Intro/vent

[Guest guest]

Hi. My name is Misty and I am new to the group. My son, Luke, is 11 years old and is regular classroom setting. He was diagnosed with Aspergers in 2009 when he was in 3rd grade. That year wasn't a good year for him as he was bullied. Also, during the last part of the year, the regular teacher went on maternity leave and her class was covered by 2 different subs. Last year (4th grade) was also rough. His nana (my mom) passed away from cancer right before Thanksgiving. School work/home work was somewhat more challenging. The biggest reason he made it through last year was because he had the most AMAZING teacher ever. His teacher was a man which is one thing I think helped. This teacher's students always have high test scores, high quality work,

learn tons from him and not just school related. This teacher worked so hard for us, with us. I volunteered a lot in the classroom for this teacher. Boy, it was an eye opener and not just in the classroom but in the school. So many politics, bad attitudes from other teachers towards this teacher (because he is creative, thinks outside the box), etc. In the middle of the year last year, we came up with a plan that if we had

any issues with the homework getting done at home, the SLD tutor worked

with Luke at recess to finish it. That worked really well.This year, different teacher. Luke's only been back a week and we are already having homework issues. He came home overwhelmed yesterday and that was before we even got to the homework. Up to this point, the homework has spelling/vocabulary, math (1 sheet on completing a frequency table, 1 sheet looking at a pie chart and answering questions with some computation), and social studies basic maps (basic marking longitude/latitude). The other thing he has to do is read 20 minutes a night. We are running into problems. I had to sit with him to correct the math pie chart sheet as at least half was wrong. The bigger problem is his not wanting to do the reading. I don't know if it's because he is overloaded by the time we get to that point or what. I tried to get him to do the reading first last night and that was an issue for

him.The attitude I am getting from the SLD tutor and the teacher is that Luke is just not choosing to do it. I got the impression that while she will work with him on the other stuff, her attitude is he just needs to sit down and do it and he won't have me fighting for him when he gets to middle school. Sorry this is so long. Started out as just an intro but turned into a vent. Does anyone have any advice, suggestions? Misty