms' with a total of 92 kids in his 'pod' (it is an 'open floor plan' school, meaning they have large spaces and then there are multiple 'classrooms' in that space with only book shelves and cabinets at best dividing them. In his 'pod' there are 2 second grades and 1 first grade, each being taught by their own teacher, all at the same time, in the same room), I was worried how he was going to be able to focus. When I found out that there were 32 kids in his class and one teacher, I was more worried. Pyrope is a child that could easily fall through the cracks. I was not getting much home as far as work was concerned, so I asked to see some work, or to at least know what his current grades were/are. I got non-answers from his regular education teacher. At that point, he was getting 30 minutes of push in services for math in the classroom, and 15 minutes of pull out services. Not by the person who helped make his education plan, but another 'special ed' teacher. A brand new special ed teacher. The SPED teacher who is responsible for his IEP, was oddly and uncharacteristically quiet the week this was really hitting the fan. I finally had enough of the email exchanges and just put in writing that I wanted a meeting of the IEP in the next two weeks. The next school day, I got a voicemail from the Principal saying that he thought that having a meeting was the best idea, but Pyrope was doing 'wonderful' this year. On Tuesday, I get 2 tests home. One in math, one in language arts. 57% and 66% respectively. Wonderful? The next day, while I was at work, I got a phone call from the SPED teacher that is responsible at the end of the day. It confirmed some of my fears. Pyrope was doing 'wonderfully' because he was sitting quietly in class. He was not particularly learning, but he wasn't causing problems. As of that day, all of his math time with the SPED teacher started being done in the resource room. I was asked to extend my 2 week time frame by a few days because the SPED teacher had been quite ill and not in school and needed a little extra time to pull together everything. I agreed. The IEP amendment meeting was this week. The going over of what was happening in math was straight forward, and I agreed. No more push in services for the year, and he will not be graded/required to complete any math papers that are done while he is in the regular ed classroom. I had gone in concerned about what was going to be done with language arts. Last year, he was keeping up with language arts in the regular classroom. It is clear, this year, he is not. He had no 'goals' on his IEP for language arts, nor was he getting any services for it. I saw the SPED teacher getting nervous. When she said "Now to talk about language." I knew where she was going, and I saved her the agony. I said I knew he was not keeping up, and what was she suggesting. It is to pull him out to the resource room for the majority of his language arts time. Each day, he will spend 65 minutes with her (not the same SPED teacher as math), and another 30 minutes daily with the Title I teacher (which also works on language arts). Essentially, he is at school 400 minutes of a day. 40 minutes is lunch and recess. 50 minutes of that is 'specials', which is art, music, library, and gym (if the school week has 5 days, then it is rotated which special they have twice that week). Between math and language arts, he will have 140 minutes of resource room (and 1-2 times a week he is pulled out for speech for 30 minutes at a time). Give or take a few minutes, he will spend half of his instructional time outside of the regular education classroom (when you factor in things like getting coats on/off, getting packed/unpacked from home, traveling to different parts of the school). Pyrope is aware of why he is not in the regular ed classroom, and frankly, he doesn't like it. He wants to be with the regular ed classroom. He also has a vague awareness of his challenges. He has an awareness that the majority of other kids in the resource room are father behind than him, he wants to be challenged. However, with his crazy 'pod' environment, coupled with the ridiculous student to teacher ratio (how can any one person teach 32 seven year olds at the same time?), with the complicating factor of Common Core: he can not effectively learn in the regular education class. I have tried to smooth things over with the explanation that different people learn differently and what is best for him at this point is to be in the smaller class for part of the day. He has voiced his dislike, but is too easy going to really fight me too much. I still feel bad. Given a smaller regular ed class, with 4 walls, he could most likely learn in it. But it is simply not an option. The options that exists at this point is staying in the regular ed classroom and not learning a lot, going into the resource room for about 1/2 of his day and most likely keep up or come close to it academically, or pull him out and homeschool him. The first is the option he wants, but as the adult, is not even a consideration at this point. I've considered homeschooling, and if the resource room option does not work out, I will do. But it is still not easy to be green. For me or for Pyrope.
And then there is Obsidian. (Academically things aren't going well for him either, but that is a different unrelated story.) Specifically Obsidian and Tae Kwon Do. 6 weeks ago, the center he goes to once again decided that how they were promoting him up is not working. So they came up with a different set of belts/promotion system for kids that start when they are 3 or 4 (there have been issues with other kids, Obsidian just sticks out more than the others because he has the physical issues on top of the young age issue). Pyrope belt tested and moved up to the next room last month. For a series of unrelated reasons, Obsidian did not belt test last month, but will this month. However, he will NOT be getting a purple belt like Pyrope. He will be getting a green belt with a black stripe, and he will be staying in the room he is in until the following belt test. At which point, Pyrope and Obsidian will have the same color belt again, but will be held to different standards, then the belt after that, Pyrope will get a brown belt, and Obsidian will 'just' get a black strip on his blue belt. Obsidian is both ticked and confused about this new sequence he is going to be going through. He has told us, "It's not fair". Jett and I both reply it is fair, Pyrope can do skills that Obsidian can not. Obsidian has to work and learn how to do those skills to be considered the same level. Then smart ass points out that at various times he will have the same belt as Pyrope but not have to do the same things. And he has never been held back before. He has points. Legitimate points. If from the beginning Obsidian did something different than Pyrope, and was promoted based on merit, not on length of time, that is what he would expect and I would doubt that there would be an issue. I would be all for it if both were promoted on merit, not time. Pyrope comes close to learning all of the needed skills in 3 months, but not quite at times. There is something to be learned, and valued, from a program where you have to correctly complete a skill to move on. If not your stuck where you are until you can. Changing the 'rules' after 20 months is hard. Particularly when you were told the rules were going to change before, but then didn't. I agree how the center is doing promotions with the youngest kids is not working. I don't particularly agree from a developmental standpoint, or a social, or moral/ethical standpoint of how they are changing it. Nor do I think it is particularly going to work. I tried talking about this, but language barriers and their lack of knowledge of typical developmental levels I did not get far. Its not easy being green. Or staying green in this case for Obsidian.
