Reports and Meetings and Testing, Oh My!

This month has been an almost equal mix of vacation and craziness. State testing took up about 3 weeks, and since the special education department is responsible for all accommodations and alternate test sites, my kids got severly neglected in how much time I was supposed to spend with them. So on the one side, it was a deviation from the routine, which is always welcome. But on the other side, working with kids became secondary, and I much dislike that.

After testing, I'm ashamed to say how much time we've gotten off. I had a workshop out of the building, parent-teacher conference "trade time" (we get a day off after p/t conferences to make up for the extra hours spent at school during that time), Veterans' Day, and Thanksgiving. I know it's not here yet, but it's just as good. So that has added up to a considerable shortage in work accomplished.

Thus, I have three meetings tomorrow that I am facilitating; not directly resulting from, though not entirely unrelated to all this time off. I also have another meeting of which I will be attending but not leading. Busy busy! The good news is that I have everything ready for my meetings and I should have everything together for them. In fact, I'm at a ponit where I'm just a tad paranoid about my readiness. What am I forgetting? Did I invite everyone? Do I need any more needlessly redundant pieces of paper (forms, reports, booklets, ect.) to bring to the meeting? If you only know how much money our government wastes on paperwork requirements in special education......

I suppose I should explain. When I say meetings, I mean meetings to discuss my students. I may have mentioned this before, but the state mandates that every year, any child who is receiving special education services must have thier Individualized Education Plan (IEP) reviews and re-written. In this plan are goals to work on for next year, what needs to happen in the classroom, and a description of the services they receive. So every year we have a meeting with the parents, teachers, principal, and any "service" staff (such as myself) to review this plan and set new goals or review services. This means that however many students I have on my caseload, I have at least that many meetings that I have to facilitate and prepare for (prep=paperwork). This year I got lucky: I only have about 9 on my caseload.

Alright, so that's the IEP part. That happens every year. Now every 3 years (or sooner if the team feels it's necessary), the state says that we have to look at the child's progress and ability and see if they still qualify. This is called a 3-year reevaluation. On occasion, a casemanager may just look at their cumulative file and decide that not enough has changed and they have not made the miraculous educational leaps and bounds that are the prerequisites to dismisall from special education. Most of the time, however, a student must be tested. Which is a big job. Tedious, so I'll spare you the details, but let's just say that it takes a lot of time and there's a lot of follow up to do. Testings, reports on the testings, meetings, etc. These 3-year reevaluations require two meetings: one to have the parents sign consent to assess, and one to discuss the evaluation results and decide if the child still qualifies. The first meeting is a piece of cake; the second one is more like the entire 9-teir wedding cake.

SO! Now that I've explained, I have one IEP, one assessment planning meeting, and one 3-year reevaluation results meeting tomorrow. Yippee for me. But the really good news about all of this is that after this semester, I will be mostly done with my IEP's and my re-evals. The spring will mostly then consist of initial evaluations....which we'll get to later.

So are you getting familiar with the sped (special education) jargon? Are you bored out of your skull? Hope not. If so, sorry. Mostly I enjoy my job. I don't mind the paperwork, but I do really enjoy working with kids. It's a challenge every day to think of ways to increase student performance. Sometimes it's hard, but that's what makes it fun. And then when they actually do succeed. Well, that's what makes it all worth while. Aww, how sweet. I'll stop now and spare you having to get out your box of kleenex. You're welcome.