Chance's mainstream school (the regular elementary school that he goes to) had its annual fund-raiser this week which is a carnival at the school. Chance got a shot to dunk his teacher in the dunking booth. He missed but his brother nailed it.
While we were at the carnival Chance was approached by several kids who came up to say "hi". Chance also pointed out several friends to us though he did not always remember their names, we were encouraged by the fact that he did know many of the names. These were all kids that we had never seen before so they must have been kids from his new class. It was good to see that Chance is making friends in his integrated class. Chance has not ever let his deafness hold him back, but as a parent you have nightmares about the other kids not excepting your child because they are different. Although, I have found many kids are just curious. Many have never seen a hearing aid or cochlear implant before and are just not familiar with them. Once you explain that hearing aids and cochlear implants help people to hear just like glasses help people to see, they understand.
We still need to have our IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting with all of Chance's teachers, a representative from both schools, people we feel will help us discuss Chance's needs, us, and perhaps a few other people. We'll go over Chance's most recent testing and talk about where he is and what he needs to work on. We all sit down and have a meeting about what Chance's goals are for the year and what the expectations are. We actually should have had an IEP before school started to help ensure that we are all on the same page and we could voice concerns, but we do not live in a perfect world as we all know. This has been a bit frustrating for us though as the IEP is an important tool to make sure that Chance is getting what he needs and all of us who work with him know what the expectations and goals are.
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