Jared’s school promoted the WONDERFUL woman who has been Jared’s assistant since the middle of last year, and he has a new person helping him stay focused. Or rather, he has a new person standing near him while he remains unfocused and anxious. Evidently that “resistance to change” part of the autism diagnosis slipped past them.
I’m hoping that Jared warms to this new person, or that his behavior last week (less than perfect) was because of his fall allergies. I don’t begrudge his old assistant getting promoted because she totally deserves it, but I wish that if they were going to switch things up on Jared, they would have done it in the beginning of the year. And I’m sure that the new assistant is doing her level best, but she’s been put in a crappy situation.
I guess I’m just disappointed because it’s been all good news for Jared this year, and now things are going downhill. Each day the kids get a little indication of their behavior in their take home folders: either a green, yellow or red dot. Last month, Jared had almost nothing but green smiley faces - not just dots, people, but smiley faces. A couple days of a new assistant, and behavior is lousy again.
Here’s his first month’s progress report towards his IEP goals from the school:
Jared did well in his first month of first grade. When asked questions during and after reading he is able to answer them correctly. Jared can respond to a text orally and pictorially but often needs verbal prompts to stay focused. We do modify tasks for Jared and he is usually able to finish a task. Jared will answer when called on and we are working on him quietly raising his hands. Fine motor skills such as cutting and handwriting are improving but are still sometimes difficult. Jared is communicating with his peers and interacts with them both inside the classroom and at recess.
Here’s the second:
Jared has been making progress in the area of language arts. He has been writing full sentences without even taking part in shared writing. Comprehension with text is getting better, although Jared still will restate verbatim from the text. Jared is improving his task completion but still needs many prompts.
Yes there are some criticisms in there, but when combined with how well Jared is doing academically, I’m ecstatic with his progress so far. But by switching out a member of his team, a wrench has been thrown into the works. Jared is already working at a disadvantage compared to his peers. He’s easily distracted, has a hard time communicating with other people, and learns in a completely different way. The metaphor I use is that it’s as though all the kids in his class are running a marathon. Jared’s autism means that he’s running with 30 pounds of weight on his back, and yet he’s still keeping up with the other kids. The last thing he needs are detours on the route… okay, that metaphor is getting tortured. You know what I mean.
So here’s to hoping that things work out with the new assistant. Jared’s been working so hard this year, and I’d hate to see him start falling behind.