Speech evals and purple slips

Things here are going pretty smoothly this week...except for the fact that I am exhausted. Totally exhausted.

The twins had their speech eval. Still not sure if anyone qualifies for services (you'd have to not only have a defecit, but a 30% deficit and I don't know that anyone is that far behind, but perhaps...) Alexandria's went fairly well when she was willing to cooperate, which wasn't often. Usually when the therapist asked for something, as in "Alex, can I have the cup" instead of picking out the cup and handing it to the lady, Alex would say "No. Mine." and so it was impossible for the therapist to know if she did indeed know what the cup was and just didn't want to hand it over or if she didn't really know afterall.

Isaiah's eval went as expected. He didn't say much other than "ball" and perhaps "dog" a time or two. Sadly, the therapist started off with the picture of a ball and since Isaiah's mind is totally one track...he fixated on that and didn't ever move off of it. She also said she couldn't really give him credit for babbling skills becuase he doesn't use a mix of consanant sounds when he babbles. It's all just pretty monosyllabic such as "Nanananananana" or "babababababa." She said she'd have to score them and then let me know if they qualify. It was her guess that Alexandria would not qualilfy but that Isaiah might. Hopefully tomorrow I may hear something.

It sort of makes me sad that they have such language issues but I know that all kids are different and that it isn't really related at all to intelligence. Drew spoke whole sentences at 18 months and is our one who struggles the most academically. Emanuel, Brandon, Jackson and Brice all spoke well withing the normal to high normal limits...granted, not as well or as early or as clearly as Drew but still no where near any cause for concern. Sydney even seems like she's picking up words now. But not the twins, at least not Isaiah.

We are proud to report that Brice has had three days of good behavior on the bus! Yea!!!

Drew is absolutely mortified right now because he brought home a "purple slip" which is a note home to parents that indicates a student did not do an assignment. When we looked at it, Albert remembered the assignment as one he had helped Drew work on. So we knew it had been done. We asked Drew about it and sure enough Drew produced the worksheet and showed us that yes he had done the worksheet but had accidently skipped two problems at the end and thus the teacher wrote the purple slip because she has a policy that if there are two or more problems missing its a purple slip. This is two missing out of at least thirty so I disagreed with the policy and very respectfully wrote a note telling her so. I said very nicely that I felt that since the worksheet was done, front and back with the exception of two that were left off, couldn't she just have counted those two wrong??? I only say this because purple slips are such a big deal and there are so many things students miss out on for getting them during a school quarter that I feel they should be reserved for when a student really doesn't do the assignment, which is the purpose. Or even if he had left off two out five or something like that. But two out of thirty plus??? I just felt that she simply should have marked them wrong. It's not my classroom and I'm certainally not going to argue it any further, I just wanted to state that I disagreed. Drew however, is beyond mortified and fears he can never show his face around his teacher again. I told him that had he completed the two missing problems, the whole thing would have been avoided! Perhaps that will be motivation for him in the future!!!