Womans-Corner
Articles and Information for Working Women and Family
Special Needs Children

The advice contained within these articles is offered for your consideration by Lisa Simmons. You, as a parent or professional, must decide whether any of the ideas presented here should be implemented in your unique situation. The staff of the Ideal Lives Project encourage all site visitors to always utilize this information in a manner that is respectful and in the best interest of their child, student or loved one.

Parents and Schools: Partners in Education
by Lisa Simmons

As parents we all know how awful it is to feel "left out of the loop", to not really know what's going on with your child while they are at school all day.

The list of reasons why communication doesn't happen between schools and families of children with disabilities is long and familiar:

• too many students and only one teacher;
  
• no reliable system to get information from school to home or vice versa;
  
• the student has limited verbal skills and can't relay messages reliably;
  
• things are going well -- and the school assumes no news is good news;
  
• things are going poorly and the school is gathering data to support a different placement;
  
• their have been past disagreements between school and parents so both sides are avoiding contact whenever possible.

But our objective today is to find positive, practical ways to increase parent involvement with the school and maximize parent/teacher communication. So where do you start . . . .

1. Utilize the basics.

Make sure your son/daughter's IEP includes a way for you to communicate and monitor progress. Frequently used methods include a notebook or fill in the blank page sent home each day in the student's backpack containing the teacher or paraprofessional's comments on the day's activities.

2. Develop a monitoring system for actual classwork.

Talk with the teacher about how long work needs to be kept at school for grading, etc. and then ask that completed items be sent home for you to see. This lets you see how work is being modified and helps you make sure that accomodations agreed on in the IEP are actually happening. It will also be the easiest way for you to spot areas where your child is consistently struggling so that you know what issues to bring up during meetings.

3. Use technology.

If the traditional paper and pencil approach doesn't work because your student frequently forgets or loses his/her backpack then consider a more high tech approach. Set up a contact schedule with your teacher using email, phone calls, or even video conferencing if you want to involve therapists or other health professionals. A new development that can impact not only your communication but your entire school's -- is the creation of a community site. This is a new service available through Learning.com that is designed specifically to maximize parent/school communication.

4. Get involved!

Most parents do the basics (join the Parent/Teacher organization, attend their child's IEP and parent teacher conferences, and attend routine school functions) but if establishing an effective parent/school partnership is important to you it's probably going to be necessary to go above and beyond this level of participation.

Need ideas?

=> Look for opportunities to volunteer at the school, most have small groups that help teachers with making copies, cutting out shapes, etc. (basically whatever the teachers need done). By doing these small tasks you can free up your teacher to spend more time developing creative accomodations and supports for your student and others that may need extra help.

=> At parent teacher conferences, don't just tell the teacher what else you want her to do, ask what you can do at home to support her efforts at school.

=> At the PTO level, look for ways your organization can support the teachers by sponsoring communication training for the teachers and administrative staff or helping to develop a parent resource center (an area in the school that invites parents to share their parenting experiences with other parents and to work with teachers and other school staff on school concerns).

5. Keep a before, during and after record system.

BEFORE you meet with school staff - develop your own agenda. This approach will make sure that you are prepared and have a solid idea about what issues that you want addressed.

DURING the meeting - make notes about the school's response to each request.

AFTER each meeting - send a letter of understanding to the school reviewing your request and their response. The letter should be included in your child's file and can be CC'd to anyone else that you want to be aware of the situation. It also serves as your record of the meeting and what was agreed on so be sure and keep a copy for your own file. From a communication stand point it will eliminate months of misunderstanding if for any reason you and the school staff walked away from the meeting with different ideas about what the plan of action was going to be. This way the misunderstanding surfaces immediately and can be resolved.

The key to all of these suggestions is to look for creative ways to maximize the amount as well as the quality of information being shared between home and classroom. Using these ideas will also help everyone remember that parents are a critical partner in the education process!

All My Best,

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