The student had been in another class for first grade, and we'd gotten the impression from his previous teacher and special education coordinator that they were perhaps resistant to evaluation for possible services: the family doctor could find nothing wrong and said that perhaps the teacher "didn't know how to deal with boys." We were apprehensive, to say the least.
Ms. Lee's method is to let the parents speak first. The mother said that they would begin the evaluation process in early December, and she had found a doctor that would take their insurance. I suspect that this may have been one thing that prevented them from doing it before. I didn't know that insurance would even cover such evaluations. File that away.
Long and short of it is, they were very afraid that their child would have to leave the school, depending on the outcome of the evaluation, and were relieved that this was not the case- there are inclusion classrooms at every grade level at PSOhNo.
They also seemed to feel that previous discussions had not been very collaborative. Both we and they shared the things we'd noticed, and we talked about the ways we were working with their child, what was working, and what the plan was going forward. The parents were quite obviously a. grateful that we were trying things and b. willing to take time and find ways to support this student's development in working independently.
They hugged us both at the end of the conference and thanked us for being so open, and I think both Ms. Lee and they felt it was a best possible outcome for the conference. I am really proud of how well it went! It was the only conference we were at all concerned about, and it was a slam dunk.
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