[blindkid] Grade 2 vs. Grade 1 Braille

[Tina Egle]

Hi everyone,

what is the best strategy to persuade our I.E.P. team to put it in writing
that the classroom teacher need to start doing grade 2 braille only when
it comes to braille lesson time.
  My son had been taught contracted braille since he was in 3rd to 5th
grade (He was using Mount Batton, Braille n Speak and other Brailler but
he types and read grade 2 level ) but we have moved from 2 different
districts because of safety concerns, even though Justin was receiving
great Braille lessons from his first public school system, they did not
allow him to have 1:1 aide when he desperately needed one due to his
epileptic episodes and being autistic and non verbal, he kept falling
and they did not address the autism issues so he often took off from the
playground and fell many times and hit his head, that school would send
him home with blood on his face and shirt and they did not even bother
to take him to the nurse to clean up, and I never got phone call to pick
him up early. So we moved to a different district then, that school
refused to give him braille lessons saying he tested super low on IQ
test and it turned out that they never gave him appropriate test so the
test was designed to fail him purposely, and so now we got him to go to
a vision program out of district and out of our region since we win the
case that he can read and write braille. I had to give him private
braille lessons for 2 years, taking him half day out of school to do
that.

Now we got another battle, the new 9th grade vision program also is saying
that there is no time to teach Justin to Grade 2 Braille, they said the
reason they need him to only do Grade 1 is for him to make sure he learn
how to spell.  Justin has excellent spelling ability ( about 90%
accuracy), I taught him spelling since he was 2 years old using speech
output computers from V tech and when he got older we switched to computer
program with NVDA, sample jaws etc..
We have no problem with his spelling, he is 16 years old now, he got
plenty of time before he become a Senior and he is a quick learner and had
not forgotten some of the contractions, granted that he still need to
learn and memorize about 30 more left.

How can I convince them to give it a shot at Grade 2, since now when he
typed at home, he is typing and reading contracted Braille but all notes
coming back from his classroom were done in Grade 1 only. He is now
confused. I have 3 staffs who worked on braille on hourly base from Mon to
Fri and he always typed contracted Braille with them and on weekends, when
I do Braille lessons, he typed Grade 2. As soon as he is in classroom, he
switched to grade 1 and that is bugging me.  This is not good for totally
blind kid, who already was exposed to Grade 2 now, we are going backwards.
 As far as spelling is concerned they can test his spelling ability on his
speech output "Fusion" device which he use to communicate with staffs and
classmates.  I am very satisfy with all the other services that the vision
program is offering except I disagree about teaching him only grade 1
Braille which is a big problem.  The TVI who did Functional Vision
Assessment also agrees with me that Justin should be encourage only to
type, read and continue to learn Grade 2,( she came in via phone since she
lives 3 hours away,) on the last year IEP when he transition from 8th
grade to 9th.

Any suggestions?  Our next IEP is on April 9th.

Thanks so much,

Tina Egle