Last Thursday we had parent-teacher conferences for both Mykaya and Laney. I am a fan of how Northridge does this (maybe all schools do, but it was quite convenient); they schedule them back to back so you can just sign a paper saying "yeah that day/time works for us" and be done with it. Working-mom-and-dad-friendly? Check. Anyway, we started with Laney's teacher, Mrs. Just, who is every bit as awesome as Mrs. Jahner, we just don't talk to her as often. I talked to her about my guilt about that, and she reassured me saying, "You can only do what you can do, and Mykaya needs the help. Laney doesn't." Well, Miss Laney came from a 2 day a week Kindergarten in Washington to Northridge, which is full-time. She was pretty far behind when she got to Northridge in December, but has already almost caught up to her peers. Mrs. Just has absolutely no concerns with her, she said she is a joy to have in class and is confident she will be completely caught up with her classmates by the end of the year. She said occasionally she gets in trouble for being "too chatty" and I laughed and said, "That's Laney-she's definitely my daughter!" After we left there, I couldn't help but remember my first conference with Mykaya's kindergarten teacher. There were already so many concerns. It was so upsetting to go and hear how scared she was, how she would hide in the bathroom during class, how she wouldn't really interact with anyone, and how hard of a time she was having academically. At that time, I was reassured by the teacher, who told me she would get used to school and things would get better with time. I believed her. Here we are 2 years later having pretty much the same issues.
Next we sat down with Mrs. Jahner. Oh how I loved this time to spend with her, just one-on-one! She is so positive, it's very encouraging to see her. She started out by showing me how she has posted visual charts on Mykaya's desk to help with classroom tasks, downtime, etc. She asked what I thought, and I told her it was perfect. How awesome of her to take what Kaya's responding well to in therapy and implement it in her classroom without even being asked. She then showed me a project that Mykaya and another girl in her class had chosen to work on together. Mrs. Jahner said she was excited to see them work together because it was an art project and they are both her artsy girls! It turned out really nice and I was glad to hear she had worked with someone without being asked.
Then we sat down with the scores. We had already been prepared at the IEP meeting we had last month so it wasn't a shock. But comparing her MAP scores with Laney's was a bit of a surprise. Some history on the MAP assessments. They are done three times a year starting in kindergarten and are shown on a graph during conferences to show progress over the year. The scores start at a certain level in kindergarten and continue up through 6th grade until they are (hopefully) the highest they've ever been. It's not a percentile score, its a numerical score. Hopefully that makes sense, how I've explained it. Anyway, Laney's scores are already higher than Kaya's. That means Mykaya is scoring at a low Kindergarten level in math and reading. I hadn't looked at it that way. A bit of a shock. But you can't go forward if you don't know where you are!
I try not to compare my girls; I feel very guilty when I do. Looking at it a different way though, if I didn't compare them, I probably wouldn't even know anything was wrong or to what degree. As long as I don't turn it into a contest I think we're good. :)
With love,
The Schulz's
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