Cheri Dotterer 0:00
Cheri. Hey, everyone, it's Cheri. I am with Jennifer Porter. She is a special education teacher. She has taught, I think all grades, high school, middle school and elementary she has her Bachelor of Science in English and her master's degree in special education with a level three in autism. Yeah,
Speaker 1 0:34
I have the one that lets you do autism and behavior disorders,
Cheri Dotterer 0:39
behavior, okay, I don't know if every state got to delineate those levels the way that they do where she lives, but basically, she's got the most credentials out there for these kiddos with autism. Her classroom was the fully contained classroom she has agreed today to come and talk to us a little bit about IEP. Welcome, Jen,
Unknown Speaker 1:06
thanks. I'm happy to be here.
Cheri Dotterer 1:09
What did I miss in your introduction? I
Speaker 1 1:11
have kids at home that also have disabilities. One thing that sets me apart from some other teachers with the same qualifications is that I've been on both sides of that IEP meeting,
Cheri Dotterer 1:23
you're much more sensitive to what the parent understands, what the teacher understands, and after hanging out with me for several years, you're a little bit more sensitive to what the OT understands as well, aren't you?
Speaker 1 1:36
Absolutely you've been very eye opening, very informative. I learned a lot about dysgraphia from you that I didn't know. Even after we worked pretty closely with our OTs and SLPs as teachers with the autism classrooms, I learned a lot from them, too, and we worked really closely on IEPs and just making sure our kids needs were met, we even divided and conquered all the labor of producing the tasks for them and the visuals, and we brainstormed together on those things. But I would say I definitely learned more from you about dysgraphia than anyone else, for sure.
Cheri Dotterer 2:19
Thank you. Hands down to let you know why Jen and I have spent the last couple years on a Saturday working together, is we have been accountability partners for our books. We would get on a call like this on Zoom, before zoom was a big thing, and we would talk a little bit. Then we would mute, and we would do pomodoros. I don't know if you know what a Pomodoro is. The Pomodoro method is where you do 45 minutes of intense work, and then you take the 15 minute break. But we would do these 45 minute sessions, take a few minute break, do whatever it is what you need to do to away from the computer, come back, have a little catch up chat, and then do another one. We do three of them a day, two or three weekly
Speaker 1 3:13
Saturday, and yeah, that's how I got most of my book research done, and a lot of the preliminary writing and my
Cheri Dotterer 3:20
book went together much faster than Jen's. Although Jen has had this book in her brain since she was in high school, I never thought about working on a book until 19, 2016 my book definitely came out a lot faster having dysgraphia, I didn't even think about it before that, and it was the challenge. I think we ought to head into the IEP and see what it has to say. What do you think sounds good? I have the Pennsylvania version of an annotated IEP. Basically an annotated version means it describes what each section is supposed to mean with what you've how you're supposed to fill in the blanks. Of course, we have the student's name, the IEP meeting date, IEP implementation date. So sometimes those the date of the meaning and the date of the implementation aren't the same. They try to make them the same date, but it doesn't always work that way. And then anticipated duration of services, which in what 99% of the time is supposed to be a year. Do you have any I should say this, that I being I'm from Pennsylvania, you're from Iowa. Is there any difference in a length of an IEP in Iowa than Pennsylvania, because ours have to be done every year.
Speaker 1 4:46
They don't phrase it like anticipated duration of services. They just basically say this, IEP is valid for one year, up to one year, it must be reevaluated. Okay within that. Need, all right, your need for services is constantly re evaluated based on your assessments during the year various types cool. I think it's asking that same question there, but yeah, it's raised a little differently.
Cheri Dotterer 5:15
One of the things that I do know from working with IEPs is that somebody who has an intellectual disability, their cycle and their renewal and evaluation process is a little different than kiddos that are not considered intellectually disabled. Their IEP cycle is a little different here in Pennsylvania, than it is. The two IEP are a little bit different. One is two years and one is three years. And then we have the date of birth, the age, the grade graduation. Lea, local education agency simply means the school parents information. And then the next section is the LEA and parent agree that to make the following changes to the IEPs, if during the in between stages, the parent and the school decide that there's some change, they can make revisions on the and they date the when those revisions were made, and they don't have to go through a full IEP meeting. Do they have that feature in Iowa as well? No,
Speaker 1 6:27
and I really wish they did. We have to do a new IEP. We would have to call a meeting talk about the revisions, and then I would have to go in, and basically, I think I can click revision and then change the things that need changing. But I basically have to reproduce the IEP as a new document and then give that to them again as a new this
Cheri Dotterer 6:50
might be like a goal got achieved and they just agree that to discontinue, to go, or it might be that parent didn't like the wording on the way something was written, and they just wanted to update the wording. Simple things like that could be revised easily, and didn't have to open a brand new IEP for the meeting. It just happened to be a wording that they noticed after
Speaker 1 7:17
making ours wasn't brand new. I didn't say that very well. It does transfer the information. When you click revision, it transfers the IEP, and you can make the revisions that way. But it doesn't have a section like that that's clearly laying out what the revisions were and what dates and the reason it's goal by goal. You would put a note on there that said that. But there's no one section that says, These are the revisions, which
Cheri Dotterer 7:43
is really nice for the state of Pennsylvania, obviously didn't realize that wasn't a universal thing. And then everybody gets to print their name and sign their name. Here in Pennsylvania, there are times when there's somebody in this group that isn't present, and they have to have a an approval by the parent. If they cannot be present, they usually have to talk to them ahead of time if you can, if you as the professional, cannot be present at the IEP meeting, and that parent doesn't include anything, but I think you they can add lines for like speech that. PT, OT, this thing can go a lot longer than it is here and right. And then procedural safeguards. Did they receive them? That is a totally different a little booklet that they hand out. And then we have this section.
Speaker 1 8:33
We have a booklet we hand out every time there's changes, and we hand it out on a yearly basis. But then we also have, in Iowa, we like to hand out with it a summary of the rights and responsibilities, like the short non legalese version that goes with the book. And we highlight that sheet usually when we do the meeting, because most parents that I dealt with, because I was dealing with the heavier needs those parents had been in the system a long time, most of them, my kindergartners, not as much, but by the time you've heard it three or four times, the parent is sick to death of going through that booklet page by page. For the earlier parents, we go through it more deeply, but then we just review it. Yeah, yeah, bookmarks made up. That was nice. I
Cheri Dotterer 9:24
I don't know that Pennsylvania has a shortened version. They hand out the booklet, um, every time now it has become a digital booklet. They get it via email, um, and then special considerations, they ask yes or no, basically, are they blind, hard of hearing, any communication needs, assistive technology needs, limited English proficiency. Does the student exhibit behavior? Numbers that impede his or her learning, and then we get to the present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, and I think this is where I'd like to hang out a little bit and maybe just even stop the video share here, because I think this is where we can talk a little bit about what it looks like from a handwriting perspective, what it might look like from a dysgraphia perspective. In this section, we have most of the time. We have what reading goals. We have writing goals, we have math goals, we have combinations thereof. But we really want that whole gamut of what are the has close to the standards as we can get included in that whole academic performance piece. Jen, tell me a little bit. What did the academic performance look like on from your perspective,
Speaker 1 10:56
the current functional level or the current academic performance, we usually had to put in specific and measurable kind of pieces of data. We use the state assessments, and we use district wide assessments for writing as a disability. We would be looking at their scores on any writing assessment that was district wide or any state assessment that had a writing portion, and specifically we would break it down. If it breaks down, for instance, it has ELA as a group within the test, we would look specifically at the writing portion of that ELA test within the larger score and place that in that box. Additionally, you would put all those scores first, but then you would want to put in a little bit of a blurb about what that looks like for that student in the classroom. You might be mentioning classroom assessments at that point, or specific writing task that all students had to complete, and how they compared or didn't compare, and it's more about what the student can accomplish when you write an IEP, do you want to write? The student is able to do these things in writing, but needs help with these things in writing. You would specify what those tasks were in the classroom. Typically needs assistance with getting notes down fast enough? Or we typically try to write it more positively than the student cannot do. Fill in the blank, but what you're summing Thank you, the student really help in those areas. What
Cheri Dotterer 12:36
you're saying is you're writing down the symptoms. You never use that word dysgraphia correct.
Speaker 1 12:45
In Iowa, we could use the word dysgraphia if the student had a dysgraphia diagnosis that was also shared with the school on the IEP during the IEP meeting. So the parents have the option of not sharing some diagnoses. Autism might be one of those, and so might dysgraphia. If the parent didn't want to tell the school specifically what their student was diagnosed with, they didn't have to. But most parents that I know told you my student had this diagnosis. And then if they said that, they had to give the specific doctor's name and date of the diagnosis, and we would add those to the IEP. And then if that was mentioned in the IEP, you could later say the students dysgraphia as a reason, but you still dysgraphia is such a wide category of a thing, just like autism, you have to be specific about what that looks like for that individual child, because it looks different for every single one of them. All right, I'm
Cheri Dotterer 13:56
going to pause you just a moment and just want to back up a little bit, because what you're saying is that a physician had to write that down on paper at some point in their documentation that this child had dysgraphia. The physicians that could do that would be like a medical doctor, the pediatrician, the neuropsychologist. Was there anyone else a developmental physician? Maybe, anybody else that you're really thinking of that could have given that documentation?
Speaker 1 14:32
It would have, yeah, no, I think that pretty much covers the people that could have written it. Okay, most time I didn't see dysgraphia as a diagnosis. I saw autism okay as a diagnosis on an IEP, just about all of mine said autism was diagnosed and they would have Down syndrome or fragile X syndrome or something else, ADHD, comorbid with it, but dysgraphia. Graphia was not often mentioned quickly as a diagnosis.
Cheri Dotterer 15:06
Were there any other words that you ever saw?
Speaker 1 15:10
Oh? Problems with writing, problems with hand writing, communicating in a written format, problems with handwriting versus the problem getting what's in your head on the paper, and also problems communicating what other people are saying to you and getting that on the paper, that processing piece of it. But we would be writing that symptom. We wouldn't be writing dysgraphia in most cases,
Cheri Dotterer 15:39
exactly. Let me pause here and share another document before we go on back into the IEP, so that everyone is aware the definition of dysgraphia is not, does not even say dysgraphia in the DSM five, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders. Hey, I got it out that time. What it says is, it's a disability in written expression, and that is grammar, punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, errors, paragraph organization, clarity, spelling errors, activity demands that exceed a student's capacity and interference with activities of daily living. If you look at that and you analyze that a little bit, we've got some academic and we've got some functional goals go our functional areas going on. But it really does not say can't write. It says we have trouble with grammar, we have trouble with capitalization, we have trouble with punctuation and and it goes into the basic fundamentals of of written expression all the way up to I can't write a paragraph which is the more complex pieces of language, and that whole connection with the cognitive as well. And then let me go to the next screen, if I can find my mouse here. This is what it doesn't was not included in dysgraphia, and that's intellectual disability, visual and auditory mental health, neurological psychological disorders, lack of proficiency and language skills and inadequate instruction. What that tells me, when I look at that definition, is all those other categories and all those other symptoms are somewhere else in the DSM five. They're not the diagnosis of dysgraphia is not the primary disorder that being said, autism being much more of a neurological base, most of your kids probably had that other diagnosis, and then dysgraphia was a symptom that was associated. Dysgraphia
Speaker 1 17:54
with its own thing that was probably comorbid with whatever they had. But yeah, autism would be their primary diagnosis, and they often had other things that were diagnosed along with it or not diagnosed and just seen as, like you said, a symptom of their autism. But I personally believe that if I'd known more about dysgraphia before, a lot of them might have had that added to their IEP as a description, just so that people know this isn't just their autism. It's another thing of its own, and there's, I don't know how much worth there is sometimes in describing all the different reasons why they can't do, what they can't do, or what they need help with. But sometimes it does help, because it gives you a place to look for supports. If they have the word dysgraphia in their IEP, a teacher who's not familiar with those symptoms or any kind of accommodations that might be appropriate, gets a new student from out of state and has to rewrite everything and make it work for their school system, and the things that she can provide or he can provide, they're going to have to do some research, and that might be asking a professional like yourself, but it might also be Googling a bunch of stuff and hoping they find the right stuff. Sometimes it does help to have a label in there, because it points you in the direction of supports that would be appropriate
Cheri Dotterer 19:21
many states, though it is not permitted, they only permit the symptoms. That's the difficult there's good reason for that key. There is absolutely good reason for that in this section, the present levels. We have the academic achievement, we have the functional performance. And that's where the OT would do their little blurb and really talk about what they can do. What are their changes from the last time that they were the IEP was evaluated, looking at where they go from here, and this is where the parent concerns get put in. This is where parents can really. Really shine, those symptoms that we may not see in the school building, some of the things that people don't even make that connection to is sleep or lack of homework or the total anxiety that goes along with homework, because they have difficulty with the writing part and they don't know what to put down. We have strengths, we have weaknesses. They all go in this section from year to year. It's a little bit more detail when we do an eval and we have an evaluation report, but those are some of the things that we need to put in here. Anything different in Iowa?
Speaker 1 20:39
No, it's pretty similar. Our boxes look different, and it's asking the same questions. And we do have a parent concern box that we have to the parent can voice whatever concerns regarding their students progress or current functioning that they want to and even concerns they might have about what the school system is doing about that they can be pretty open and frank, and it goes in the IEP that concern is there. Those are helpful boxes. And like you said, it can bring up other things that might be causing some of the symptoms. And I can think of at least one example where one of my students, who was a middle school student of mine, went to high school, and her parent, the parent, actually called me to talk to me, and she said, I don't know what is wrong. His performance has taken a dive, and I can't see how to fix it. She says he doesn't seem to be sleeping well, because he's tired all the time. And he says he's going to sleep. I'll find him awake at various times of the night, and because I suffer from sleep apnea, I suggested that. Cheri said, Are you sure that he doesn't have sleep apnea? Because that's one of the symptoms of sleep apnea and confusion during the day, and being tired all of that all day long, is part of it. And he did end up having sleep apnea, and he feels better now, but that's one of those things. Had she been at an IEP with someone she knew, like this was the first year he transitioned. She still felt I'd had him for three years. She's, I don't even know what to say in the IEP about that. She was just calling me for feedback before she went to the meeting, but she very well could have brought it up in the meeting, and someone else could have pointed it out. It is a very important part of the IEP, and it can point out bigger problems that could solve so many things
Cheri Dotterer 22:31
if there is one of the area, yeah, it's one of the areas that people don't like to address in an IEP is sleep, but it is so crucial to just general function throughout the day, now intermittently having a little trouble. Hey, he didn't sleep the night before. If that's a one time deal, that's one thing. But obviously it was becoming a perpetual habit for that child. And what was causing that for myself. If I look at my story, I was having trouble sleeping, and I would wake up gagging, and I as I looked back at it and going through some experience with my daughter having gastrointestinal issues. At one point, she said to me, Mom, why don't you just do what I did and raise your bed. I have done that, and I don't get that gag reflex happening anymore. That gag reflex, what I was misunderstanding, was probably a reflex. It took me a little while, many over 50 years to figure that out, but it really can interfere with these kids. I personally like to mention sleep issues as part of the functional performance, because it really does impact dysgraphia because of the fatigue, it
Speaker 1 24:05
impacts so many things, and it can be, in some cases, fairly easy to fix. Three cases now your bed renew, your sleep a whole lot better, very quickly.
Cheri Dotterer 24:16
Yeah, some cases yes. Some cases no. It's hard to say. It's hard to say. All right, going back into the IEP, our section three here in Pennsylvania is transition, and that's for any child 14 or over, as they're considering transitioning out of the secondary education world. Do you start yours at 14? I think that's federal level. That's 14. Yeah, many times OT is not involved in the trend transition services. However, when we look at this and we and I look here, and I see work ot really does is impacted by Ken. Help with kids that are transitioning to a work environment, and really can make some great adaptations to work in environmental modifications. I think there's still more of that. I don't think I went too far. Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, no, that's his four. And then participation in state and local assessments. Pennsylvania has their own unique ones. I think that what you're saying to me earlier was that Iowa has its own unique local and state assessments. And I think every state has their own uniqueness in that. So going from state to state, but really looking at, are they doing those standardized tests, or are they creating a pasa and looking at those alternative assessments to help the student, typically a kiddo with specific learning disabilities, they should be accommodating those assessments, and there's some things that they'll allow them to do, and some things that they won't here in Pennsylvania, like extra time and will allow them to have things read to them, other things they can't have read to them. It's really different the way that some accommodations are made and some are not allowed to be made. And I am not the special ed
Speaker 1 26:17
teacher to know the different allowed a reading comprehension test, but you can read just about every other part of a district assessment or state assessment, and you can also have the scribe for kids that have trouble with filling in the bubbles. A lot of things are online now, which is really nice, but even kids, there are kids that have trouble with doing that too for various reasons, whether it's attention span or getting distracted online or clicking through too fast because they can. We often had an adult person assisting my students by either putting in their answer for them or filling in the correct bubble. Yeah and extended time and yeah. There's several things you can do,
Cheri Dotterer 27:03
and I think this is the section that really can get the most involved, and yet the most confusing, and that's the goals and objectives. Really. It's the way we word the goals and objectives that are going to make or break the student here with what condition will Joe be able to do this in this amount of time? One of the ways that we would, as OTs, write this, would be with kindergarten style, three lined paper. Joe will write a five word sentence in so many minutes, measured monthly over the IEP year. Some of those things are the way we would word it, and it's not always legible. But our goal with dysgraphia is legibility and speed. We're looking at how well it is. Are they using grade level paper? Are they using a certain particular pencil? Are they using an incline and some of those things go in specially designed instruction, yeah, that word out, but some of them, or some of the way that we were wording them, might go in the goal, if we were trying to decrease it. And then how students progress is measured. Data collection and observation are oftentimes and things that we as ot put down that was what was required in Pennsylvania, and then periodically, we would have to check at least monthly and then report quarterly. Or if they had tri semester, it was report three times a year, but a lot of times it was quarterly. How different was it in Iowa?
Speaker 1 29:00
It's very similar goal writing procedures, the keys are to be very specific. And one thing I would say about writing IEP goals is, and I know you don't have any trouble with this, Cheri, but a lot of people do have trouble picking which skill, which specific thing is the most important one for right now as a team, that's very important that you all agree which thing is the most important thing to work on right now. And these are the options and the OT or the specialist or the English teacher or whoever needs to lay out. These are the standards for their peers that apply here. And here's where they are in relationship to those and the next step for them might be this, or it might be this, and just talk about the pros and cons of those. And when you determine when what that specific thing is, then you have to be very specific about how they're going to reach that goal. You are listing the accommodations that you're giving to reach that goal. One. With the three line paper, they're going to do that if there's some way it's different from what the other students would be expected to do, you need to make sure that's in the goal so that's part of the assessment, and typically for me, I also had to make sure that it aligned with an official assessment as much as possible, because otherwise I had to make up a proficiency scale or a rubric to go with it. And those are difficult to make valid, and they're very difficult to make comparisons using like you can't you might on that proficiency scale. You'd be giving steps to reach what the other students are doing, what the expected standard is for that grade level or that age level. And you'd have to have the steps laid out in a proficiency scale. And then you'd be writing what that looks like. You have to describe each piece of it. It's easier and faster. If there's already an assessment, and you can align your goal with that assessment, like using whatever reading assessment will, they'll achieve this score on that assessment. But I often had to write proficiency skills for skills like you're talking about.
Cheri Dotterer 31:21
I really like that, because one of the things that we often talk about in OT is not really aligning with any thing that's already pre programmed. We have to create it all ourselves.
Unknown Speaker 31:35
Yep. And
Cheri Dotterer 31:36
one of the things, and one of the particular reasons that happens in OT and speech and PT is because we are adapting the typical to specifically design it for a student, and we're having that almost this anti standardization thing going on in our general profession, and really hard. And I really like that you have to align that with a specific assessment. All we had to do in Pennsylvania, the teacher did not even specifically the OT is they had alignment with a standard. They didn't specifically have a student an assessment that they had. Neff doesn't necessarily aligned with it. I just want to mention that in my book handwriting, brain, body, disconnect, I have a whole list of goals. It is Appendix E. It starts on 191 it is about five pages of different goals that you can have different goals that you can look at. I also know of this, the IEP goals and objectives bank. If you have an English standard, you click on this, and then it breaks it down. And right here in this whole section, we have writing goals, and then it gives you examples of goals, state scoring guide, analysis of writing samples, diagnostic, survey, spelling, inventory, are some of the ways that you can monitor these goals. Then they have different objectives underneath it. And here's another goal. Will increase writing skills to blank in their areas of and then it really goes into those specific and I think that's where it becomes academic versus functional. We're looking at, can they write on grade level, legibly and up to speed of their peers, you as the teacher, are looking at, can I take that writing content and make it functional from a content perspective, are they analyzing what they're supposed to be? Are they doing what they are they may be doing academically
Speaker 1 33:47
synthesizing ideas? Yes, all those it's like the abstract versus the specific literal stuff. And a lot of kids can handle the literal, but as soon as you ask them to connect abstract concepts or to make abstract connections that require them to take something that wasn't given to them and put it together in their head and put it back out. That's where we ran into a lot of problems. But yeah,
Cheri Dotterer 34:16
we have probes, we have rubrics, we have teacher made tests, checklists and inventories that are allowed to be used for progress monitoring in Pennsylvania, and then we have short term objectives. This was only used when a kiddo had a intellectual disability, and that was like breaking down the the annual goal into quarter legals. We didn't use the short term objectives that with kids in
Speaker 1 34:42
Iowa, we had to do that only if they were alternate assessment. You could put it in for any student, but you had to break it down at least quarterly for kids that were on alternate assessments.
Cheri Dotterer 34:56
Yeah, there we go. Basically the same idea. You said differently. Six special education related services, supplementary, aids and services, program modifiers. This is where the meat comes in. The specially designed instruction. Are the all those little combinations, slant board, sensory menu, adaptive pens and pencils and paper and all those things that were not goals anymore, but the standard that you were using with the student so that they could function in the classroom. Does that make sense to you? Anything? Yeah, oh, yeah. Supplement anything other than that that really went with an SDI.
Speaker 1 35:41
We did the same thing. A lot of teachers had problems understanding the difference between an accommodation and a modification of a goal or of a standard, I'm sorry, and they had to understand that when you change the curriculum itself, that's a modification. Anytime you take away part of the standard that the student has to achieve, a knowledge of or an ability to apply. Anytime you take away from that standard, you've modified it. So that would be like they only have to do three of the goals for this chapter instead of all of the learning objectives. They only have to learn the vocabulary instead of they have to learn how to apply the vocabulary in this context. So that's a modification, and accommodation is what you're talking about. And we often had whole pages full of accommodations for so many things with my students, that was not just a three line box that was a gigantic page or two section that listed all the possible accommodations that student could be allowed to have. Now, if the student had a higher functioning level than some of mine had within the classroom, there's might be short but for instance, if it was only dysgraphia they were dealing with, they might have a paragraph or two listing the things that were available to them, if they had dictation, or if they had the use of a scribe, or if they had the ability to use their own iPad to type whatever, any kind of thing that was specific to Their success that we felt was a needed accommodation, but it didn't change the curriculum or the end outcome that was in an accommodations box. And then we also had a modifications area that you would write. These are the modifications that are acceptable for some students. Some modifications were acceptable, but you also needed to lay out, what's the depth of the modification, what can that student be expected to do? Because you don't want a teacher to just have a student sit in their classroom and not expect them to do anything, and that is often a problem with kids that are non verbal. Teachers don't know how to interact sometimes, and they won't know what to expect or how to get that outcome from that student. And the problem isn't the student's comprehension level, a lot of the time, it's just a communication deficit between them, and the teacher doesn't know how to get them to show what they know. It's helpful when you write that kind of thing in there, this student can have these modifications, they can show what they know by and list out the ways that they can show what they know. We were very specific in that part.
Cheri Dotterer 38:34
You need to be. You need to be, yep, I advanced it a little bit, and this is where the related services section comes in, any of the related services, OT, PT, speech, orientation and mobility and any of those other maybe even nursing, would go in here. Where is that happening? OT, oftentimes it just said, OT, room. It could say in the classroom, it could say in the hallway, depending on what we were doing with the student, frequency and duration. Our
Speaker 1 39:08
boxes look different. Ours are laid out like that. Ours have this stuff off to the there's two boxes that are connected to each other for each service, but it's going to say what service it is and the frequency and the location and all that off to the side, and then you have a description part to the left. And in that description part, we had to specifically say, basically, what skills were going to be worked on. Specifically, you had to have a list, and you needed to say how you were going to work on those skills you might be saying, in a small group, pull out of one to three other students, the student's going to work on social skills by using this curriculum, and we're going to work on these specific social skills by using peer modeling or video modeling, or you had to be. Very specific about how that service was going to be given provide guys that was a part ugly word provided. Ours has a little description box that's extra and maybe you guys go into a little more detail somewhere else on yours, but ours was right next to each other. Each service was laid out even for transportation, if they had specialized transportation, a box over here says the frequency and when it starts and where it is and all of that. And over here you're going to be specifying whether that student can sit next to other students, if they have a harness, if they have any other needs, why they need a transportation goal or a transportation service than a goal? It all had to be spelled out.
Cheri Dotterer 40:41
These are the approved related services. And then we have a section down here for supports for school personnel. And this is where, like the paraprofessionals, the resources, the training, the equipment needs to go into to help the students. This is where those harnesses would get put in to the picture, because that was a support for the transportation person, so that they put those things in this section
Speaker 1 41:14
that would have been listed. It's listed. We have a drop down box that says support for school personnel, or all these things that you have laid out separately. We just had a drop down box. We selected which one it was, and then we put the description in,
Cheri Dotterer 41:29
got it, got it. And then we have those gifted students who were what I lived with at home, because I had twice exceptional kids, where my kids were gifted, but they had trouble with handwriting. They have different needs and different expectations than a lot of the other kids that we've been talking about here today. There is a separate box for gifted kids and then extended school year. Extended school year does not have to be just in the summer months extended school year, can also be so many minutes before and or after school of support for the students, so many times a week and stuff. And I want to use my friend James as an example. We had this kiddo that I was working with before the pandemic hit, as I was a consultant in the school, I was not working directly with the student and the first grade teacher and I were talking, and we had decided we're going to try this program. We took an app that was on my phone, and we did this app with the kids that was all core exercises a couple minutes before class every day, and then we went through this, the alphabet, and we did the alphabet with interlaced hands. The one that I like to share with people is the vertical figure eight. We bring up the hands, and then we make the eight vertically. Now I'm not standing, so it makes a big difference when I'm standing. But trying that with a kiddo who has some coordination issues who and even I watch OTS do it for the first time, and they're like, I can't do this. And I watch teachers do it for the first time, and they're like, I don't get this. It's crossing midline, it's bilateral integration, it's all those things. And because you're using your full arm, you were getting that full motion sending messages through the proprioceptive system and the vestibular system back to the brain to reorganize how to create that particular letter, and we had such positive result from this kid. We were getting feedback long before the session was over, which was about six weeks extended. School year does not have to be just before and after school and between during this the summer months, it can be other times, it's always going to benefit the kid. Have you ever experienced a before after school? Kind of es y program?
Speaker 1 44:18
We didn't have a specific es y program for before and after school that I know of, Nobody that I know of did that in their IEP however, I know of many teachers, myself included, who were there before and after school working with kids on a regular basis, because we had kids, our kids showed up earlier and they came directly to their classroom instead of hanging around with their friends, most of the time, some of them hung around with their friends, but most of them came directly to the classroom because they had a paraprofessional leading them through their day. In my case, I had them for 20 to 30 minutes before school actually supposed to start. And yeah, we use that time if they had something they need to work on, or. Finish for another class. We were helping them get that done, but if they had that time on their hands, we were working on social skills, or we were working on math skills, or we were working on writing.
Cheri Dotterer 45:12
So what you're saying is that should have been SDI or a goal in their IEP, and you didn't even think of that.
Speaker 1 45:21
Oh, we thought of it, but it just seemed like we didn't want to, okay, I'm going to say that we didn't have an official es y program, and nobody was paying us to do that. Therefore, those minutes were donated minutes, you know what? I mean, we did that because we cared about the kids and we wanted them to be successful. But there were still times where, if I was tied into it on an IEP, this student will have 20 minutes before school. You're taking away from my prep time and you're requiring it. There's a difference. If you're going to require me to give up that time as my prep time, then you need to give me other time as my prep time, whereas if I donate that time, I donated my prep time on an IEP. We did think about putting it in their IEP. Sometimes I did write it in as the student will have X number of extra minutes of pull out time during lunch or whatever time, and we're going to pull a peer with them, and we're going to work on that. And we actually did, do we call them laugh groups, but it was basically a student micro board that we would gather a group of peers that liked interacting with the student, and we work on social skills together as a group, it helped to build friendships for kids that had a hard time building friendships, and we could coach that group a little bit and provide activities for them to do, but they would basically give up their lunchtime and come and eat in my room together and talk and interact With the student. We wrote that into the IEP,
Cheri Dotterer 47:02
and it required me to give up my lunch. So glad to hear that. And I think that we do these things naturally, and we donate our time so much that we don't even think about that. We really are doing extended school year without obese kids. If it was I do see your point,
Speaker 1 47:23
but for sure, you would want it in the IEP so that you get that time back for yourself, because as a teacher, you have to take care of all your students, and you can't do that without your prep time. Yeah, oftentimes teachers lose track of how much time they're donating to help kids, I would say the line comes when it's the same student over and over and you're the same student is coming in, and without that help in the morning, they're not going to be successful anymore, or they're not going to make the progress that you want them to make. If it's not extra icing on the cake kind of time, but it's actually become a time that we really rely upon, put it in the IEP and find another time for it, if before and after school is not the best time, but yeah,
Cheri Dotterer 48:14
and I'm thinking about that from a stakeholder perspective, from The board's perspective, and really looking at it. If we took that those that time back to the special ed director, could we get a grant for and have it funded through that? Is there anything that we can do to get some interaction beyond the classroom and carry over to the next year when that goes to a different teacher and therapist, you're doing all these things that are wonderful. How do they carry them through from school to school and really, and don't hide them from the services that's
Speaker 1 49:00
well, especially, like I said, if it's something that is really helping that student be successful and make progress, and you can see the connection, you definitely want it in the IEP so that, like you said, if they transfer school suddenly, for whatever reason, today, they're your student tomorrow, they're not. And that does happen, the other teacher needs to have something to go on to help that student be successful, or you just hamstring that student. You're not helping them. By doing that, by not communicating with the next teacher,
Cheri Dotterer 49:32
correct or therapist. It. It doesn't matter. And then educational placement, this, I believe, is the whether they're itinerant, supplement and full time, and that one is definitely where you would be filling that out. And really it has nothing to do, specific, directly, whether a kiddo has dysgraphia or not, but some of the results and how and where they fit into these. Members here might impact whether they are with kids, those with dysgraphia, whether they're itinerant or supplement, or what was the middle one? I forget I said it wrong. I think, yes, supplemental, not full time. There are they itinerant or or they supplement, depending on how many services they have, related services they have working with them. But Jen, you fill this out much more than I did. Would you have an idea it how a kid with dysgraphia might fit into the that difference between the itinerant and the supplemental? I know you worked mostly with full time, but can you do you have any examples of where that what kind of supports the kid might have that might trigger one versus the other? Or did I ask you too complicated question? Yeah, we
Speaker 1 50:59
didn't use the terms itinerant or supplemental. We just would say percentage of time in the classroom and percentage of time in the classroom could be with co teaching, support, it could be with a paraprofessional, they're still in the classroom, getting the same instruction at the same time with the other students.
Cheri Dotterer 51:26
I believe that would then support the workload model of occupational therapy, where we are coming in and we are collaborating in the classroom, push in with the teacher that's going to get a different number than the pull out. Thank you.
Speaker 1 51:45
Yep, on ours, we would say the percentage of time in the classroom. And there's a description box to say when they're not in the classroom. And you might include if there were supports, such as co teaching or OT support, you would put that in that box. You would say, in the classroom 97% of the time. And you might also break it down and say 10% of that time is with ot support, okay, or CO teacher, but a lot of the time, OTs pulled out. SLPs pulled out. They weren't co teaching, so that would come out of that classroom time and anytime I had to do specially designed instruction for that student, they were getting pulled out to come and work with me for that time. Those times would be subtracted from that overall, and you just take the minutes in the day, and for us, that was 400 minutes, and then
Cheri Dotterer 52:48
divide that out. That was basically the end of the IEP. What's the difference with the kiddos that have 504 did you get to work with any of those kids that might have had a 504 that really I didn't that disability level and had to struggle with the writing and needed support. Did you get a lot of 504 as
Speaker 1 53:14
an autism teacher? No, most of my kids were had much higher levels of need than that. I did have a couple that had a 504 but as an English teacher, before I became a special ed teacher, yes, I had some kids with 504 and one specifically was on the autism spectrum, but he was extremely he was probably twice exceptional, not probably he was and for him, he struggled, because his family's routine was every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. They were performing in the evening until late, so 1112, and one o'clock Walter High School, this kid was sleep deprived. And in addition to that, he knew most of the content that was being taught to him, so he would sleep through spot sets. And this is a problem. He also had some behavior issues that were tagged on to that, but he only had a 504 for a long time. Some of that was for his writing, and he did. He was missing a few connections with writing, and once he figured out how to make those connections for himself, he was fine. He did great.
Cheri Dotterer 54:41
And that's all, yeah, there's as much five or four needs, yeah, that
Speaker 1 54:47
behavior, and then a little bit of writing. And just because his behavior was often connected to his writing,
Cheri Dotterer 54:53
yeah, I see a lot of those kids who just struggle because they can't get the words down. On paper. They know how to write. They can write legibly if they can copy it. They can't write legibly if they have to pull it out of their brain and self generate it, because fig get too distracted with whatever it is going on up there. And oftentimes they also have a secondary diagnosis that ADHD comes in. Yes, we've
Unknown Speaker 55:25
had that going on with the student too.
Cheri Dotterer 55:28
Yes. Jennifer, thank you very much for your time today. Do you have anything else that you would like to offer before we we move on to anything else? No, all right,
Speaker 1 55:41
not really. No, we've really stressed the importance of being specific in an IEP, and it is extremely important to be specific and to be positive, because it can be a very negative experience for a parent, and you want that parent to feel, you want the kid to feel if the kid is at their IEP meeting, you want them to feel built up, you want them to leave feeling like they can do this. And there's the next step right there. You have to think of an IEP as this is the next step towards success. This is not the result of a lack on the student's part, necessarily, like it is, but that's not the perspective that you want. You want it to be. This is your next step towards success, not this is another piece of evidence that you are a failure.
Cheri Dotterer 56:35
Yes, be very specific
Speaker 1 56:36
about how they're going to get that success, because it's important for the kid to know that too. They need to know that with these tools, I can do it. Yeah, yeah, the tools have to be in there. A lot of teachers do generically list tools, and it's much more helpful when you're very specific about what it looks like for that student.
Cheri Dotterer 57:01
Yeah, and with symptoms, be specific about the symptoms, so that we can get carry over from year to year.
Speaker 1 57:11
Progress that way too. Sometimes when progress is slow or you don't feel like it's happening, when you look back at a very specific description of what it looked like at the beginning of the year, you'll actually see it. Wow. More was happening than I realized. They've actually come quite a bit of a ways from that spot, but can't be test results. That's why it's important to add that little piece underneath that describes what it looks like right now. This is what they can do right now. This is what we feel like the next steps are to get them where they need to be.
Cheri Dotterer 57:47
Hopefully, this helped you really think about what it looks like on the IEP when you're writing your goals, your present levels of functional and academic performance, and your specifically design instruction, because those are the big three contents the OT would be working at and for teachers the whole gamut of what the IEP may look like. I'm thinking a lot here about the regular ed teacher who may not even understand what goes into it. Hopefully this helped you a little bit understand more about an IEP, thank you Jen for being here today, and I'm ready to sign off. Jen Porter, it's been great to have you. Thank you. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
