Setting Goals and Plans in Place

Ye gads! 

Melia's laptop camera stopped working. She needs it for her Japanese lesson bright and early Monday morning. Michael and she worked on the problem. It seems the virus protection was seeing her camera as a virus - but nothing they did helped. He said we'd buy her an external camera, but we needed a solution NOW. 

We went to bed planning for Melia to use my new laptop for her Japanese lesson.  The two of us were up and ready...and then the camera was showing the ceiling....and we couldn't figure out HOW it was showing the ceiling...until we realized my PHONE is connected to the new laptop and the camera on the phone was activated. We eventually got it all working (I disabled blue tooth on my phone), and Ms. Kim said Melia did great today. 

Stacia and Melia went for lunch to a Cat Cafe today. Melia did great at getting right back to her remaining schoolwork when they came home! 

I headed to Walmart for an eye appointment. I have new glasses on order and instructions not to skip an ANNUAL exam (it'd been 2 1/2 years or so).

My next stop was to visit Dad. It was a nice visit, and I told him I'd be back on Thursday. 

I followed this visit by a drive across town and a 1.5-hour meeting with our new IDEA contact teacher. Melia has a goal of being a nurse practitioner. Her current transcript doesn't support that goal.  She missed the 2nd half of her freshman year, the first month of her sophomore year and quite honestly neither the contact teacher nor I could figure out why she was placed in courses she was in her freshman year. I was glad the professional was as perplexed as I. It doesn't look like there has been a clear plan in determining her courses. Enough said.  The meeting started with me being told she probably couldn't get a strong enough transcript to qualify for the Alaska Performance Scholarship and ended with a completed ILP (learning plan), scheduled placement tests (so we can target holes and fill them), a commitment to talk a few issues over with the supervisor to be sure "nothing can be done," a plan on how to qualify for the Alaska Performance Scholarship by graduation and  with me saying, "We WILL get this done if Melia wants it done. I just need help rather than roadblocks."  We should at least try! Right?  Her contact teacher is excited to meet her and committed to tackling roadblocks with us. That's all I could ask for.  Well - I actually asked if we could ignore her first semester grades as we are taking the COMPLETE courses online now and she is making A's...so if she's doing the work can we just ignore those grades from the 6 weeks this fall? We can't. Oh, well. We'll make it work. 

Sometimes advocating is exhausting.  I arrived home drained. 

We had planned to go see The Lord of the Rings, which is in theaters just now.  Michael, Stacia and Melia left to drive into Anchorage and meet Jamin and Jared. I am going to sit in a recliner with some tea, a book and try to "we-lax" after being rather wound up all day. 😏