So the dreaded meeting with "the powers that be" at the elementary has come and gone. (Teacher, principal, speech therapist, language specialist and special ed teacher. Funny-no ESL teacher.) I wasn't too surprised at the outcome.
The "language specialist" (a.k.a. young guy with bed head hair wearing sandals on this blustery 30 degree day) sat down and immediately pulled out an article that shows the parallels of lack of language skills and learning disabilities. It basically concludes that until a child has been in the country speaking for 2-3 years he is not articulate enough to assess for a learning disability. I can agree with this-somewhat. I'm not really thinking Alex has a learning disability-a speech disorder? Perhaps. Regardless can't he qualify for more one on one help during school?
(Hum? Grr....)
I was proud of myself for being vocal and not emotional. I explained that my son was from an orphanage for children with "heavy speech disorders" and that I assured the court I would have his disorder assessed here in the States and follow up on it. We have been here almost ten months. Of course I don't have any documentation as to what sort of speech disorder he has. Nor do I have anything documenting precise learning disorders-only told he was a terrible student and hates to study. But my Alex is sometimes difficult to understand and I don't know it that's just a lack of language and his palate struggling with new sounds OR his speech disorder. One of the reason's for this meeting. I would like him tested so we can determine one way or the other. Is it his disorder or he just needs time to grasp the language? The speech therapist was very sympathetic but with the recommendation of the language specialist to wait for two-three years it doesn't look like we'll be getting a speech assessment anytime soon. Apparently testing cannot be done without the approval of this entire committee and I certainly don't have Mr. Bedhead on board. She further pointed out that perhaps if we point out his articulation issues that he'll feel self conscious and just stop talking or trying to communicate. I can agree with this to a point but what if some of his sounds that are hard to understand could simply be solved with a session from a professional that can show him were to put his tongue or move his lips or there's a simple, easy technique-that I don't know-to help him with certain sounds?
(Grrr...frustration)
Everyone was oh so nice and offered to give ME any and all of the resources needed for ME to help him outside of school. Which is a lovely idea in itself except I ALREADY help him outside of school. Each day we work on his spelling, vocabulary, write in his journal-working on sentence structure, punctuation and more spelling-read & study his Lucky Listener in addition to read out loud for twenty minutes.
While walking with the special ed teacher to her room to get said materials I asked her how much time I could reasonably expect out of Alex outside of school for studying and she told me forty minutes to and hour......hum....we're already doing that and sometimes more!
I got a little defensive when the principal told me "I realize Mrs. Richhart that you might be disappointed, that Alex might not be learning as fast as you'd like and that you are frustrated." I'm frustrated? I'm disappointed? "Let me be perfectly clear. I am not disappointed in Alex. I think he's doing fabulous-but he needs more help-one on one during school." His poor teacher cannot give him this-she is fabulous and so in my corner. (Which is what I felt like-like I was in the ring and fighting Mr. Bedhead. Without his approval, nothing can be done?) I further went on to explain that unlike most ESL students, Alex's native language is not spoken at home. In fact he cannot remember how to speak Ukraine. He can understand some of it in his head but cannot find the words to speak back. Totally normal for his age and given he doesn't have anyone to speak to in his language on a daily bases. So it's not like if he doesn't understand something WE can explain it to him in his native language and at this point-explaining it to him in his language may or may not be any clearer than explaining it to him in English!
Mr. Bedhead referred to the many older adopted kids that are currently at the Junior High. I pointed out that they are ALL significantly older, from a gifted and talented orphanage (or at least I was once told that) and that they have a network of children all from the same school living in the same area and have retained their language.
We don't have this.
Now in all fairness, he DOES get some help already. He has thirty minutes three times a week with the ESL teacher, a special computer program in his class room that he does when the subject being taught is just way beyond him or when he has some free time, and sometimes he has a tutor listen to him read. But in my mind-correct me if I'm wrong-I cannot expect more than an hour more of study outside of school-why can't we make his time IN school more productive? Why can't he be pulled out to work on English comprehension or fractions or sentence structure by trained and qualified individuals. (Unlike me. Theater major. Mom. Real Estate Agent. Anyone who's followed my blog for long can attest that English is not my forte!) Why can't he get more than a hour and a half a week of additional help? Why not make his day at school specific to his needs?
I was hoping for help during this last year and three months he has remaining in elementary as I know how junior high is. Seven classes, seven teachers with hundreds of students. He's going to get chewed up and spit out. Heaven help us.
But as it stands, no testing or assessments until he's been here for at least two years-which will be just a month shy of getting out of elementary.
(More Grrr..)
I did tell them that I'm not trying to pawn him off on them-and expect them to take care of it all. We DO work at home, EVERYDAY! But there are so many subjects covered during the day-like history-that he's not grasping and sits there bored and/or bothering his classmates. Why not get him some further language comprehension help or address some of the math skills he's lacking?
Later, I emailed everyone this article about language and the older internationally adopted child.
http://pages.towson.edu/sglennen/Olderchildrenandlanguage.htm
One line in this article cries out to me and certainly applies to our situation- and is why I pushed for the meeting in the first place!
Parents need to advocate for their children and remind professionals that
the internationally adopted child’s first language, and only language, is
now English. If the child is not proficient in English, the child is not
proficient in any language and therefore at significant academic risk.
Am I done? Heck no! I fortunately have a fabulous friend who just happens to be a speech therapist and she's agreed to test him as a favor to me. It won't be official but it will be something. My hopes are that he'll test well and whatever speech disorder he has
doesn't manifest its self in the English
language. (I was told by our adoption
facilitator that the sound he struggles with is not a sound needed in English?) Then I can relax a little and know "in two to three years" he will be articulate. If not I can at least take my results back to the school for round two in the ring.
We've adjusted a few things at home to incorporate more English into our routine. We've eliminated him reading the "Lucky Listener" which was reading out loud long passages about the Constitution or the US government. We've replaced that with 2nd grade worksheets with a lot of basic English concepts. Three of them each day.
Tuesday night I asked a certain older sister to help Alex with the worksheets as I had church commitments. When I got home-late-everything was done incorrectly. Big sis DID give him the assignments but apparently little or no instruction. The next morning before school I sat down with him and we went back over and erased and re-did. I realized that each morning Alex-who is a morning person-gets up, gets ready and has 30-40 minutes of unstructured time that is usually spent playing on the piano or petting the cat or dog. This morning I got him working on his worksheets. He did AMAZING. One worksheet had words grouped together like vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and then a list of words that described the group of words (flavor being the answer) and he did great! Mornings are defiantly the time to work on this.
Standing beside him as he sat at the bar, I told him how awesome he did and reflected.
Me: Alex, where were you last year at this time?
Alex: In Ukraine.
Me: Yes, and look at you now. Less than a year later. In America. Doing English worksheets so very, very well. You should be so proud of yourself. You are amazing. Are you proud of yourself?
Alex: (Beaming with a big grin nodded and wrapped his arm around my waist and leaned in to hug me) I proud of you Mom, teach me English.
Me: I'm proud of me too!
Later, I clarified that if we do our worksheets in the morning then we won't have to do them at night, freeing up some time and craziness at night. He was relieved to learn my new morning study session idea was not in ADDITION to what we were already doing after school and at night. As he finished up the last worksheet he said:
"I'm good with that!"
Like he'd been speaking English forever....
