Who's Thinking About Next School Year?

I am!! In browsing around, I found some excellent material online that I wish I had found much earlier! Such good info about IEP meetings, involving the student and self-advocacy. Wow! I will be asking my son this last set of questions, for sure.

What Exactly Does Self-Advocacy Mean?

It means taking the responsibility for communicating one’s needs and desires in a straightforward manner to others. It is a set of skills that includes:

§ Speaking up for yourself

§ Communicating your strengths, needs and wishes

§ Being able to listen to the opinions of others, even when their opinions differ from yours

§ Having a sense of self-respect

§ Taking responsibility for yourself

§ Knowing your rights

§ Knowing where to get help or who to go to with a question

One of the best places to start teaching your child about self-advocacy is in his or her Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings. Including your son or daughter in the IEP meeting provides him or her with an opportunity to learn and practice important life skills. Some advantages your child may gain by being involved in the IEP process include:

§ Learning about the impact of his or her disability

§ Practicing goal setting

§ Building teamwork skills

§ Developing an ability to speak up for himself or herself

§ Participating in a process of resolving differences

§ Gaining an understanding of his or her strengths and needs

§ Learning how to ask for and accept help from others.

Even very young children can contribute to their IEP meetings. If you feel your child is too young to participate in the entire meeting, you may choose to include him or her just in the opening of the meeting. This helps your child to know the IEP team members better and to start to be more comfortable in a child to display at the meeting. You can also receive your child’s input before you attend the IEP meeting. Ask your child if there is anything he or she would like to share at the meeting or to have you share. It can also be very beneficial to ask each team member to state one positive trait or skill your child has as you begin the meeting. Be sure to include your child in this sharing of positives. After the IEP meeting, sit down with your child and explain the goals and services or answer any questions your child may have.

As your child becomes older, the ways in which he or she can participate in his or her IEP meetings greatly increases. It is important to discuss the meeting process with your child beforehand. Role-playing being in an IEP meeting with your child can be a great teaching tool and may help your child to feel less anxious about participating.

Some Questions You May Want to Discuss with Your Son or Daughter Prior to the IEP

Meeting Are:

What do you want to learn or work on this year?

What are your special concerns for the school year?

How do you learn the best?

What do you need to be successful?

What would make learning easier for you?

What do you wish your teacher and other school staff would understand about you?

Discuss with your child how to handle the situation if something negative or difficult to hear is said about him or her in the meeting. Determine at what point, if any, you would stop the meeting and have your child leave. If the meeting is likely to be too stressful or negative, have your child only attend part of it and determine the agenda ahead of time with the team. Be sure to include your child’s input on the agenda. If your child chooses not to attend a meeting, ask if he or she would be willing to share ideas or opinions in writing or on tape to provide to the team.

Get more of this good stuff here.

If You Could . . .

Is it possible that writing techniques taught to my son two years ago are positively affecting language and communication today? I have reason to believe so. I am going to attempt to recall several of the questions he has asked me recently that I believe are connected to his 7^th grade English class. His middle school years were complicated and are fraught with wishes for a do-over on my part, but it encourages me to see that something good yet remains from that class I pushed for him to be in!

Every single day there was a writing prompt on the board, and the students were required to answer it as fully as possible in a short amount of time. This was sometimes frustrating for N, due to his fine motor skills not allowing him to write as fast as others, not to mention his language delay. (We looked into a device –like a mini laptop—but it did not work out.) The questions usually started out, “If you could _________, what would you_________ and why?” He never turned these questions outward. Until recently. Now they are non-stop.

“If you could have any superpower, which one would it be and why?” (Hmmm, still thinking. . . .)

“If you could drive any car you wanted, what kind would it be and why?” (Mine is fine. If it stopped working, I would think about it then. I just don’t let myself go there if there isn’t a reason! But I said an old Camaro anyway.)

“If you could work at any restaurant at all, which one would it be and why?” (I said a bakery. I’ve always wanted to operate an industrial-sized mixer and use those huge ovens and pans. ??)

“If you could work at any store, which one would it be and why?” (I said “Glo”, this cute little makeup store. I have a thing for tons of colors-- I only need to look.)

“If you worked at Sonic and it was your lunch break, what would you fix and why?” (I said tater tots that are fried twice as long to get them really crispy.)

What I recently learned about him is that he would work at Bed, Bath and Beyond if he could work at any store, and that if he worked at Sonic, he would make himself a triple burger with fries and a Coke.

I read just recently that adults and children with Down syndrome typically ask much fewer questions than others. This inhibits conversation greatly if you do not ask questions. What cracks me up is that he never forgets the “why”, leftover from the class! I would love to know why two years later this is re-surfacing and what jogged his memory.

Now I ask you. Do you have a definite opinion on any of these questions? Please tell. And why.

Possible Result of Inclusion?

I would certainly hope that auditing a college class would be an option for anyone with a disability. The fact that classmates stood up for this young lady thrills me!! Go, students! I wonder if many of them had the privilege of being in classes with kids with disabilities while in elementary, middle or high school. Perhaps they just knew it was the right thing to do.

Now all we need is some "people first" language in the title of this article, and we'll be set! (It would put the person first by wording it "Classmates of student with Down syndrome protest withdrawal".) But the actions in this story speak louder than words!

Classmates of Down syndrome student protest withdrawal

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Posted: 2:35 PM November 18, 2010

About 20 students demonstrated today at Ashland's Southern Oregon University to protest an administrative decision to withdraw a student with Down syndrome.

Twenty-year-old Eliza Schaaf, a graduate of Ashland High School, was auditing a ceramics class as a way to share the college experience with her friends from high school, her parents said.

She had completed two-thirds of the class when she received a letter Nov. 8 notifying her she would be withdrawn from the class because she was not qualified to meet academic standards and disrupted the class. The letter also said the family would be given a full refund of tuition and fees.

All 19 students in Schaaf's class have signed a petition stating that Schaaf did not disrupt their learning in the class and was a welcome presence.

Mollie Mustoe, one of Schaaf's classmates who spearheaded the petition, said administrators didn't consult students before making the decision.

Student organizers gathered about 40 more signatures today from students who oppose the decision to remove Schaaf from class.

SOU's Student Senate voted unanimously Tuesday on a resolution asking the administration to allow Schaaf to remain on campus and to give Schaaf due process.

"The fact that it was unanimous is overwhelming for us," said Eliza's father, Ron Schaaf. "It's so gratifying to know other people believe in Eliza, other than her parents. We hope this will lead to a good conclusion."

— Paris Achen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you want to go to the article yourself, click here.

Better, Not Bitter

As I re-read my last post, I thought, “Hmm, I sound sorta bitter about my dealings with the ol’ school district and their people.” To tell the truth, I think that often I am. Really, things could be so much better, but it doesn’t seem that there are many administrators who really get it. We have had some phenomenal teachers who have been open-minded, kind, and very creative with regard to inclusion, and my son has had some good years, despite the Special Ed Administration. Maybe these people are overworked and are burned out on meetings and lack of funding.

I have heard it said, “Let tough circumstances make you better, not bitter.” So I have to ask, How am I better because of my dealings with our school district administrators? Here are several ways. I have learned to be prepared. As in, be prepared for anything crazy that these people might suggest. I have had it suggested to me that my son be dropped off at a different point at the school so that he might think he was being taken to a different school. (Yes, they really did say that.) They have turned me into the master of asking, “What? Are you serious?”. Being prepared with that question has helped me in all matter of circumstance.

I have also learned to be persistent. This is another trait that can have lots of value in other situations. The old “squeaky wheel gets the grease” and “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” have been put to the test and rewarded more times than I can count in my school meeting dealings. Life demands persistence, and I am grateful to have developed a tendency toward it.

Another way I have become better is through learning to become creative. If something I requested for my son got vetoed, I learned to swap it for something else just as good, but couched in different terms. This is an art I still need to develop, for it often requires quick thinking and good negotiating skills.

I have also become more aware of humor in situations. The neighbor friend that I have referenced has referred to some school meeting situations as, “Straight out of a Saturday Night Live skit”, which has been so true!

So, all of that was not for nothing, and it has made me wiser and more bold for the sake of my son. But there is more I want from the experience. I desperately want my experience to count for something for other people. I don’t want the battles fought to be for nothing, so that the “powers that be” can go about doing the same thing they did before us, keeping status quo. I want it to count as forward progress for students with special needs in the public school system. What can I do to make lasting change and promote willingness to try new things for the cause of inclusion? At times, it burns in me to make more things better than just me.