Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional back to school, what would you do about this?

Wikipedia has everything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waka_(canoe)

All that's required at these meeting is 1 core subject teacher. I have specifically requested others attend IEP meetings, but this has only been successful at the elementary school.

I'd just as soon there be fewer attendees because I figure they are all annoyed by being there in the first place--so fewer equals less negativity in the room. DS' 504 (so far) has been very simple and low demand-on-teacher. I like to keep things simple and reasonable but am now thinking it should be more specific, since when I'd ask for things that seemed like obvious front-line behavior management to me (outside of 504), they didn't happen.

I would like to take the waka building class...funny that reminds me of an extremely gifted young man I know, with EF issues, who says the best classes he ever took in HS were his tech (wood shop) classes--where he went well above and beyond, was totally engaged, and learned a lot of engineering and practical skills. He learned everything else too easily, including math and science, and spent most of his HS career playing practical jokes and being a general nuisance. :P

I actually also prefer to do a lot of the meetings about DS as one-on-one rather than in the formal meeting setting. The major exception is to have the gifted intervention teacher in the room. She rarely says anything, but her constant presence serves to remind everyone that this is a 2e case.

Your daughter probably wouldn't be allowed to do waka building. But you have a point. I just don't see there being time to do the essentials properly for a reasonably academic student. I went to school when electives were history, geography and French plus hands on stuff like woodwork and horticulture.

I'm also curious why the teacher wouldn't be involved in the 504. My son's 504 meetings in high school have included most of his teachers. Not every meeting but the big one setting it up last year did. The band teacher didn't come as it wasn't necessary, and often one teacher can't make it because of scheduling. When my DD had IEP meeting in high school her art teachers came to at least give a report.

I'm impressed that you school even has a class like history of baseball. Electives are fairly boring at our public school partly because there isn't much time for the kids to take them.

oh yeah my Te ara Maori is not what it should be - still working on Te reo.

To any interested parties - NZ is considered bi cultural so there are numerous opportunities to take electives that involve Maori culture ie: canoe building. **at some schools**

The law for ESE is one regular Ed one ESE teacher minimum....all are welcome to come but one of each has to be there to represent.

The law for 504 is the representative chairing the meeting and at least one teacher. But more can come if available. I find the more there the worse the plan for my son. One chair, one or both parents, and two teachers is the most I want. Once you get seven or eight teachers, gets to be a mess writing the thing.

Parent conference to discuss the plan afterwards is a different story.

Our gifted meetings had one LEA rep (a staffing specialist/compliance person) and usually two teachers one who was gifted endorsed (and usually the second one was too....but I think she was representing regular Ed).

I often wondered why we couldn't do both meetings at the same time...he is a whole kid with two plans....but they said no.

We never had 7 or 8 teachers trying to write the 504/IEP. Usually we had most teachers come in and give a report and get some feedback and only one or two would stay for the writing part of the meeting. Often it would be the particular teacher most affected like the English teacher in both my kids cases.

In our building, we do back-to-back meetings when two legal functions need to be fulfilled. The relevant staff stay for both meetings, and the others rotate in and out.

We didn't have all teachers stay for the entire writing of the report part of the meeting either, but our school required all teachers to attend the meeting, and they were allowed to leave once the accommodations list was reviewed. Some left beforehand, stating that they would agree to everything. The key was that they had to be there to agree to the accommodations (at some point in time) and to voice any objections that they might have - because if they hadn't technically "agreed" it would have caused more of a hassle for the coordinator and student etc when/if the teacher who hadn't been present objected to an accommodation written into the 504. If a teacher popped in for the first part of the meeting, said they would agree to whatever we decided on, then left, they had less ground to stand on in arguing over an accommodation after the 504 is written than if they had never been present or weren't invited to the meeting.

While it's not legal to *not* follow the 504, it is a plan that has to be workable otherwise it simply won't get followed. This is just a for-instance. Suppose you write in an accommodation for turning in assignments via email. One of the teachers isn't present at the meeting. That teacher doesn't want assignments turned in via email, so he arbitrarily chooses not to accept them. It may be in the 504, but he, in turn, can say he didn't agree to that accommodation. Does this mean your student won't have FAPE in his classroom? Not necessarily, because there are other ways to get assignments turned in and accomplish the same accommodation goal - which the teacher *could* have brought up at the 504 meeting if he'd attended. If he had attended, he could have voiced his concern about why email wouldn't work for his class, and offered up a different option, which could have been written into the 504. Probably not the best example, but things like this have happened to our ds.


I haven't found that having more teachers makes anything worse; it helped us because we could avoid situations like I mentioned above. What helped us also was going in with very clear accommodations, documentation of need, and a reasonable expectation that the accommodations we were asking for could actually take place. The actual plan wasn't technically written at the meeting, it was agreed upon and the 504 coordinator drafted it after the meeting was over, then circulated it to us (parents and student) to be sure it reflected our understanding of what was said at the meeting.

polarbear