1st day at school for speech therapy

I really wanted to write how wonderful it was...... I guess I have to say I was disappointed. When we got there they had no record of us being on the schedule. We find out Miss H. is on an unexplained leave of absence. The director came in and started to discuss scheduling asking if we had to come on Tuesday and Thursday?  Umm I planed it all out, if you know me, you know I planned it down to the minute! :) She told us that all the other speech pathologists in the building would be taking over for Miss. H. They had a small group going right now and she would go ask Miss. "I did not get her name" if it would be alright for Jimmie to join their group. It was.

As we were walking to the room. I asked the director if this Speech Pathologist knew of Jimmie and our goals for him (obviously not as they were not expecting us.) she said the therapist doing this small group was the director of the special ed program so she had seen his name and file to approve him, but she would go over his file and make sure she knew what his goals were.

We get to the room with the group already in progress. Jimmie of course would not let go of my hand. I asked the teacher if I could sit in with him, she was very accommodating (Justin thankfully came with us) The two other students were bigger and seemed older. They were working on more enunciation, not adding words to their vocabulary. I don't want to seem biases but Jimmie was not challenged intellectually at all. I don't think by any means that he is brilliant but he seemed ahead of the game cognitively.

About 1/2 way through I told Jimmie we were going to wait outside the door, we left and he did great. That was a huge victory, a few times Jimmie looked at the door and saw me through the window. He talked to the therapist a lot more than I thought he would and even interacted with one of the little boys. As the therapist was asking him to clean up he said "stay play" He liked it.

It was disappointing to me that Miss H. was not there. I understand her having to leave we have no idea what is going on in her life. I understand scrambling for teachers trying to cover classes, it is just unfortunate that it had to be me :)

I am trying to take this as a opportunity to work on being flexible. I know I cannot control everything and this is a perfect example of that. I have a lot of things swirling in my head. For now we are going to do as planned. At least till spring and then reassess and see where we are at. I am very grateful we are going to the Children's Hospital once a week for speech. If we need to I might get more involved there. The hospital is quite a long drive for us though. I would love for the school to work out. I will of course do what is best for Jimmie.

Here is Jimmie on his first day:

Love, Rachael