The Brookston Family Blog

The keenly anticipated I.E.P., or Individual Education Plan, was held for Porter this morning. In addition to us, of course, the meeting was also attended by Hallie Joffe, the Speech-Language Pathologist, and Cameron Kline, the School Psychologist. They were the two we'd met before and who prepared the report. Then there was Toni Lee, who runs the school itself. She had given us our tour a few weeks ago. Also the was Katherine Steinberg, who's known as Micki. She will be Porter's new teacher. We'd seen her before during the tour but didn't get much of an opportunity to talk with her then. Lastly, Gene Rich, who represents the school district we live in, which is Dixie. We had never met or spoke to him before and he seemed like a very pleasant, straightforward person.

We reviewed the report and then went over Porter's Goals and Objectives for the coming year. There are seven of them; four in the area of language development and three in social development. For each one, there's a pretty specific mark they want him to hit. Each quarter has an increasingly ambitious goal for him with the ultimate goal for the fourth quarter, or his one-year anniversary.

There will be only six people in his class and one assistant teacher in addition to Micki so there's a 3 to 1 student/teacher ratio. He'll be going every day from 8 a.m. to Noon beginning this coming Monday, the 22nd. He'll also be attending summer school, which is seven weeks long although we don't have those exact dates yet. That should be his overall schedule until it's time for kindergarten in a couple of years, assuming all goes as we hope.

He'll also be getting one-on-one speech/language therapy twice a week for one hour per session. Overall, I was pleased with the meeting and everything seemed positive and hopeful. His new teacher seems very nice and enthusiastic. I'm going to take Porter to meet her and see his new classroom tomorrow to try and make the transition from Montessori to easier for him.