Oh my gracious!  Where has the last nine weeks gone??  We've been so very busy here at CLE that we've neglected catching everyone up on the latest happenings in the ESE Department!

We're excited to welcome Danielle Gorostiaga to the CLE ESE team as our 3rd grade VE Resource teacher!  She will be working with our 3rd grade VE students in reading, math, and language arts.  She will also be working with the 5th grade team during Science and Social Studies.

Miss Henry will now be working with 4th and 5th grade VE students for reading, language arts, and math as well as providing support facilitation for the 4th graders during Science and Social Studies in the general education classrooms.

Welcome back to another school year!  We're excited to begin fresh with new students, new teachers, and a new administrator!  Let's start with our new teacher; Ms. Henry.  Ms. Henry will be our new 3-5 VE Resource teacher.  She's energetic and full of great ideas, and we're very happy to have her join our wonderful CLE staff.  Our other new face is our Assistant Principal, Mrs. Harvey!  Mrs. Harvey comes to us with lots of experience and great ideas.  We think you'll enjoy meeting and getting to know her.  Welcome!

"So shines a good deed in a weary world" by David Seltzer for the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.  ~Leo Buscaglia

You never know how you're going to touch someone's life.  I recently had the priviledge of positively touching the heart of the father of a special needs child with only a kind comment. 

Mrs. Cloy was kind enough to recommend the following websites for you and your child to explore:

http://scholastic.com/parents/play/games/

http://www.starfall.com/

http://gamequarium.com/

So your child has met the eligiblity criteria and placed in the Gifted program.  Congratulations!!  Now what?

There are a variety of programs available to meet your child's unique and individual needs.

1.  Consultation ~ This option allows the child to remain with his/her general ed. classroom full time and will be monitored for progress by the Gifted Teacher.

2.  Resource Room/Enrichment ~ Your child attends an all day, once a week pull out enrichment program at his/her home school.

Mrs. Cloy would like to remind all of her wonderful "Cool Cats" and their parents there is a Vocabulary test every Friday!  Each student has a list of words given to them on Monday for practice.  Take that list home and study, study, study so you can be successful, successful, successful!  Thanks everyone and good luck!! 

Yesterday, a friend of mine sent a story which beautifully describes what it's like to have a child who has disabilities.  I thought our blog site is the perfect place to share this wonderful story!

Welcome To Holland
by Emily Perl Kingsley
c 1987
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland       

We always have an influx of new students right after the winter break, so it's expected that some of these newly enrolled students will receive ESE services. Last week, I had two whose situations couldn't have been more different.

One parent came with an updated IEP and re-evaluation from the child's exiting school. They met with Mr. Scholl since I was at an inservice and gave him all sorts of good information. When I came back to school the next day, I was able to make one quick phone call to confirm placement and had the child receiving all of his/her services within 24 hours.