Someone's Watchin' Over Us

The time is almost here. My not-so-miniwarrior starts High School (Mom heart scream....eeeek!!!) next week.
His Freshman orientation is tomorrow...and I had yet to hear back from the Special Education department who was supposed to be in charge of setting him up at his new school.
Last night I felt a wave of stress slog over me. I felt the pressure of the upcoming school year pressing on me, knowing we were getting down to the wire and nothing was cemented yet.
I spent a fretful night sleeping, my brain wouldn't stop worrying about all the details.

I woke up this morning determined to go to his new high school and do battle to get his schedule down and get some answers. I called MW at his Dad's house and warned him that we were heading straight to his HS (high school) after I picked him up. Always a good thing to prepare him for any changes in his set routine.

Almost as soon as I hung up the phone with MW, my phone rang. It was the special ed secretary returning my call from a message I had left on her phone weeks ago. She was just returning to work and made a point to call me back as soon as she had received my message.

She was very sweet and helpful and did a lot to ease me from my late night stress fest. I gathered my paperwork, picked MW up from his Dad's and headed to the school.

Oh my goodness! The High school is HUGE. It's almost as large as a college campus! My high school experience was very small as I went to a private school. This was intimidating!

We made our way to the school office and they pointed our way to the registrar office. Once there the registrar was very nice and very helpful. MW's schedule had not been made out yet by some strange fluke...and she took the time to fix that immediately. MW was able to get the elective classes he had been eyeballing...Beginning weight lifting, art and a digital video class. But the big thing....the one thing that blew my mind? MW is going to be in general education classes for EVERY CLASS!!!

No more being stuck in a room with lower functioning Autistic kids. No more babysitting classes....MW is going to be able to have the FULL high school experience that we have dreamed for him.

His IEP is in place so he will have less of a work load as regular students...and he is going to be given a chance to go to an inclusive classroom to chill out once a day. A place to de-stress or to catch up on things that take him longer to do then the regular classroom expectations.

Every where we turned today there was someone who showed up at our side to help us. After we got his schedule and the class numbers listed...we stood out in the hallway to sort out the map we'd been given to see where MW's classes would be. We were, to say the least, a little bit lost in the maze of this large school.

A lady showed up asked if we needed help...it turned out it was the same lady who had called me at home earlier that morning! She walked us to the special ed office where there she turned us over to the head of the special ed department...who was a dynamo of action.

She looked at MW's schedule, determined that he was going to need a little more support then it offered, took it on herself personally to work a classroom break into his schedule without him having to lose the electives that he so dearly wanted to do...and told me to call her tomorrow and she'd have the revamped schedule for us. Not only that...but that she would then work out a time where she would personally take MW and I on a private tour of the campus so we could see where his classes would be without the chaos of the freshman orientation meeting set for tomorrow.

I took MW out to coffee afterwards and drew on a piece of paper an explanation of what this all meant. Then spent time talking to him about how he felt...and what changes were going to be happening..etc. He is a bit overwhelmed by it all but is excited :)

I...well I'm still in shock. Everything I've wanted for my MW is happening. It ran so smoothly...I couldn't help but think that someone out there was pulling for us and helping us by putting the right people in our path at the right time. It's mind boggling how well everything turned out.

We are on our way, Peeps! High school...

omg.

High school!