Brandon's IEP

On Wednesday I had Brandon's IEP meeting. I always go in worried that they might try to pull Brandon back to the regular schools. With the economy, I was even more worried. Usually, there are all kinds of people there. Teachers, therypist, directors and always the person from the district. I got there first, I know, I'm just a little crazy about being late. About 5-10 minutes later, his teacher and speech therapist came in and announced that they were it. I asked about the district guy and was told he wasn't coming. She looked at me and said "It's a good thing". DEEP BREATH. She then told me that we were just going to phone conference them in. Since it didn't look like there would be a fight, we were just doing the small group. When we went to call the district, the person we were supposed to get wasn't even there and they gave us a woman who normally does secondary school and didn't even know anything about Brandon or his case. We went over his therapies and how he was doing. Basically, he is doing great, but still has big problems with word retrieval. The speech therapist is worried about him being so self aware. He gets embarrassed when he's with the other kids and can't come up with a word. Doesn't like to ask for help when others are doing it without. The teacher thinks she has come up with a way he can ask for help without the others knowing. Really kind of smart. They are going to put a two sided chip on his desk. Green side for everything is good and a red side for help. Next year the teacher can just stop by his desk to help as she walks around the room. Reading is slow, but he is improving. Math, science, health, social studies are going great. They are even adding stuff in the IEP to increase amount and level. He really excels and they want to give him something to really be proud of. It really is weird that he will have trouble naming a number, but can do a simple algebra problem. Once again, it's all in the word retrieval. Anyway, when all was said and done, we talked for an hour and 15 minutes and he is to stay for another year. YEAH.