I Have a Teacher Crush

So here we are 10 weeks later and I'm pleased to say that, this year Ayla's mainstream school ROCKS!

Everything has come together and the tears of the first day of school (mine ...not Ayla's LOL) are a thing of the past.

Ayla has a truly amazing teacher this year.  A-MAZE-BALLS!!  Ayla is finally TRULY included in her class.  She is a part of the lessons that the other kids are taught and her teacher has very creatively come up with ways of including her in each lesson. 

This teacher absolutely GETS IT.  She has understood that Ayla needs to be pushed to make choices and thus gives her choices.  She understands that if Ayla could give a consistent 'yes' or 'no' answer to questions, that her whole world of communication will open and she is working hard on this. Ironic that a 'fresh from uni' teacher understands more about Ayla's communication needs in 2 weeks, than a whole swag of government Speech Therapists in 6 years!  I have a serious Miss W#@$s crush right now.

Our parent/teacher meeting in the second week of school revealed to me that Ayla's teacher really does listen.  She said to me that there was one little thing that she heard me say in the first week that really spoke to her and affected her, and that was, "Everyday I ask Ayla what she did at school that day and the silence is deafening.  I have know idea what she does at school or whether she enjoyed her day".  Her teacher acted on this immediately and at the end of each week, I have received a picture collage of Ayla's school activities for the week and you can browse through them below.  Some of my favourites aren't here ....They are in pdf format and I haven't had time to reload photoshop on to my computer so that I can convert them to a jpeg. 

And newly implemented is a daily activity log of removable pictures telling me what lessons she did that day and how it made Ayla feel.  This is really exciting because it means that at the end of the school day, I can sit down with Ayla and we can go through this together.  It's like having an after school conversation with my daughter!!  It's almost normal .....almost :).