Help - high school IEP - More - LRE - Examples

[Guest guest]

Thanks everyone. This list is great. I'm realizing my school district did a

very bad job of transitioning my son from one building to the next. I'm going

to take someone's advice and ask some further questions. I have a long question

on LRE, followed by a couple of examples that I'm curious how other people have

done the same, what worked, what didn't, etc.

First of all, I'm realizing there is more to LRE than I thought. The

determination made was that my son needs small classes, but the SPED academic

classes are not appropriate because his academic ability is too high. The main

choices to my son (14yo - 9th grade) are: 1) one period a day in a SPED class

for coaching in study strategies and social skills--There is no group work--it

is all just between him and his teacher--this combined with part-time, shared

facilitators in all his core classes except Pre-AP/AP--teachers are supposed to

be feeding things to SPED teacher for him to work on; 2) co-teacher classes for

all his core classes except Pre-AP/AP--no SPED class--can work with monitoring

teacher during 25-minute " advisory period " this high school has every day at

lunch time and co-teachers can do interventions.

The HS SPED chair is telling me the co-teachers and monitoring teacher can do

the same interventions they would be doing in the SPED class.

I put that last sentence separate, because that is the burning question--would

this really happen? What is everybody's experience? The monitoring teacher

told me her job is to monitor my son's grades and ask his teachers periodically

if there are any problems. She didn't mention anything about doing

interventions. She already missed my son's first late assignment, so I'm not

sure how much I'm going to be able to depend on her. I have talked to one

co-teacher; she seems game for doing interventions. The co-teachers also teach

SPED classes such as the one proposed for my son, so it seems they should have

the appropriate training.

If it actually works out, having the co-teachers might even be better than the

SPED class since he would be getting in-class interventions throughout the day

and also be able to work with more different people doing interventions.

Another thought, in the other direction, is that, with the SPED class, the jr

high plan was other staff and teachers to feed things into the SPED teacher and

vice versa, and he was supposed to do interventions throughout the day,

coordinated by the SPED teacher.

Anyway, the HS SPED chair's beef is that the SPED class is not LRE--the

co-teachers are. It seems odd to me to consider the SPED class a restrictive

environment since it is an elective and does not affect my son's academic

classes. To me, it is sort of more restrictive to have the co-teachers in all

his academic classes as opposed to the part-time shared facilitators proposed to

go with the SPED class. I understand the SPED classroom is more restrictive in

the sense it is taking place in a SPED classroom instead of a general ed

classroom, but considering the class is an elective and not an academic class,

that seems kind of goofy reasoning. In a common sense way, having co-teachers

in his academic classes will be more restrictive than having shared, part-time

facilitators in his academic classes.

I am also wondering if I could list a couple of examples of the things my son

needs and see if anyone can offer any input in how this was handled for their

child, what worked, what didn't, etc.

Example 1. Last spring, a general ed language arts teacher raised the concern

in a 504 meeting that my son was still not participating in daily routines. All

the other kids come to class and do a series of activities they do every day,

and my son is just sitting there. She didn't know anything about generalizing

difficulties, didn't know that she needed to tell him what to do every day,

didn't know she would need to very explicitly explain how they repeat certain

things every day, but still keep telling him every day because he may not

remember, etc. So, I proceeded to explain all this to her, and her jaw dropped

to the ground. So, this is something my son needs coaching in and teachers need

to know about. Some teachers are like this one and don't have a clue, some do

get it and are pretty good at prompting him when needed. What is in my son's

IEP is a goal that he do these things from a list on a card stapled inside a

folder for each class. They are trying to fade the prompts (with the teachers

that do the prompts), get him to follow a list instead of being prompted. He'll

have to have some training to use the card; I think he'll resist it. It is

easier to let people remind you. Just curious how this plays out in real life.

Any better ideas? How much support is usually needed to make this happen and

the child really get independent? How can I monitor this and make sure it is

really happening and they aren't just saying he is doing things on his own? I

guess ask to see the data?

Example 2. Social skills. I'm curious how other people word these goals. The

two main things that concern me regarding my son are his lack of ability to have

2-way conversations to clarify what each speaker is talking about (constantly

misunderstanding people in certain ways--doesn't get directions correct and

often misunderstands peoples' intentions) and the lack of friendship skills. He

knows how to interact with people who happen to be physically with him, but

doesn't know how to extend relationships beyond that. I've seen IEP goals in my

research for kids to learn to organize activities with other kids, but don't

know if this is something that would ever happen in Texas, if you know what I

mean.

I'm very appreciatative if you've made it this far. Any information on how

others do these things would be immensely appreciated. Our ARD is Tuesday, if I

can't get it rescheduled.

May be too late to reschedule. I realize now I should have scheduled a Pre-ARD

and should have requested all the teachers at the ARD. The school district

autism specialists that did my son's last school eval agreed to come, so that is

good. We may just have to make this a long ARD to sort of incorporate a Pre-ARD

and maybe continue it on another day to bring the teachers in. Anybody know if

there are any rules against that?

[Guest guest]

Thanks for all the help, everyone. The IEP meeting is over and the IEP is much

better than it was. I think the key was involving more people and getting more

heads thinking. It was determined he will stay in the study strategies/social

skills class, as he has too much detail in his goals to work on for co-teachers

to handle.

We also changed some of his goals and accommodations for the better. No more

!# & # agenda LOL. He will learn to e-mail/FirstClass his assignments, rubrics,

etc. to himself.