Like I said, all students on my caseload have to have an IEP. Every year the IEP needs to be reviewed with goals to be addressed over the next school year and results of the last year reviewed. Every three years a child needs to be reassessed with a more intense review of current level of performance. For a non-review year I would gather the data from the past year write a report (45 minutes or so), meet with teachers, aids, and other services (30-90 minutes) discussing overall progress for the past year. We also discuss the most appropriate goals for the up coming year and the best placement for them. For those three year reviews, you have to add in testing time, scoring of the test, analyzing the test, meeting with others doing testing to discuss their results, a more intense report explaining the testing and scores. That adds about an hour onto whole process.
That is just the physical process. What doesn't get added into the IEP time is the time I spend laying awake thinking of goals, letting test scores sink in and processing. I think about these kids in the shower, making dinner, in bed when I should be sleeping, in my dreams and in the car.
As professionals we put out heart and soul into these kids lives to give them the most help to let them succed with the least amount of support. We get together as a team and recommend from our hearts. We don't sit around and pick our favorite kid and give them everything while the rest we try to screw over. I sometimes felt while in private practice parents viewed the IEP as a time of us against them. We really are on the kids side, but due to policies we might not be able do what we fully want, but guess what, you can't do it in all in the private practice either. There are limitations there too, but those are not viewed as horrible. We are professionals, we do know what we are talking about and for my caseload of 26-28 by the end of IEP season I will be surprised if I can still function.
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