Questions for a parent (autism, schools, games, functioning)

[jen4]

Hello all,

I am a student in a Masters of Education program, and I have an assignment to ask some questions of a parent of a child with special needs. You can answer the questions right here on the forum. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you

(Even if you could answer just one of them, it would be helpful.)

1. How long has your child been in public school and what type of classroom/classrooms is he in?

2. What are some things you do to encourage parent-teacher collaboration?

3. Share some positive collaboration experiences you have had with teachers.

4. Share some negative collaboration experiences you have had with teachers, as well as what was done to resolve these situations.

5. What are the biggest fears or concerns you have when heading into an IEP meeting?

6. What are you most confident discussing in IEP meetings?

7. How do you handle situations in which a teacher’s goals/ideas differ vastly from your own?

8. If you had a concern with a teacher’s goals, teaching style, or behavior toward your child, how would you approach the teacher?

9. How do you carry school goals/interventions over into the home setting? What support are you given by the school or teacher in order to implement these goals at home?

10. What are your suggestions for increasing collaboration among parents and teachers?

Thanks again,
Jen

[Penguin_ie]

1. How long has your child been in public school and what type of classroom/classrooms is he in?
2 years in a public school, 1 year before that isn a dedicated SN pre-k.
We will be going into 2nd grade this August; he is in a self-contained autism-specific classroom, but has specials (art, music, recess, lunch etc) with the NT pop with the help of an aide and buddies.

2. What are some things you do to encourage parent-teacher collaboration?
Be well prepared for IEP meetings; email with the teacher politely if there is a question or problem.
Don't sweat the small stuff- I don't care, and don't contact, if my boy comes home covered in cheeto dust one day or the daily agenda is not filled out one day (child is non-verbal); they know that if I have an issue, it is a big one and they must take me seriously.


4. Share some negative collaboration experiences you have had with teachers, as well as what was done to resolve these situations.
None with the teacher; we had an issue with transportation (special needs bus), but that was in no way the school's fault.

5. What are the biggest fears or concerns you have when heading into an IEP meeting?
That they won't want to give my child as much therapy as he needs.

6. What are you most confident discussing in IEP meetings?
My child and his needs; current best practises (we keep up to date on research).

7. How do you handle situations in which a teacher’s goals/ideas differ vastly from your own?
We haven;t had any vastly differing goals.

8. If you had a concern with a teacher’s goals, teaching style, or behavior toward your child, how would you approach the teacher?
Depends on the issue; I would email them first, asking why they want to do X. If I disagree with the answer, reply and show evidence based arguments as to why (link to articles). Call a meeting if there is still disagreement- we never got to that stage.

9. How do you carry school goals/interventions over into the home setting? What support are you given by the school or teacher in order to implement these goals at home?
We do private therapy during school vacations.
The school sends home some basic writing and coloring sheets weekly which we send back.
We discuss over email when something works well at home/ at school to do it in the other setting.
I ask the school teacher and therapists for suggestions for good games and other gifts to give my child for birthday and Christmas.

10. What are your suggestions for increasing collaboration among parents and teachers?
An orientation meeting before school starts every year is good; the school provides childcare for ALL kids (ASD student and siblings of all ages) during that time, so the parents can see the classroom, therapy rooms and ask questions in peace.
We are happy with the collaboration with this current teacher; it is great that he answered email usually the same day, so vital with having a non-verbal child.

[AnywhereElse]

My son is 28 with Down syndrome. I am not sure that any thoughts I have will be useful. My son was in a total of 3 school districts/3 states. He was pulled out of all the programs and homeschooled due to the fact that they often let him sit or the punishment they used also, he learned bad behaviors and many of the children had mental health issues which made the classrooms dangerous. We did all the meetings and due process but since he is lower functioning, he was not considered worth much of an investment in the world of education.

He worked on the computer at home and I ordered books like I learned to read, "Go Dick go." "See Sally run." I thought, well, anyone could read that and I was pretty much right. I did sub as a teacher's assistant in a few special education classrooms to get a "fly on the wall perspective."

Issues with the IEP meetings were that there was always a lot of THEM and just myself and my husband. Yes, sometimes advocates were supposed to show up but didn't. The school often had more people on their side than were listed on the required paperwork, surprise people as if they didn't already have enough people on their side. The "team" approach was a joke since they were willing to listen to what we said but appeared to never be willing to try anything since they came with the IEP already filled in for discussion and changed nothing. Yes, I know all the rules but they didn't follow them and the state offices of education never did anything about it. Costs for lawyers were too high and like it would matter anyway since what they had to offer wasn't worth fighting over anyway.

For those with high-functioning children, it can be a whole different story. There is a LOT of discrimination within special education itself, the division between those that are lower functioning and those that are higher functioning.

What it came down to was that I was much more capable of teaching my child skills than the public school system. Actually, my older 4.0 son had to be helped at home too since the teacher's often could not spell or do math. So, my experience with schools was not a good one all the way around.

Also, what happens is that parents are often treated by the school personnel like they are "slow" and I really, really resented that.

[nana053]

Originally Posted by jen4

Hello all,

I am a student in a Masters of Education program, and I have an assignment to ask some questions of a parent of a child with special needs. You can answer the questions right here on the forum. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you

(Even if you could answer just one of them, it would be helpful.)

1. How long has your child been in public school and what type of classroom/classrooms is he in?

He is 11 and has been in public school for 6 years starting with PPCD (special needs classroom, then mainstreamed with pull outs for 3 years and with push ins for 2 years.

2. What are some things you do to encourage parent-teacher collaboration?

Give the teachers a booklet about him called All about Me which talks about his strenths and weaknesses and about his family including pictures of the people who are important in his life. Attend all IEP meetings. Email teachers when things are happening that they need to know about like when his dog died and it upset him.]

3. Share some positive collaboration experiences you have had with teachers.

We have had many positive experiences with his teachers. We talked to them when his behavior was giving them problems and collaborated on what could be done to extinguish things like his verbal stims.

4. Share some negative collaboration experiences you have had with teachers, as well as what was done to resolve these situations.

We have really not had any negative collaboration experiences at this point.

5. What are the biggest fears or concerns you have when heading into an IEP meeting?

We sometimes fear that he will lose services or that he may not be meeting all his goals. Since he needs a lot of support for social interaction, we have feared that they would not do much because that is not academic. However, because his school is an IB school and projects require collaboration, they had to help him with it. This was actually the first year where he participated in the music program that his class presented.

6. What are you most confident discussing in IEP meetings?

I am always confident, but then I was a teacher myself and I have been working with him since he was 18 months of age.

7. How do you handle situations in which a teacher’s goals/ideas differ vastly from your own?

We have not had that come up.

8. If you had a concern with a teacher’s goals, teaching style, or behavior toward your child, how would you approach the teacher?

It would depend upon what the issue was really. Teaching style? We might ask for a transfer to another teacher. That has not come up because his school does a great job of matching him to a teacher who had the appropriate style for him. Goals? We would discuss with the teacher and if we still did not agree, we might call another IEP meeting to hash it out with the whole team.

9. How do you carry school goals/interventions over into the home setting? What support are you given by the school or teacher in order to implement these goals at home?

We have ABA help at home to implement goals. He also goes to an ABA center which looks over goals and helps. The biggest thing was getting him to do his homework with help. He is relatively rigid, so does it at grandma and grandpa's house, but often will not comply with mom.

10. What are your suggestions for increasing collaboration among parents and teachers?

Thanks again,
Jen

Grandson, not son, but answers above.