Any advice to make school change easier??

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

Hi,

I have a seven year old in second grade that has been struggling and is way behind his peers in reading. We go to a private school that does not offer services to him. We recently had testing done through our district public school and got the results yesterday. They say he has auditory processing problems as the main issue and some speach problems that are minor. If we leave him where he is is will get 100 mins of service a month. If we switch him to the public school which is 50 feet across the street he will receive 220 min a WEEK. This sounds like an easy answer and we feel we have to switch him but how do we make it easy for him when we know he likes his present school and his siblings will remain there. The public school goes up to 5th grade so we are thinking on switching him for three years and coming back for 6th. Has anyone had to change schools? He would be happy if is brother changed also but he would only get to go there for one year and is doing very well where he is.
Thanks in advance for any advice.

Submitted by keb on Sun, 01/22/2006 - 4:11 AM

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While 220 minutes each week makes the decision sound easy, make sure the public school is willing to work with your son. Questions you might want to consider include:

1. class size (if there are more students, there will probably be more auditory distractions/confusions for your son),

2. the willingness of the administration to encourage teachers to accomodate different learning styles (in my experience, it is the administration’s attitudes that shape the entire school….either they do what it takes to enable students to succeed, or they say, “This is how we do it here”, implying that the problem is the child or parent, not the education being offered.)

3. the ability of the teacher to adopt a more visual teaching style in order to enable your child to access grade-level vocabulary.

I work at a private school that offers a college-prep curriculum for students who benefit from smaller classes and more structure than is available at our local public schools, and, in my experience, it is much harder for students to come back to us, unless the decision was made for purely financial reasons. You might want to consider having your child tutored privately to see if you can help him bridge the gap before you change schools, particularly if you intend for him to attend middle school at his current school.

Karyn

P.S. My neice, who has significant auditory issues, has found that drawing pictures on flashcards illustrating her vocabulary words on the day the words are introduced, and then reviewing them daily for a few minutes has enabled her to be much more successful. She uses a format I was taught during my LMB training. Let me know if you’d like more details. Your son is probably a bit young, but you could help him initially, if he found it useful.

Submitted by Sue on Tue, 01/24/2006 - 8:26 PM

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There’s more to the story than numbers. Visit the classrooms; see what exactly is happening in those 220 and 100 minutes respectively, *and* during the rest of the day.

Also consider that every minute pulled out is missing something happening in the classroom; sometimes that doesn’t matter (if they pull him out during reading fo rreading, say) but sometimes it does. I tcould be that 100 minutes is appropriate for him, especially if it’s basically a good placement.

Submitted by KarenN on Mon, 01/30/2006 - 1:56 PM

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Marie,

we moved our LD son before 4th grade from a private (where he got nothing!) to a private LD school.

My approach has always to be very honest with my son. He knew he was struggling, he knew he had been tested. We told him that the results showed he was very smart, but had an LD, and that he needed to be taught in a way that was different than his sister and his friends. He was sad to leave of course, but so so relieved once he settled into his new school.

The other posters raise very good questions about how to evaluate if this change is right for him. My son’s new school is full of kids who left very good public schools . There can be issues in any environment! But should you conclude that this change is in his best interest then I would just tell him that. Everyone is different and not every school is right for every child.

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