In his freshman year, ShawSon was doing well but was very frustrated. As a brilliant but severely dyslexic kid, he found his classwork was filled with busywork that he found painful and tiring but that the subjects that were easy for him (honors math, honors biology) were painfully slow. In addition to working with the Special Ed department, I had shared with every teacher the results of his neuropsychological and psycho-educational (I think that is what it is) testing. I explained to each teacher what the test results would mean for his/her particular class and what accommodations would help. With honors math, he said, “Dad, we discussed an idea on Monday. I get it on Monday. We’re still doing it on Friday.” And, in a number of the classes there were lots of makework assignments and they were not really teaching him how to write in English. I came with proposals for most of the teachers consistent with the IEP that had been granted in the summer before school. Largely, the teachers ignored me. The Deputy Superintendent of School stepped in and suggested something the school had never done, which was partial homeschooling that would enable ShawSon to take lab science, art and social studies in school but to do English (where he really needed to learn to write at a level matching his intellect) and math (where I could hire a grad student to do math at a much faster pace and cover interesting topics). We followed her suggestion and his learning was much improved and his life was better. She had attended some of his IEP team meetings. She also stopped in to hear him when he was in the finals of the Moot Court tournament and when he was awarded the Best of Show in the Senior art show. When it came time to apply to college, the Deputy Superintendent (who had by then become the School District Superintendent) volunteered to write his recommendation. She wrote a strong letter (she sent me a copy) saying that it was very unusual for her to write a recommendation for a student but that he was a highly unusual student and she ended the letter saying she thought he would make a significant impact in our world. Absolutely above and beyond the call of duty.
2 Likes