Gratitude
The negative response by the superintendent to our family’s request for a teacher for the autistic was a real blow. After all the years, the resources, and the energy to get the autism diagnosis, it felt like a real defeat. And so we went on… year to year, making the best of each school, each class, each opportunity, and each situation.
However, there is something very important that I have not yet addressed, and I want to address it now. It is a very important factor and the thing that sustained us through the school years. Even though we were dedicated advocates for Jessica and we fought so emphatically for what we felt she needed and deserved, we loved and still love our school system and the people who work in it! There were wonderful, precious front-line individuals within the school system who loved
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Oh…over the years we still had disagreements with school personnel. They were mostly about Jessica’s abilities and potential. Occasionally, they were about really dumb things like being forced to eat egg salad (seriously). The thing we disagreed about the most was Jessica’s ability to
Most of Jessica’s school career, she did not have what I would consider an appropriate placement. The biggest problem for Jessica was not placement, per se. The problem was that there were not appropriate programs in place when she needed them. She was always one step ahead. With each level of her schooling, by the time the programs she needed were established, she had moved on to the next school, the next stage, the next need.
Jessica was a pioneer.
She was the transition.
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