Ms. Heidi

Smiley considers this lovely lady his most important teacher. Smiley has speech apraxia, and Heidi Reid was crucial in his speech development. We finally hooked up on Facebook to insure a connection after our youngest leaves Humboldt Park school. Happy to have her in our fb circle - Lisa

A Busy, Busy Day

I spent the afternoon in back to back speech IEP's for Smiley and Junie Got a little contentious during one of them, but we're sick of their progress being sugarcoated. I think the plan that resulted will help. (don't ask for details, if I was going to share I would have  put it here).

 Now grade school conferences, followed by YaYa's high school conferences, dance class, Marquette, work . . . at least I didn't have to shovel though LOL 

update: 

Elementary conference results: Junie "never has a bad day" and is always cheerful, and tests at near a sixth grade level in reading. Smiley is a strong writer who tests above the 90th percentile in math. LuLu, practicing to be a teenager, refused to answer my questions about how she did, and I'll have to get the answers from Lisa later. But she did well enough for Lisa to reward her with a hardcover at the Book Fair afterwards, so she must have done very well indeed

High school conference results: with four weeks left in the term, YaYa is riding five A's and a B, the latter being in her major (theater), which the instructor wrote off as being because she is bored with the introductory curriculum. Three classes - physics, English, and History - want her in AP next year. The history teacher assigns her extra work "to keep her interested" and the English teacher grades her papers "to a higher standard" and says she's already grooming GC for senior level coursework. Four of the six reported she is a joy to have in their class. As YaYanormally refuses to so much as breathe a word of what she does at school (welcome to life with a teenager), I was floored. Great job!

RE: the conference results. I've been telling you for twenty years, I bred for looks and brains. Gotta have 'em both. LOL

Hot dog! In light of the current blizzard, Marquette canceled Smiley's speech therapy session, saving me a trip across town. Whew!

Kudos to Smiley for pronouncing his "Sh" sound worksheet correctly!

Smiley Returns to His Old School for the Day

Took Smiley to visit his old school & sign him up for speech. The outporing of love for him there was great - everyone from office staff to teachers came to hug him, comment on his growth spurt, & tell him they miss him. His old teach even let him spend 1/2 hr in her class w/ his old friends. Best line? She said his summer school teach emailed her to say Smileyliked being Heidi's student 'cuz  she "blond and pretty" :)

Smiley can communicate, speech or not

Park hooked his hands like a cat on the prowl & said "Claws it" over & over. He then started grabbing his, er, junk, still saying 'Claws' & pointing at the TV. 'Go pee," I said. "No!," he said, "Claws it 'en pee." "Pause the TV?" I said. "Yeesssss!" he said, & ran to the john. He gets his point across somehow/someway. He may not be able to speak well, but he apparently has the rhyming thing down pat.