With contributions from Robin McMillan
Happy (??!!?) September everyone! The school year is almost upon us. And for many parents of children with CAS, this can be a stressful, and even perhaps scary, time. There are a BUNCH of amazing resources about school and education on the CASANA website that you should absolutely check out. Our favourites include IEP guidance, Letters to Teachers about CAS, Support for advocating for your child’s needs, and even an article on ‘promoting or retaining’ as the school year comes to an end (although that seems very very far away right now!).
We wanted to take the opportunity to highlight an amazing ‘Getting Ready for School’ resource made by fellow Ontarian and parent of a child with CAS, Robin McMillian, also the founder of Ottawa Parents of Children with Apraxia.
This is a WORD document that you can download and personlize yourself or with your child, to send to the school. This is a great document to send in BEFORE school starts, and also a great document to have on hand during school meetings about your child (e.g. IEP meetings). It’s also great to send with your child on the first day of school, and perhaps to extracirricular activities where the child might want to share personal information but cannot do so verbally.
The last 2 pages are meant to be ways to communicate daily between home and school (or extracirriculars). You could laminate and re-use them with a wipe-off marker, or print multiple and recycle (or keep!) daily.
Most local copy shops (e.g. staples, UPS) offer laminating and binding at reasonable prices so you might even have time to get the book waterproofed and bound before sending it off with your child.
Wishing everyone a great 1st day of school next week!!
