So for those of you who didn't see my post last month on FB, Luke officially got his autism diagnosis from the district's psychologist. I had a lot of feelings about it.
We actually had his ARD last week with the whole gang. Everyone agreed that he's just the sweetest kid, which is good since he can be quite a pill at home most days. He's going well academically, but he's still a bit behind his peers in reading and writing, which isn't a great shock considering that his expressive and receptive speech is his #1 issue. So he gets one-on-one help during those times in class. But I question this a bit because apparently he's been "reading" Captain Underpants books during their DARE (drop everything and read) time, and CU is waaaaay above his reading level. We have a parent-teacher conference tomorrow, so we'll probably bring that up. Pleasure reading doesn't seem that effective if he's not actually reading.
The big kiddo is doing well at school still. He's currently making straight-As, and 4/5 of his 7 classes are technically honors classes since ALL the core classes are honors classes. (And I say 4/5 because they have one 2 period class they call the integrated humanities program that serves as their language arts and social studies credits, but it's one grade on the reports.) He's also taking biology, Spanish, and geometry/Euclid's Elements as honors classes.
He also spent a week in Colorado 2 weeks ago on a 5 day backpacking trip with a small group of boys from his class. Way cooler than anything I ever got to do in school. Pics attached. Mine's the one with the hair. He's also bringing up the rear in the pic where they're actually hiking. His backpack doesn't match because he was the only kid on the trip who actually supplied his own gear as opposed to borrowing it from the expedition company that the school used, and as such, he came home less sore than everyone else, despite his feet problems, probably because his backpack has been properly fitted and he's received more than 15 minutes of instruction on how to pack it.