I.E.Ps…oh the joys.

I.E.P stands for Individual Education Plan. They’re written up for children who are finding some aspects (or all aspects in many cases) of education a bit trying. They get updated every few months and all mine were due to be done today. A supply teacher was drafted in and I spent most of the day with the SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator) updating them. I have a lot in my class. As in a hell of a lot.

We started with my good chum Mohammed, he has a Statement (in layman’s terms his problems are so, er, unique that the school is given a certain amount of money by the L.E.A to help sort it out. This money is spent on a very nice lady who, bless ‘er, spends every morning with him helping him with the tasks I set, or occasionally taking him out of class to do his own thang. I have to say, the boy’s done well this year. He’s achieved the target I set in December of counting up to 20 (in order, which was part of the problem), recognising all the letters in his name, getting three smiley faces per day (he’s off that now, gets the same rewards as the other kids. Well, is able to get them anyway) and more besides. He’s not managed to recognise all the sounds the letters of the alphabet make though; W, X, Y and Z are a mystery to him at the best of times, and rather strangely ‘L’.

Timmy’s done well. So well we got him in and asked him what he’d like some of his new goals to be. One of his major hurdles is balance. Standing upright and not falling over can, at times, be a bit of a mission. So after we’d decided his academic targets (he’s achieved all the targets we set last time) he was asked what he’d like to do next. Rather touchingly his big ambition in P.E is to “do back flips”. Explained that they’re actually rather tricky…believe it or not Timmy, but even Mr.Chipz has never (intentionally) managed it. Did once trying to get down from a wall while pissed but that was an accident and I didn’t quite manage to land on my feet, but it was ok; my face broke the fall. We came to the mutual agreement that perhaps it would be best to master the forward roll first, and if he managed that we could look at the backwards roll. You should have seen his face. It was the sort of face Biggles would make if you told him he had to take on the entire Luftwaffe in a bi-plane, at night, armed only with a revolver. In other words; wild eyed determination. Bless his mismatched socks. I’m gonna fucking do this. By July 23^rd (end of term), Timmy is going to be doing forward rolls. Even if it kills me. Though more likely him, but hey, he chose the target.

We then went through all the others, generally there’s been all round successes, but not to the extent that any are coming off I.E.Ps and that’s probably a good thing for now.

Tomorrow we ‘meet’ our new classes. The kids don’t know who their teachers are next year and as usual there’s wild speculation. They don’t know yet that none of the teachers are moving so this year’s Year One are coming to me for half an hour in the morning. I’ll get them in a circle and they can tell me what they like. It won’t be as good as last year. Last year the children just thought of me as one of the teachers who taught the older ones and didn’t know what I was like. As they came into the classroom about four were crying hysterically and clinging desperately to anyone they could grab hold of. My next class know me fairly well so there should be no drama. Damn, they know I’m actually a soft bastard at heart. Rumbled.