About a week ago I decided I'd go back to the school where Mr. Hebrews 13:1-3 attends school. I wanted to talk to the para to see what was going on and if they'd heard anything about him from his mom. If he were still out I'd take pictures of the other kids in his class so the sub could use them for the Intellitools program. Then there is a little girl in one of the preschool classes for whom I did an FVA (Functional Vision Screening) for her educational evaluation. I wanted to know the results as I'd not heard anything from the pupil appraisal office in over a month and I'd not received a copy of her completed evaluation. At any rate, it would not be an empty trip over to the other side of the world.
When I got to the class, the three classmates of Mr. Hebrews were writing their journals from a dry erase board. The sub told me Mr. Hebrews' para was at the front of the school. The Child Welfare and Attendance office had been called to pay Mr. H's home a visit and make clear to Mom that Mr. H had to be in school.
I hurried to place the last student's photo on the Intellitools desktop as the sub had informed me the class was going on a field trip. That's when we heard that Mr. Hebrews was up front with the para. A neighbor had brought him from home. The sub and I went to the front of the school to see if we could talk to he neighbor and maybe find out if he or his mom had been ill.
By the time we walked to the front of the school, all of the children were on the bus for he field trip. The neighbor was walking toward her car when the sub called out to her. She said that she didn't know if the mom had been ill or not but she seemed okay when she last saw her. She said she mostly talked with Mr. H and not his mom because he's such a friendly child. She said she thought mom was taking a few classes somewhere and that she asked for Mr. H to be taken to school since he'd missed his bus. The neighbor said she had no idea that Mr. H had missed almost two months of school!
I missed seeing Mr. H that day because of the field trip, but I was able to see him yesterday. He had all sorts of things to tell me and to show me.He is very happy to be back in school. He has this alphabet toy on which he can press the alphabets, which are labeled in Braille, and it will say each letter and a word that starts with the letter. Another game he showed me was that it would ask a child to spell a three-letter word. If it is a real word the toy will say the word and then say, "You found a good word to spell." If it is not a real word it will just repeat the letter sounds. He is very good and came up with several three-letter words, which showed me that he actually knows the braille and is not just memorizing.
Then I put him on Intellitools and showed his para some learning games he can play to help learn braille and new spelling words.
Sadly, she told me that he had forgotten much during his absence. He also developed the habit of saying, ":Where are you? Where are you?" which led her to believe that he was at home lone during much of his absence. When I had him put his book bag away, he'd forgotten where the cubby shelves were and had trouble locating his own cubby.
Now that child welfare has been called, Mr. H has made it to school for an entire week straight. However, mom is upset and says she will have him in a new school next school year.
Poor baby's pants are still too small and he has trouble zipping and fastening them. Mom had him in a pair of school uniform shorts with a Velcro fastener instead of a button. But he still couldn't get one side of the Velcro to meet the other because the pants are just too small. I told the secretary that I was not going to sign out because I was going to run to the dollar store to get a pair of uniform pants for him.
Unfortunately this time of year the dollar stores are out of uniforms until July when they stock for the back-to-school sales. My GPS made me aware of another store in the strip that was a uniform store. Of course that meant the pants would be more expensive, but at least the little guy would have something that would fit comfortably.
When I explained to the salesman in the store what I was doing he let me take the pants to try on Mr. H. "If they don't fit, just bring them back. If they do just bring the tags back and I'll ring you up."
They fit perfectly, those size 10 slims! Mr. H thanked me for his new shorts. I took the tags back to the store and had the clerk add another pair. Next visit I will take Mr. H his second pair and ask the para and sub to leave them at school so we can make sure he has some that will fit at school.
I'm so happy the child is back at school. I am so very disappointed that he has missed so much school because he is actually very bright. His very slurred speech and his walk from the cerebral palsy will lead an observer to think in the first ten minutes that this child is far more developmentally delayed than he is actually. I pray the best for him and hope his mind is not wasted.
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