A Reminder of Your Rights:
To attend IEP meetings An independent evaluation (paid by you) Deny or allow evaluations of your child Your right to mediation To invite anyone who knows your child that will aid in the IEP meeting, family members, doctors, respite provider, etc. ____________________________________________ Because your child's education is a team effort the IEP should not be written prior to the meeting. Everyone can come to the meeting with notes and ideas but you should never sign a completed IEP before the meeting is conducted. The goals should be based upon what the student, parent and providers share at that meeting, which would make it impossible to have the IEP prepared beforehand. Student Preparation I have found this part to be new to many parents. Previously, students may or may not be invited to the meeting and if they were invited to the meeting they watched and listened. Student-led inclusion begins with the IEP meeting. Cutting edge special education teachers are now making it the norm to have students attend meetings from a very young age, even has preschoolers. When they are very young they may not participate, but do get used to attending the meetings. Around 3rd or 4th grade a power point presentation will begin to transfer the job of meeting moderator to the student. How is this done? If your special education teacher is participating in this type of IEP meeting the SPED teacher will take the student aside to prepare the power point with the student. If the SPED teacher is not interested in a student-led meeting you can make this with your student and help her to present it. Practice is important either way. Let your SPED teacher know your child will be presenting a power point and that you would like a room that can accommodate the presentation. The power point presentation should include at least: 1-3 hobbies your child enjoys 1-2 Good friends of your child Something your child enjoys about school Something that is difficult for your child at school What your child feels helps her at school in terms of accommodations. What does your child want to become? The disability your child has. (Yes, your child should know her disability) Pictures can be included of the child doing the things that she enjoys, family members, whatever is important to the student. What this is not...... a slideshow made by the adult about the child. The presentation is made from information the student provides, not the adult. The first meeting this is used the slides might be clicked through and then the student can ask if there are any questions by those at the meeting. As the student gets used to participating more, the student can describe the slides and give more information and field more questions. If the student is non-verbal picture prompts can help the student identify what things they want included. The purpose of this type of IEP meeting is to give ownership of the child's education to the child. Why wait until a student is 16 to begin this process? Whenever a student is included in their own goal making there is a greater likelihood they will want to accomplish their goals. The power point presentation also lets everyone in the room get to know the student in a personal way. I once worked with a middle school student that had great difficulty concentrating in class and challenged authority at every turn. To motivate him I asked a few questions about what he enjoyed doing outside of school and I found out he was actually a talented 14 year old mechanic that had dreams, real dreams of owning his own mechanic shop. I shared this with a few of his teachers and it shed new light on him. He was not just a trouble maker as they may have seen him. He was a student who did not enjoy academics but was extremely talented in other areas. The power point presentation only needs to be modified once a year but can be presented whenever needed. The next year do not make a completely new power point, just modify. Each IEP meeting should still be moderated by the student as much as possible. |
Above is a good example of a student-led meeting with power point.
Note that it states he is in elementary school. |