Help, school b.s. is about to start again! IEP meeting friday

[HaoZi]

Oh yeah, get an advocate, either from this group or elsewhere, and drag everything out until you get EVERY accommodation V needs from the school and sign nothing until you get it. Don't let the school pressure you, either.

 

[BusynMember]

You can find out who your free advocate is (they do NOT work for the school) by calling your Dept. of Public Education and the special needs dept. have to tell you who is in your area. I wouldn't sign the papers until an advocate saw it, although I was threatened with, "We can do it anyway, even if you don't sign it." So...not sure how much it matters.

 

[Liahona]

That is a lot to put on a benchmark. I would've put one of those on a whole goal and then added benchmarks to get there. For example 'V will ask for help 100 percent of the time' being the goal. Then break it up into more realistic chunks for the benchmarks. 'V will realize he needs help... V will raise his hand for help when prompted... V will go to the teacher for help when prompted... V will independently raise his hand for help... You get the picture. Lots of baby steps that he would need to reach before he could do it.

IEPs are a work in progress. If it isn't working call another one and change the IEP. Do try to keep them shorter though. By the end of 3.5 hours some people aren't going to be thinking straight and will just be going with emotion.

As for the teacher what she says in front of her boss or to people who could talk to her boss might be different than what she says to you. Sounds like all the private therapies helped get V the starting of an IEP. Way to go mom!

 

[Ktllc]

Thanks, Liahona! You were able to put into words what I could not: those goals are so big and not broken down into simple steps it felt like "vague" to me... the only word I could come up with.
I will keep your advice in mind, for next time.
I hope the adovacate agency will call me back today. My guess of what I'll have to do: call the school back with the few suggestions from TEACCH, therapists and maybe advocate. If they don't want to change it, ok. I'll wait until first quater next year and see what needsto be tweaked. I'll have to admit it was hard tp come up with anything since the teacher did not seem to really know where he was at and where he was really strugling. If you ask e, she showed a poor image of herself.