A Focus on Resiliency

I have been less than ideal as a person with a blog, so I will try to spend more time posting the things that matter to me, what I do in my Learning Center and what matters most, my students. I am a resource specialist in a Learning Center model. What that means is the most (“at risk”),  what I like to think of as the kids who have to start the race 5 miles back from the starting line, at my school are under my umbrella of responsibility. We are a school of 600 students and I have 70 (the lowest academically 10% at each grade level) of those kiddos in my radar. So each day, my assistant and I see 70 kids.  We have 10 kids from each grade level, kinder through sixth that we educate. Of those 70, 16 are on IEP’s for specific learning disabilities, emotional/behavioral disorder, or autism. 

I have been a special educator for 26 years; many of those years were working with students with emotional/behavioral disorder and students with moderate to severe needs. In this latter part of my career have been drawn to working with kids who are living in extreme adversity, parental poverty, parental substance abuse, students who have experienced domestic violence, students in gangs and students who have been sexually abused. In addition I work with, kids with learning disabilities, academic failure, and mental health issues. 

My focus is resiliency and a preventative approach to special education. I try to put into place supports in my Learning Center that will assist these wonderful kids I work with to make it despite the odds. I am aware of the research that says 50 to 70% of students in dire living/family situations will actually make it out and into a financial and emotionally healthy adulthood. It would be so easy to start looking at the kids and sorting them into you will, you won’t, categories. I have one amazing fifth grader that is in her 5^th foster home and currently they are trying to reunite her with her mom, yet again. She is just exhausted with trying to survive and who can blame her?

What I will try to do in this blog is post weekly on the matter dear and close to my heart, resiliency. I have put together years of big and little ways to encourage resiliency in my students. I will also post for all the websites I use and any links to information that I have found valuable.  Lastly, I will place things for all to use at the Teachers Pay Teachers website. Most of it I will provide for free as I am happy to help others who are working with kids in our society who are most at risk. 

Who gets the IEP?

An IEP can be a life changer for many students and their families, but it can also be an opportunity to take advantage of a system that is not uniformly regulated. In some cases the parents I work with embark on the difficult road to the IEP with the goal of wanting to genuinely assist their child who is struggling, both in the school and community setting. However, I have had other parents tell me with open frankness that they need SSI money to help support the family.

To me what matters the most is that I have an enormous responsibility to complete and accurate and thorough educational assessment, which is my domain as a resource specialist. In that process, I believe that it is important to work openly and honestly with the family of the child being assessed. The process of special ed assessment is nerve wracking for families, I feel they both want the assessments and simultaneously dread what the results might be. Parents are looking for answers as to why their child is struggling so mightily in the classroom, or may have no friends, or is constantly being suspended. The answers may or may not lie in the results of the assessments. Parents are led down a road of complicated educational jargon, surprising outcomes, difficult to interpret test scores and often end at a place without an answer. When I start the process as the case carrier I have found it helpful to be honest and upfront with families in regards to what the assessment team is looking to discover. I find that taking 15 minutes to sit down with the family, go over the assessment consent form, review the horrifically complicated procedural safeguards document, and start a record of any concerns that the parent has is enormously helpful to begin the process on the right note.

In addition to the traditional forms, I give to the parent a document I have complied that is an overview of the IDEA statutes on what the 13 disability categories are. I explain that the team is looking for a presence of one or more of the disabilities I have listed on the document; I go over the terms and meanings of what each disability is. I find this visual compilation of the IDEA statues really helpful to the families as they know what the team is trying to accomplish, that we are being open and honest and following the law.

To assist any resource specialists that would be interested in also using this document, I have uploaded it for a free download at the Teachers Pay Teachers website. It has helped in numerous sticky situations.
Darcy Thompson - RS

Sharing...

I decided to begin this blog with the link to Teachers Pay Teachers website, when yet again I lost material and ideas to administration. I am a teacher, my passion is to guide my students, and their families through this very difficult journey called life. Teachers and administrators tend to view the academic world from two completely polar opposite points of view.

As my students have a wide variety of disabilities and life traumas, it is imperative that each moment of instruction be valuable and meaningful. I have spent countless hours and my own money designing curriculum, parent materials, and special education specific documents.

The law allows for educators to have intellectual property rights as long as the employee follows the terms in the district of employment contract. We can and should share with other what we have created. Our students and their families benefit when we do. We should also have exclusive rights to share and sell what we have created, we are creators after all…