Why Does This Child Need a Grade?

This year one of my students is a brain cancer survivor. She's had plenty of surgeries, she's got a shunt in her head that you can feel through her hair, and there's a real potential that the cancer could come back at any time. She's been through hell, and she's only six.

The neat thing is that she's also about the happiest little girl that you could ever hope to meet. Her parents are also the salt of the earth, folks who are just happy that their little girl is alive. Academically she's a mess--her kindergarten year was a long series of surgeries and treatments--but her spirit has come through unscathed, and that's a beautiful thing to see.

(Aside: One day she asks me to walk her to the bathroom. "K," I say, "you've been to the bathroom plenty of times. You can get there by yourself." "Mr. Grant," she replies, "my memory's not very good--the doctors had to cut my brain during the surgery!")

A problem I'm running into, though, is that she doesn't have either an IEP or a 504 plan, which means that I'm going to have to grade her against the "normal" first grade standards. Given that she missed a ton of kindergarten and came to me in first grade with a significant skills deficit, that means that she'll be at the very bottom of our scale in every area:

4--Exceeds Standards
3--Meets Standards
2--Working Towards Standards
1--Well Below Standard

....and that doesn't seem very fair. I can work towards getting her IEP'd as an "Other Health Impairment", and she should have no problem getting the label, but as the special ed teacher pointed out, is specially designed instruction really going to do a whole lot for her? My understanding of her situation is that the brain may eventually heal to a point that she can be a competent learned, but it'll be a process to be able to get there.

I'm just kind of feeling like the Grinch when I ponder filling out her first trimester report card next month, and that's not a happy feeling.

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