The Key to Advocating for Your Students in IEP Meetings
Hi friends, Happy Friday!
We hope that you all are staying warm in this crazy weather. This week, we want to talk about the key we have found to advocating for students in an IEP meeting and offer you a seat in our free training!
Before we jump in, I wanted to tell you a quick story.
When I started out in this field, I was bright-eyed, fresh out of school, and quite frankly, I was naïve. I remember my first IEP meeting. I had been seeing this particular student in our private practice for a few months and when the family asked me to come along to the IEP meeting I was so excited. I had this picture in my mind of sitting at the table with her teachers and the other school-based professionals and being able to advocate for her and tell them all about her reading abilities. I couldn’t wait to share my thoughts after working with her and be able to offer insight and my professional opinions during this meeting. You can imagine the “gut-punch” when I walked in and they assumed I was just the student’s older sister.
Have you ever felt dismissed, talked over, or doubted in your intervention? When I walked out of the school that day, I had this awful feeling of defeat knowing that I wasn’t taken seriously, but worse, I wasn’t able to advocate for my students the way I wanted to and knew I should be able to.
I knew that something needed to change. Instead of being doubted and talked over, I needed something that would give me a leg to stand on during these meetings so that I could advocate for my students effectively.
That’s where a data-tracking system came in.
I knew that in order to effectively advocate for my students, I needed to have data. I needed proof of where my students were doing well, where they were struggling, and be able to show how they were responding to intervention.
Now, I know that hearing the words “data-tracking system” makes people nervous. I was nervous too. I didn’t know what I should be tracking or how to build it into my lessons.
I can honestly say, that after a few years of trying different systems (including the oh-so-common post-it notes), our team has put together a data-tracking system that easily layers into lessons AND provides you with key information that will allow you to make your intervention more effective than ever.
Now, I no longer get dismissed at meetings because I have data and it can speak for itself. I never feel nervous walking in (or defeated walking out) because I know that I have proof that I can use to help me advocate for my students. I am also able to use that data to make tweaks where needed in my intervention so that I can truly serve all of my students and know that what I am doing is working.
We’d love to tell you more about the do’s and don’ts of data tracking we’ve realized over the years so that you can…
Have confidence once and for all that what you're doing is working (and if not, hey our students can all throw us for a loop sometimes, you have the exact information you need to make the tweaks to get back on track)
Show up like a boss at your next meeting and impress parents, your district, or other professionals with the streamlined information you have on each student
Optimize your intervention time and get results for your students faster than ever
For more information about how you can support your students even more effectively than you already are, check out our FREE course, 7-Steps to Reading Intervention that Works, below!