dmmetler

I think they handled the homeschooling stuff well, and JJ needing an extra year makes sense, except that this shouldn’t be coming up in Spring of his senior year, it should have come up in his IEP and transition planning meetings. I love that Maya was being largely successful-and that JJ was the one who decided that he needed to go back. And I loved Jimmy saying his piece for once. Dylan and Ray were shoehorned in to keep them from being entirely absent.

I just got the complete series on DVD, and am quite enjoying it. I’m impressed at how much the boundaries are pushed for a 1960’s show :) And how good Jeannie was at shutting down unwanted attention.

The thing is, it’s on both sides. My parents didn’t catch the reduction in services until it started causing trouble in the classroom grade-wise because the IEP support had no one to provide it. The same applies here. A school putting JJ in 1/2 of a stretch Algebra 1 class and School B missing that JJ actually has not completed Algebra 1, and that not being noticed until school F is looking at credits for graduation would also be something Maya and Jimmy should have caught. Since JJ was in a special needs school at one point, it would be very possible that some classes weren’t offered at all at. High school level, and it was missed when he transferred to a mainstream setting. Maya would have been the most likely person to catch that-but the fact that classes weren’t offered at a level leading to actual proficiency would be on the school. Another option would be for JJ to struggle with required tests due to a weak background due to moving frequently or low standards at his prior schools, and that now that the school isn’t giving him an automatic bye due to being disabled, it’s coming out that he’s not as well prepared as everyone thought, he has to play catch-up. Again, it happens. And again, it partially falls on the parent. I think they could either handle this very well, or very poorly. I have hope that they’ll handle it well. I’m very nervous about the homeschooling part of it-TV tends to handle homeschooling badly, and honestly, pulling a kid out midway through senior year (and pulling out siblings who are successful in a fit of pique) rarely ends well.

On the “JJ not on track to graduate”, I thought “real ways schools dropped the ball” might be instructive”. i got dropped from Speech/Language on moving to middle school despite still clearly qualifying. The rationale given was “teens don’t want to seem different”. Without having the therapist to work with, several parts of my IEP (like prior notice of oral assignments so I could work with the speech therapist on them) didn’t happen. That happened for a year until I asked about it myself-and then it took another year to get me back into therapy. (And my speech intelligibility rose dramatically in high school because I had a therapist who worked on that instead of specific articulation, so that time was not wasted).

I’m a little nervous about this one. I know a lot of families where homeschooling ends up being the only viable option for their kids with special needs, and TV shows tend to play on the stereotypes heavily, not the reality.

The other thing is that in the South, a decent number of high schools have majorette style dance teams, usually as adjuncts to the Marching band (although like with color guard, there are also separate competitions) and school teams have their own separate competition outlets. But I can’t think of a single school that does Dance Moms style competition dance (YAGP, for a performing arts magnet, maybe...)

I took the “Men can be nurses” as a reference to Strax...totally forgot that Rory was also a nurse!

I loved JJ and BB-8 bonding over being unable to go up the stairs :) I wonder if Dylan still has the snake?

The "can I have a family?" Brought back memories. Back in the early internet days (pre WWW) I was on a listserv for parents of kids with CP and the single question parents asked me most was "you're married? To someone able bodied? How does that work?"Having said that, I married someone who had grown up with a sibling with CP. That makes a difference. I'm at the mild/moderate end, though, and the demands on a spouse are less "physical caregiver" and more "need to be understanding". On careers, JJ may end up being in the situation where he can't afford to work. I know two people who are similar in functioning to JJ who are minimally paid volunteers for non-profits (often working and paid for only a handful of hours/week, but volunteering far more), because the jobs in their fields (both work with computers, one as a website designer, the other as a DBMS specialist) simply cannot cover the costs for someone like Kenneth. They have to keep their federal and state support.

Also, coaches tend to send kids to their alma mater. I'm guessing there are a lot of high school dance team/private team coaches who were ladybirds. Even if Todd doesn't favor the students of his past favorites, they know what he's looking for and can recommend the school to girls who would be a good fit.

I know the answer is "for plot", but why not just show up at some Catholic or Orthodox Church on Sunday, and dunk the spear in the wine? Theologically, it becomes the blood of Christ during the mass for churches that believe in transubstantiation. It is far more likely that Sir Gawaine, who is in legend as the most Catholic of the knights, would have been buried with a flask of blessed Communion wine than the literal blood of someone who had not been corporate for 5-600 years! The cup and spear lasting, yeah, maybe, but not the blood.

I'd love to see Laurie Anne preparing the girls for and sending them out to actual commercial auditions, instrad of another season of competitions. And given the results in the past, I assume Laurie Anne's dances lost not due to not understanding competition dance, but that the narrative called for a loss.

I'm going to assume it's an art school within a larger college, and she's essentially a dual enrollment student. Not all that uncommon, although more so for academics than art,and DE does generally require permission of the department if it's not one of the set classes on the list.

Please tell me most college students are more mature and less middle school than these seem... And for that matter, please tell me most college dance team coaches are more mature and stay out of rivalries and don't have such obvious favorites? Seriously, my 12 yr old's middle school cheer team has less drama... Also, why would you only have half the girls dance for halftime, etc? They aren't being judged, and performing in front of the audience is a set of skills that cannot be practiced just in the studio. Cutting for competition I can see, but you can easily fit 40 dancers on a basketball court or football field!

Still have the soundtrack :)

I would really like to see someone from the US National cheer team do the ANW course. The girls would probably be too short (the gymnast problem), but the guys are pretty impressive, and maybe it would help gain recognition as the sport fights for Olympic recognition (and NCAA recognition, for that matter).

We're flying to Reno so my DD can do a specific program (which is why flying to Maine for a specific camp is not surprising to me. I can imagine that camps designed for kids at JJ's level of physical needs are relatively rare. I know several for kids with other special needs, but usually they're focused on kids who need minimal physical assistance.) We've done our family vacation there for the last 2 years. This is the last year for her to do the week long program. The teens go for 3 weeks, which is a bit long for DH and I to stay there for our vacation.

Can we get Caity Lotz, too? Canary and Green Arrow would make a pretty awesome ninja team!

You mean the folks who advertise on AMC (at least on demand). Seriously, I think they're advertising to Jimmy McGill's Elder law demographic.

I don't know anything about angina, but sometimes capsules are used with the intent that they be opened, and a powder dropped on the tongue or under it dissolves fast (or is sometimes used if the drug is to be taken with food-especially for children or animals-in that case, the drug is mixed with spoonful of something that the patient will readily eat).

The Girl Scout council here has a one week special needs camp that utilizes a lot of volunteers (senior Girl Scouts, college students, high school kids who need service hours, state scholarship recipients). They also hire paid staff who are experienced working with disabilities. My head canon is that Kenneth found the camp, signed up as either a volunteer or as paid staff, and then suggested it to J.J.

Aren't Colonel and Captain equivalent ranks, with Colonel being land forces and Captain sea ones? That kind of took me out of the moment when Grant acknowledged Sara.

Sara defaulting to planning to kill Darhk makes sense to me. She's a trained assassin, and while she has tried to leave that life behind, we've seen her choose to return to it when times get tough. Since it's now canon in the CW DCU that Laurel was the most perfect, inspirational snowflake that ever lived, and Sara can't go back to a LOA that no longer exists, it makes sense to me that she would retreat to planning an assassination. And, well, Nyssa is pretty closely associated with the LOA for Sara, too-so it also kind of makes sense to be that she'll replace that side of the LOA with whoever is handy, too. I really, really want them to bring over Nyssa. And if they can pick up Katana on the way, I won't mind that, either.

I don't understand why Kayla's mom was objecting to her taking classes with Torrey. Not only does he know his stuff, but even if he hadn't explicitly said that she could take classes for free, she probably could have done so at a deeply discounted rate because they're both Dollhouse employees. That's not minor for a college student teaching dance part-time. I do wonder what she's majoring in. If she were majoring in dance, she'd probably be dancing several hours a day. I assume she's had Ballet in the past, but dropped it to work on Hip-hop.

I really liked the coach swap. It let us see more girls. I appreciate Tyrus going with girls who we don't see every week for the same reason. I do agree that it seems like the Elite Stars may not have as many levels/developmental teams as the Dancing dolls do. And maybe they're a younger (as in years under the same coach) team overall, as well as possibly in age.