Observation

Two people from the school district went to Cornerstone this morning to observe Nate as part of the district's assessments of him. They attended Group for the first hour or so and saw Nate in the song time and in the first small group session, where he had speech today. I was not there, as Grampy drove Nate to therapy this morning, but I got a full report from Will.

I had been a little concerned that the observers (the school psychologist and the speech/language pathologist who originally evaluated Nate) were going to be observing him on a Friday, because 1) he is often tired by the end of the week and seems to pay less attention at Group and 2) his shadow on Fridays isn't Will; it's someone else who doesn't do a very good job of redirecting Nate if he gets distracted or whatever. However, Will said that Nate did an awesome job--he sang all the songs (sometimes on Fridays he zones out/stops singing by the end of song time, which is about 25 minutes), answered all the questions the song leader called out, raised his hand to volunteer for things, and participated very well. Will said the observers asked him (Will) a few questions, and they asked something like, "How are we even going to come up with areas for improvement for him?"

It sounds like a great morning. I'm hopeful it will add some ammunition to my argument that Nate shouldn't be put in the special day class.