I am preparing for our last IEP meeting of the year and our advocate has suggested totally redoing the goals to include more specifics. I am hoping that some of you would be willing to share wording that has proven especially effective for your 2E kids.
For example, last summer we worked through our district's central office in designing the original IEP. We discussed in detail concerns about DD's anxiety and how to address it. I said she needed to be seated away from "troublemakers" because she both takes on responsibility for their behavior and had frequently been injured because of her proximity to them during their behavioral outbursts. They indicated that "Seating with positive role model peers" was the appropriate and accepted IEP language for this. I pointed out that DD was usually the "positive role model peer" but was assured that all would understand this as "IEP speak". Needless to say that didn't happen. The SW assigned to work on her anxiety issues scheduled her for social skills training and she continues to be seated with troublemakers during small group "tier time" sections and at lunch.
Another example, DD totally shuts down (or if it's really bad melts down) if she is in a room with a teacher who yells, scolds, threatens, punishes or uses a "public shaming device" like a color chart. I was told "Positive Reinforcement" was IEP speak for she should not be around this behavior or teachers who use these types of classroom management techniques. Her main classroom teacher is great but she still had exposure to this sort of thing during tier time in other classrooms and with substitutes, both with predictable results. As I posted on another thread they took drastic punitive actions against DD following an anxiety induced meltdown which is continuing to cause major problems. The district has written a letter acknowledging that they violated her IEP but I want to keep it from happening in the future, not just go after them when they fail to do the right thing. Any hints regarding anxiety goals or techniques you have found to be effective?
With suggestions from members here (special thanks to Aculady) I think I have a good idea of how to frame things for some of her LD issues but am interested in anything that you may have found especially helpful. We are dealing with LD's (dyslexia, dysgraphia, possibly dyspraxia or something similar - we are redoing neuropsych testing later this year), fine motor deficits and anxiety. She is currently in pull out for reading, math, OT, speech and anxiety. I have managed to finally get them to introduce some scribing which is helping to provide some enrichment in her writing curriculum. Even though the IEP indicates “explore enrichment opportunities” no other enrichment is being provided other than what we do on our own. (A lot of audio books, nature and ecology, history, etc. Also for things like writing sentences using 5 specific words a week for her homework she writes a paragraph on a theme she selects rather than just writing 5 unrelated sentences as the assignment reads.) I am hoping to convince them to focus on assistive technology and keyboarding but may not be able to until we get the new neuropsych reports, probably not until next school year is already underway. Her current IEP reads “oral responses and testing when needed” which I would like to change to something allowing ALL responses to be oral or scribed unless they are meant to measure handwriting skills. Any other suggestions? She will be in 2nd grade next year so I wonder if something similar for spelling may be needed.
So, what have you found that works? As IEP season is in full swing hopefully this can help others as well. Thanks.
Pemberley
