Sunday, December 20, 2009

Regained some energy

Well, Thursday and Friday were pretty exhausting. Winter break is so close yet so far. I finally feel rested enough to finish reporting the rest of last week.

Thursday, December 17th
This day was all about the special, lawyer attended meeting. I had every bit of information I thought I could possibly need. I had invited everyone that I thought needed inviting. And I had all the forms I thought would be needed.

Before I had my meeting, I met with my supervisor about my recent performance evaluation then it was off to the meeting. I thought that one or both of the supervisors of the supervisors would be attending the meeting but here I was going with a few coworkers. I get to the meeting and our lawyer arrives but we are still awaiting the parent's lawyer. We go into our little pre-meeting pow-wow with our attorney and when their lawyer arrives, they go into theirs. About 20 minutes later, the meeting is ready to begin. There is a lot of people in attendance. The teacher turn out is huge. At least one from each subject area which is great. Two related service providers; the transition coordinator; the LDTC; later, the supervisor for English and social studies. Really quite impressive.

I open with my considered agenda items: review of recent testing; deciding on a neuropsychologist; and discussion of personal aide duties. I ask the parent what items they sought to discuss and transition concerns are added. From there the meeting takes off. The teachers say their piece first since the teachers will have to leave in a little while. We review the testing then follow up with discussion of neuropsychologists. From there we hit the meat of the meeting: personal aides.

Three and a half hours later, the meeting ends with some additional modifications added and adjustments made to the duties of the personal aides. In addition, there is the certainty of another meeting in the future once the neuropsych is completed.

Overall, the meeting goes quite well and it definitely had the chance to go poorly. It is to the credit of all the people that attended the meeting that it didn't go south. In addition, the family's attorney was quite reasonable and did not act in an adversarial manner.

I get back to the office to try to decompress and looking forward to a little downtime since the meeting blew through what is generally considered lunch time. But rest is not my destiny. About 20 minutes after I get back to the office, I get sent to the middle school for another risk assessment. Following this, it is time to leave for the day. I decide to get out of there before anything else happens that needs my attention.

Thursday night was also a department holiday party at a restaurant. It is also the retirement party for someone that retired before the start of the school year. If I hadn't already paid, I would have gone home considering how exhausted I was. I go to the party and have a nice time. I didn't really know the retiree that well since she was only in school for half the year and went out on medical leave but it is nice to see her looking so well. I take my leave and head home for the night.

Friday, December 18th
There is not much to report for the Friday. I did some follow up stuff from Thursday's meeting. I contact the facility doing the neuropsych and get the information to make the referral. I send out a few emails and try to make a to-do list for next week.

I am blessed with the gift of 5 new initial referrals and I try to contact the other people that have been equally blessed to arrange a common meeting day for all 5. This is not going to happen before break but the winter break does slow the clock down a little.

There are a large number of people absent today. Either people that planned to be absent after the previous day's festivities or others that didn't feel like slogging it in afterward. The day goes slowly and quitting time takes forever to get here.

Three more days to go before break and there is so much to do.

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