Jeff Said:

receptive/expressive impairment and pragmatic impairment?

We Answered:

Hi,
I am a SLD (Specific Learning Disability) teacher for grades 1-2, and I have a lot of experience working with children with these types of communication impairments. With team involvement, early intervention and caring parents, your child should do very well.
Basically, your child will be working on either remediating the effected areas of the brain, or building new connections in the brain in order to overcome the problems. This is why it is so important to intervene early,(as you have) as these problems may manifest themselves in the classroom later on. Some areas where they may(not always) become evident in the classroom are:
1. Listening and following directions.
2. Developing phonemic awareness for reading
( Connecting letters to sounds, connecting sounds to blended letters in phonics, writing/spelling. Maybe the child can say the sounds, but writing the sounds connected to the appropriate letters could be a difficult area.)
3. Listening/reading comprehension. ( Your child may not be able to answer questions that are not concrete...eg. Can answer obvious, more factual questions, but may have difficulty with Why questions or What if types of questions.Also, there may be some recall difficulties after listening to a story or reading a story. ( Can't remember what was just read.)
4. Understanding idioms ( A cats got your tongue...) in speech and filling in gaps in conversation that we naturally fill in based on experience.May have difficulty with taking things literally. May have difficulty with understanding sarcasm, body language in conversation, anything that is not literal. Also understanding and using context clues for reading comprehension may be difficult. ( In other words, making a jump not based on information actually provided in text, such as cause and effect in a story.)
I am not telling this to scare you. I am telling this so that you can have a heads up and scan the horizon to address these issues before the child becomes overly frustrated. You should take note of any of these things you notice, because the parents are the VERY BEST advocate for the child. If you note these things to teachers in the future, it will save your child unnecessary frustration, and also help the teacher tremendously. ( EG...Please be direct and concrete with my son when you are asking him to put his belongings away. EG:Please do not tell him to do it "Lickety Split" or in "No time flat" as he may have difficulty with the request.)
Also,if you have not already, you should try to start making connections between letters and sounds in reading. Read EVERY night, and point to or under each word as you read. SOUND out the words as you read at times. This will build these connections in the brain. Play games with letters and sounds ( Get Fridge Phonics (Toys R Us) ....a game for the fridge that sings and repeats the sounds....may seem babyish, but it works!) Also, ask questions about what was read. Build confidence with concrete level questions...Where is the Cat in the Hat? (points) Where is Thing 1? (points) What color is the couch? ( says it).....Now progress a little....Where did the mom go...do you think? Where could she have gone? (If the answer is not provided) Name some possibilities.....Why did the Cat in the Hat make such a mess? Model some reasons if you child does not know...provide an extension from the text to additional ideas/possibilites as often as possible. Also, build upon your childs schema( Schema is knowledge and experience, and connections with experiences) For example, in the car or times when there is nothing to do9waiting for a dr appt, or in line), say...Lets name all the things we can that are always or usually...... yellow...or....green...or .blue.....red.....Then build...Things that have to do with Christmas, baseball, Fourth of July, (later) four legged animals, furry animals,science, dinosaurs,etc. This forces the child to recall all kinds of previously learned information and make connections between them. It is a great exercise.
Also, my 2 year old son is currently in Early Intervention. He has Sensory Integration Dysfunction and mild cognitive auditory delay. He is extremely bright, but his sensory system does not regulate properly to his changing environment, which causes extreme behavioral issues. It is a different problem than your child has, but I am telling you that I know what it feels like to be faced with this type of situation personally. He currently receives Speech and OTweekly, and has made many improvements, but it is not easy. Good luck and I hope you found this helpful.

Jane Said:

Do people that are very negative about other peoples' achievements annoy you?

We Answered:

I would report her if I were you. That's not good & quite discouraging for the students.

She's got the "Dean Pritchard" syndrome from the movie "Old School" with Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn & Luke Wilson.
She was probably picked on by someone back in her day & now that she is in some kind of power position, she's gone haywire with it like a mad scientist.