Kids on Paper

School started Monday, so by tomorrow it will be my fifth day of school. I have not met my kids in person yet. We don't start serving kids until the second week of school because the teachers like the students to get used to the classroom routine before we start pulling them for services. So this week has been spent trying to eek out a sort of schedule and getting to know our kids on paper. I read through their reports and Individualized Education Plans (IEP's) to get an idea of what I need to work on with them. Each IEP has one or more (usually more) goals that the student needs to achieve by the end of the year. A year consists of the time between IEP review meetings, which the state mandates happen once per year. The goals may be in Math, Reading, or Writing for students with Learning Disabilities. For students with Emotional Disturbances, the goals may be in appropriate behavior, anger management, or sometimes organizational skills. And then the students with Cognitive Delays work on functional living skills like memorizing their addresses, living skills such as cooking or laundry, and self-advocacy skills. So what I do as a teacher is help them work toward achieving those goals through what's called "service minutes." Each IEP states how many minutes per week a child must have the direct instruction of a specialist such as myself. It's usually somewhere between 120 and 150 minutes per week, which translates into 30 minutes per day for 3 to 5 days a week.
So that's a snippet of what I do! I've been going through IEP's and making schedules for most of this week and tomorrow I'm going to start planning lessons for them.

Oh, something that I forgot about what I do is the paperwork. As I said, each year an IEP meeting must be held. For each meeting, a written notice to parents must be issued, interviews of student performance conducted, evaluations of classroom performance reported, goal progress reported, the IEP must be written, and goals must be developed. Throughout the year these goals must be charted and progress reported as often as other students get report cards, which is usually 4 times. Also, every three years we "get" to do state mandated re-evaluations of a student to determine if they still qualify for special education services. I only have two this year, so that's wonderful. They're intense. In addition to this paperwork on the students that I case manage (which is what you call all this), I get to do evaluations and observations of new students who are referred to me by teachers, parents, and/or administrators. An evaluation consists of testing the student and writing umpteen reports on the testing. Many meetings as well. Also, intense.

Well I won't bore you any more, but I just thought I'd give a peek of what it is that I actually DO.