Finished first year of High School!!!!!!!!!!

Jasmine’s first year of high school is coming to an end. It has been an amazing year! She has two regents bound classes(science and global history) two re mediation classes (English and math) and is main streamed for electives which included health, baking, career exploration, child development and adaptive Physical education. She has a wonderful group of teachers. They are all very patient and accepting of her disabilities. She has an amazing one on one aid (without her she would not be able to manage all the different classes or organize her homework) Her aid encourages her to be as independent as possible and has a great way of getting the best out of her academically and physically (she uses only her walker in school!) In school she receives speech, occupational and physical therapy.

This year has been very hard! She started school recovering from a broken clavicle and a broken head! Other than warning the aid we did not mention this to the rest of the group ( although I am sure they noticed the crazy shaved head on one side and the arm sling) We did not want anyone to baby her and they did not. We were for warned that high school is not the middle school and the expectations are high and that the work is very hard. THAT IS THE BEST THING ANY SCHOOL HAS EVER TOLD ME! I have always known that if you teach her she is bright enough to learn. I have begged every school she has ever attended to please teach her. PLEASE RAISE YOUR EXPECTATIONS!

Jasmine is not a morning person and the day starts very early. Most days she was so tired she needed to sleep before doing any homework or exercise (she needs to exercise daily otherwise she is too weak to eat let alone study). This is a child that never napped in the day even when she was an infant. The work was hard especially science and global. These two teachers have a wonderful curriculum and the home works were frequent and sometimes required research to find the answers. Frequent tests and quizzes which were hard and sometimes just happened to fall on the same day. This does not sound unusual to anyone who has gone to school. But when you have a multiply disabled child it takes a very long time to physically do what is required of you. Two tests on one day meant that she was so confused she did not know where the science began and where the global ended. Prior to learning any of the content she needed much of the vocabulary explained to her. Or she used her talking dictionary to look up the key words. She is a very persistent, hard working young lady and I am so very proud of her.

Her science teacher (god bless her) instead of condensing the topic she expanded on each topic so that if the text book had two pages on a specific she would add fourteen more pages. I love this type of teaching because once you learn a topic in such detail you own it for life. The notes from this year have already filled a 4-inch binder to capacity and we just started a new binder. She has learned so much and with each day I am more and more impressed with how smart she actually is.

We have a rule is this house, get a hundred on the test or at the very least the highest grade in the class. I call this a” kick ass” grade and every day that she attended school she promised me “ I will try to kick ass!” What more could a mother want?