Far North Parent-Professional Partnerships
Building Partnerships • Understanding Basic Systems • Best Outcomes

Understanding Basic Systems

Education

Parent Talk

Our son has difficulty reading and spelling. He has been receiving special education services for about three years. We (my husband and I) have become increasingly active with designing his IEP. One of the most effective ways to be heard and to partner with the school is to come to an IEP meeting prepared. We always look over last years IEP and have changes in mind. For example, if our son was tutored during the summer we have that information ready for the special education teacher to review. We also talk about his attitude and how he is as a person. The more information I can give to the school and the special ed department, the more I seem to be accepted as a partner.

Family IEP Story

Our son has always had some kind of identifiable communication and/or processing problem. From the time he began to try to convey his thoughts or answer others’ questions, it was apparent to us that this was not an easy process for him or one that came naturally. In his first school setting, at a local preschool, his teachers recommended a hearing screening because he could not consistently respond to directions or questions. While we were relatively sure he could hear just fine, we went ahead with testing to rule out this cause for his difficulties. The tests came back normal although with time delays in answers that might have been due to an auditory processing glitch of some kind.

We debated whether to send our son to kindergarten as a 5 year old, but went ahead after extensive talks with his potential teacher. He did well in the multisensory environment she provided and was tested for speech-language services and qualified. This was our first experience with the IEP, but with speech services the process was very casual as the teacher is a family friend and the goals centered on our son’s issues with oral language and communication, not academic categories. He has made steady progress in this area since entering school and for us, the IEP has been a sort of benchmark for his developing skills, though at times the speech teacher made specific recommendations in terms of activities to emphasize at home which would reinforce his learning at school.

Our son stayed in a Slingerland/multisensory learning environment for his first 3 years at school based on the recommendations of his kindergarten and speech teachers. This was ideal for him with his processing challenges. As he entered the 3rd and 4th grades, however it became apparent that he was struggling with math and also writing. He did not seem to be able to consistently apply rules in these areas even with repeated instruction and tutoring. He also did abysmally on any standardized testing that was administered. In the middle of his 4th grade year we realized that he was doing division without knowing how to multiply or sometimes even add 2 digit numbers consistently. His teacher was not unduly concerned so we approached the principal about having testing done. She agreed to preliminary testing which turned into extensive testing. Finally near the end of the school year, we were told that our son had a significant, though not readily identifiable, learning disability and qualified for resource support in the areas of math and writing. He began these services immediately and has been attending since then.

The special ed teachers at our elementary school are excellent and have made the IEP process unintimidating and have always readily responded to our concerns and questions on a personal level. For this reason, I don’t think about the IEP conference as an isolated meeting of the minds about our son’s progress, but a part of the overall process of his education. Some thoughts that I have about special ed (at least at the elementary level in this district) is that one needs to be an advocate for one’s child in terms of making sure thorough testing is done to receive services in the first place — we would never have gotten resource, or probably speech-language, help for our son unless we had pushed for it. Also, the district has been very slow to provide adequate paraprofessional support to the special ed teachers so that they can fulfill the services that are laid out in the IEP. I would encourage parents to back the resource teachers by calling the district directly when staffing is short or slow in coming as they seem to respond to parents (or parents with a call in to the Disability Law Center...) more readily than to teachers at times. This has been the case at our school for at least the last three years. Lastly, it was never pointed out to me as a parent that the IEP could be looked at as a tool for us to use at home for setting up our own goals and assistance for our child. I tended to look at it as a school benchmark whereas I now look at it as useful information that I can take as a starting point for developing home-based interventions. I now realize that our son needs significant support beyond just the school day and have begun to think in those terms. An IEP can become a jumping off place for finding that support.