Pre-Preschool Meeting

Yesterday i met with the ACS Preschool teachers,

Julie and Debbie.

First impressions? Love them both!

This meeting was set in place to talk about Marshall-

who he is and what he likes,

our goals for him for his first preschool year.

Both Melissa and Karen from the FVCDC

were at the meeting as well.

The aide is not back from her 10 month contract

so she was not able to attend.

Karen had a bit of a bombshell for me, for everyone,

at the meeting yesterday.

Marshall will not have his own aide.

PCHOOO!!! (bomb sound) lol.

There is another little boy with Autism in Marshall's class

and due to lack of funding, the two boys will

be sharing 1 aide.

*sigh

Since all of this talk of preschool for Marshall already

now for the past year, i have been told that he

would qualify for an aide, his own aide.

Knowing my son, i have said time and time again that if

Marshall does not have an aide, that

i will not even put him in preschool.

It would feel as if i was setting him up for failure...

and i am not a big advocate for 3 year olds

to be in preschool anyways,

but i understand the benefits for Marshall with all of his

delays, and how having an aide in this social setting

will help Marshall to improve.

And now i find out that one-on-one attention is

out the window.

My initial reaction? I wanted to cry.

I started to get teary eyed and choked up, but i managed

to save the real tears for after the meeting

when Melissa and i talked in the parking lot for an hour.

I'm not sure why i felt so emotional.

I think it was just overwhelming for me to have a new thought,

a new thing to worry about.

I have been excited and curious to see how Marshall will do

at preschool, and i was confident that with

the help of an aide, he would do well.

And now i'm not so sure.

Both of the preschool teachers who are very in tune

with special needs children and support

their integration into their classroom,

were not pleased to hear about the shared aide idea.

Debbie stated almost right aways,

"I am sharing from my heart...

I don't think it is fair to those two little boys,

I don't think it's fair to the aide,

(even though she has tons of experience and they love her

and have worked with her before)

and also, it's not fair to us as their teachers."

I agree.

Karen felt terrible to have to give us this news.

She said that she was still going to try and

figure something out, and that she would come and fill in

when it worked with her schedule.

Karen also said that there might be funding to contract out

an aide, which would mean that ACS would have

to find someone to fill the 4 hours a week slot...

i can't imagine that's an easy task,

and the teachers did not offer any comfort words about

this scenario. It would have been great

if they would've said,

"Oh yes, we have several contacts that we could call

if the funding is provided"

or something along those lines.

But they looked concerned about finding someone.

Great.

So after this discussion about the shared aide came to a close,

the teachers wanted to hear all about Marshall.

My head was somewhere else... panic mode i think. lol.

So Karen and Melissa started to talk about M

and eventually i was able to join in.

The teachers were very happy to hear about Marshall's

progress at Next Step. In talking about

M we were all smiles and had a few laughs which was great.

Both teachers said that they were excited to meet

Marshall and were looking forward to having him in their class.

It felt genuine :)

Now i am feeling... well, everything feels up in the air again,

which i don't like.

Everyone at the table agreed that we needed to just pray

that everything would work out.

It's true. Prayer and a little Faith.

Sounds simple doesn't it?

Boy i tell you, God has been testing my Faith more so

in the past year than he has my entire life...

and it's not fun! lol.

A journey of Faith is something that i've talked about my whole

life, but had no idea what i was even saying

now that i look back on it.

Anyways...

It's ironic that my last post praises Marshall and how well

he is doing at school,

how well he is doing in general.

After the initial shock of the shared aide scenario,

i am optimistic about the whole situation.

Marshall might be ok with a shared aide.

Thankfully, it is slow integration

and the class is split into two groups,

so the aide can work with just Marshall for

an hour each of the two days that first week.

Maybe this will be enough??

Then the following week it will be the two full hours sharing the aide.

It's scary.

And it will definitely be an adventure for the staff involved. lol.

We shall see.