RISE!!!

We have been very fortunate to have been contacted by numerous parents who have children with Down Syndrome (referred to hereafter as DS, for brevity's sake) and various DS groups throughout the city of Houston (and beyond!).  The one piece of advice we kept hearing was to contact the RISE School and get Mara on the wait list there asap.  So, I got all aggressive and called to sign her up...when she was but a mere four days old (for those of you who know me well, this runs counter to my usual procrastinating, non-competitive self...I felt like a psycho "tiger mom"). 

We went for a tour on Monday and it was truly a wonderful place.  They will be expanding this August and moving into a brand-spankin' new school that I cannot wait to see.  In the meantime, what we saw was awesome--a place where you could sense how happy and loved all of the children were and even more importantly, how much they were learning and how, well, normal it was.  Expectations were high but individualized (alas, if only our public schools could mesh those two so well, but that's fodder for a whole other blog!) and I was impressed by the employees and the openness of everything.  The goal of the school (which only goes up to Pre-K) is prepare the kids for their next academic environment, ideally the least restrictive one.  My kind of philosophy!  Hopefully Aidan will also be able to enroll there (they have classes with 10 students each and it's a reverse inclusion set up--the majority of the students are special needs but there are 3-4 (usually siblings) in each room who aren't special needs learning in the same room as their peers, which is quite an opportunity for everyone) but we left feeling so happy that we had found such a great school and one that made us think, "Our daughter is going to be at a great place, and oh, she has down syndrome" instead of thinking, "Our daughter has down syndrome and has to be at this "different" place."  Here's the link to the website:  http://www.riseschool.org/houston/

*Disclaimer--I swear we're not getting any kickbacks or our kids automatically enrolled in the school b/c of this glowing report--the place really was that great!  (And Mr. A was a HUGE fan of their various playgrounds, playroom, and classrooms--he started crying when we left one room that had a sandbox inside...very discerning in terms of his education, that one!)