Finding her niche

Miss Kat has been doing (overall) very well since our move. She has lots of friends, her Halloween party has become "the event" of the fall in her tiny school. Every day some friend comes over to hang out. She also has joined a "Dungeons and Dragons" group in town. She is such a proud little nerd!

We had back to school night a few weeks ago. Miss Kat signed up for several clubs (including drama and a book club!) and we signed her up for driver's ed. We also asked the school about how we are going to handle a foreign language. Because the school is so very small (less than 30 students per grade) they only have the option of Spanish. We explained that this would not be a good fit for Miss Kat, and the school said they absolutely understood and that they would allow her to take ASL at the local community college for dual credit. She should start her sophomore year,

Now about her IEP and all that goes with it...Miss Kat is now 14, so we have started with transition goals. She presented a very nice PowerPoint at her IEP about what services and accommodations she finds useful and how she best learns. It was great to see her taking ownership of her hearing loss and her needs. We have, however, been struggling with notetaking and with having teachers understand the importance of her accommodation of "teacher provided notes". We recently discovered that a teacher is handing out a packet of papers and lecturing and having the students fill in the paper with the information that she is lecturing about. We explained to Miss Kat that this is, in fact, the same thing as taking notes. She was very relieved. She expressed how difficult it was for her to have to try to watch (a website on the SmartBoard), listen and try to take notes. Her itinerant is looking into it.

Finally, I invite everyone to come and see Miss Kat and I at the AG Bell conference. I will be giving several presentations, but one in particular is about our experience on this journey so far. Miss Kat and I will be telling our story!