A High School Open House with My Child with Autism
Open house.
Every school has them, at some point during the year. It’s a chance for the student and parents to visit their classrooms, see some work, and talk to the teacher.
What about my son’s open house?
This year open house, my son’s second in high school (sophomore year), was a success.
We live close to the school so we walked.
Once we arrived, my husband and I let our son take us to his classes, in whatever order he wanted.
We visited with his Spanish teacher, his math teacher, his English teacher, and his chemistry teacher (one teacher was absent).
How did it go?
All of the visits went well. My husband and I agreed that we had never had such good reports from an open house. That was a relief. The reports were glowing.
I guess we weren’t that surprised. We hadn’t heard from any teacher this year. No “we have to talk” emails or “Your son did this today” emails.
Yay!
Any “hiccups?”
Two minors ones…
I did have to redirect him once or twice.
I noticed that when he entered a classroom, he wanted to walk in and say, “Hi,” right away to his teacher. The first teacher we visited, this was fine because the teacher just happened to be alone.
Yet, in the other three classes we visited, the teacher was already engaged with other parents/students.
I realized this pretty quickly when I observed my son walk into his second classroom and immediately begin to say “hi” to his teacher, yet his teacher wasn’t available.
I stopped him, and explained to him that he had to wait. He needed to come into the room, assess the situation, and then adjust his greeting. Save it for when it was our turn to talk to the teacher.
The only other “hiccup” was reported by his English teacher.
He asked if it were possible if our son only said “Goodbye, Mr. _______” once at the end of class and not several times.
We agreed this was totally possible and told the teacher that we’d discuss this with our son.
I talked to him about this minor adjustment. He promised to try to stick to one “goodbye.”
How was the overall experience?
So positive, calm, and encouraging.
Besides the great teacher reports, it was nice to see my son say “hello” to teachers he had in freshman year and even say “hi” to some classmates.
We stopped by and talked with his counselor who discussed a summer school option with us. He seems to really connect with this counselor, and we like her a lot.
Additionally, we ran into parents we’d known for years. It’s always nice to re-connect.
Only good open house vibes happening here!
A High School Open House with My Child with Autism
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