Special Education Inner Circle

This is NOT an old school IEP checklist! IEPs have many boxes to check and forms to fill out, but somehow it always feels like we are missing something when we leave the IEP table. Use these 13 IEP Checkpoints to fill in the gaps and create a more collaborative IEP meeting. Free download: www.iepchecklist.com

Have you ever thought of picking up and moving to a better district? Almost every special needs parent & IEP team member I've ever talked to has had the same dream. But, will IEP progress really improve in a district with more resources? Maybe. Maybe Not. Continue the conversation at www.specialedinnercircle.com

With dozens of pages in every IEP it can be hard to focus and prioritize for everyone at the IEP table. When you look at the details in these 6 areas of the IEP, the rest can fall into place. Parent Input Statement Data (simplify!) Measurable Goals (don't make this complicated) Home to School Communication Plan Placement Teacher + Team Responsibilities Visit www.masterIEPcoach.com for more help. Special Needs Parents, Special Education Teachers + Teams, you got this!

Inclusive experiences between special education and general education students within Generation Z are going to need more support for all students than ever before. Use this new perspective to build inclusive experiences that are successful for everyone involved. Book: Generation Z Unfiltered by Tim Elmore Master IEP Coach Mentorship: www.masterIEPcoach.com

Stop thinking you're supposed to do Special Education alone. Parents & Teachers if you had an honest conversation with each other, you'd find out that nobody expects one person to know everything about Special Education. It's time to stop figuring out special education by yourself and do these 3 things: 1. Lean into your expertise. 2. Be humble instead of humiliated when you need help. 3. Stop faking it. You're not supposed to know it all. Decide you are done doing special education alone. We have too many tears, too many people feeling burnt out, and too much turnover in special education. You can flip the negative feelings when you surround yourself with people who get it! Resources: Master IEP Coach: www.masterIEPcoach.com Special Education Inner Circle: www.specialedinnercircle.com

After 20+ years of writing IEPs with parents and teachers, I've learned a few things... 1. You're never going to get every goal a child needs into the IEP. 2. A child will shutdown if you stuff their day with direct instruction hour after hour. 3. A child needs time to "be a kid" in their school day. This is often when their biggest milestones will be met. Need help? Visit www.masterIEPcoach.com Get Full Podcast Notes Here: https://www.catherinewhitcher.com/blog/stopcrammingiep

Podcast Highlights: IEPs vs 504s is a hot topic in special education. I'm going to go over six points, real quick, just to give you an overview so you know what questions to ask next about supports for your child at school. (00:51) The first thing that you need to know, point number one is that there is a difference between which law is governing this document that's going to help a child with their education. So here's my disclaimer. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not practicing the law, but I am telling you where to look. So if you're going to start pursuing an IEP, you're going to be looking at IDEA law. For a 504 plan, you're looking at the section 504 of the rehabilitation act of 1973. (01:55) Each of these documents have accountability systems set up. It's just knowing where you need to look and who you need to talk to about the support documents. 504's get a bad reputation for not being enforceable. It's not that it's not enforceable, it's that it's enforceable in a different way. (02:48) Now when it comes to eligibility, this is very different between the two different documents. An IEP has eligibility categories. The federal government has said, here are all these different categories. I like to think of them as buckets. So there's these buckets and then we put the child's traits or needs inside of the buckets. We set them out and whichever bucket gets filled up fastest, that typically becomes the primary eligibility category and then sometimes there's a secondary eligibility category. The awesome thing about an IEP is that you're not limited to services based on that eligibility category. (03:44) In a 504 plan, what we're really looking for is does the child need additional things to access their education the same as their peers. So we're not really looking for an official category. We're looking for needs that are not being met, which are actually stopping a child from accessing their education the same as their peers. So they might need some additional supports, accommodations, modifications. We'll talk about that in just a minute and what those can look like. But it's not so much that they have to have a specific category, they just have to have specific needs. (04:40) Age limits, when it comes to an IEP, the age limit is the 22nd birthday. But when it comes to a 504 plan, there is no age limit and it's not limited to the traditional school years. It can go onto college, it can go into a workplace and go to a lot of different places and follow with it with a child into adulthood because it's under a completely different law. Now what does an IEP or a 504 actually do? An IEP is to provide a free and appropriate public education, to meet a child's unique needs, and to help prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living. (05:44) A 504 is giving equal access. It's a plan that designs equal access so a child can do the same thing as their peers or that a person could do the same thing as their peers. It doesn't have that extra layer of specialized instruction that an IEP has to support and teach a child. Point number five, What's inside the documents. Inside of an IEP, you're definitely going to see goals. A child's going to have a deficit in specific areas that relate to those core areas of further education, employment, independent living. They're going to have deficits which are going to require goals and specialized instruction and maybe a different placement than the standard classroom and there's going to be services most likely inside of that IEP, whether it's from a resource teacher, an OT, a PT, a speech therapist. (06:53) A 504 plan is streamlined into accommodations, modifications and supports. So that could be things like having directions read to the child versus the child having to read directions by themselves. It can be an extra set of books. It could be specialized technology. It could be anything that they need to modify the environment or the lessons so they can do the same thing as their peers. (07:49) How often can the documents change? As often as needed, but the bottom line is that both documents need a thorough review annually to decide what is appropriate for the child going forward. (08:43) Is the document working? Is it not working? How much needs to be changed inside of that document? These six points will help you as a member of an IEP team or a special education team or as a parent. Start asking the questions that you need to ask to ensure that every child is getting the education that they need for their future. If you have more questions about the Master IEP Coach program and how you can not only dig deeper into this for your own family, for your classroom, but you also want to help others visit www.masterIEPcoach.com

Our special education laws and system are outdated and holding students back. It's time to lean in and work together, as special education teachers and special needs parents, to create an entirely new education for all students. Building an IEP for the future is critical for the success of our entire special needs community. You don't need to do more. We need to do better. READ ENTIRE TRANSCRIPT & SHOW NOTES HERE

Inclusion Podcast Highlights (00:19) We're going to talk today about three different things that you can do to avoid the trap of having students earn inclusion. We really do not want to approach inclusion from the standpoint of earning inclusion. If inclusion has to be earned it really starts to give a feeling not just for the student, but for the entire student body, that inclusion is something that you earn to be with the good kids. And if you don't earn inclusion, you go to the special education room as if that's a bad thing. (01:26) Now that's not the intention of the IEP team of the teachers, or the staff, or the team, but it's what the feeling is and that's really what inclusion is... Inclusion is a feeling. Now we've all felt excluded from activities, right? You as a parent, as a teacher, as an adult, you have felt excluded from a party or a community event or maybe a workshop that you're attending. You know what that feels like? Let's really work on creating inclusive experiences on your school campus for every child from the minute that they step off the bus to the time they go back home, they should feel included as part of the school body. So the first thing, our first step that you need to do when you're struggling with this concept of inclusion is to really figure out what does inclusion mean specifically for this student's inclusive experiences. (02:30) Inclusion Does not mean taking a child who learns differently and plopping them into a general education environment. Inclusion means making sure that a child can participate in an activity at their level and that they are accepted for who they are. Inclusion does not mean that you're doing everything that everybody else is doing. Inclusion does not mean that you have to be put out of your comfort zone and struggle to keep up with everybody else. Inclusion can mean participating a reading activity where everybody is in the same classroom and they're reading their own books and they're having their own snack and they have their own juice sitting on their desk and a child is participating collaboratively in a parallel activity. (03:28) What are the child's strengths? What are we looking to achieve? Where are we really looking to create? When we talk about this inclusive experience, that's your task number one. Now remember, this does not need to be an academic activity, but it also should not default to the standard gym music art as the options for inclusion. A lot of times those are the most difficult classes to include a child for a variety of reasons. The second step that you need to do is to start taking data and not just on the student. When you're looking to create more inclusive experiences, it's time to start taking data as a team for what you are doing as a team to support a child, not just in their accommodations and modifications in their current environment and not just on their accommodations and modifications and supports and inclusive environment, but also what are you doing to teach the skills that are needed for that inclusive experience that you've defined as a an achievement you've defined as a goal. (05:56) Now, third thing that I want you to do is set some really, really clear timelines, deadlines and communication plans. We cannot create effective inclusive experiences if we don't have timelines of who's doing what, deadlines for when we decide is this working or not, and full communication plans between the team. Parents, teachers, therapists, and also the general education teachers...They all need to be included in this communication plan. (07:44) This is not just about a child working towards being in a less restrictive environment. This is about the team supporting a child to live in a community longterm with peers of all ability levels. Inclusion is not about being like the other kids. Inclusion is about preparing a child for further education, employment, independent living, which is the entire purpose of an IEP. That means inclusive experiences need to happen because we do not live in communities where they're not going to experience inclusion. In fact, students are going to be tossed into inclusion when the school years are over beyond what they've ever experienced in a school system. So we need to do our work now by taking these steps and preparing every child for inclusive experience on their school campus. Remember, if you want to learn more on how to make all of this happen, you can join me at www.masteriepcoach.com

Facts or Feelings - How are you making IEP Decisions? Listen in to learn the one red flag statement both parents and teachers should be aware of at the IEP table. During this live conversation on Facebook, Catherine shared how to know when you're making a decision based on facts or feelings. Next, special needs parents jumped in with questions about how to make their next decisions for their children. Make your next IEP decisions easier with your own IEP checklist at www.iepchecklist.com