Teacher Journals #2

“My First IEP Meetings”

My first IEPs were very different experiences for me. One was a three year re-evaluation and IEP combination. The other was a traditional IEP meeting. One was completely out of my hands because the school psychologist set the entire meeting up and was in charge of inviting IEP team members and the guardians of the student. The second meeting I was in control of, which was much more frightening. One was dramatic, one was relaxed. However I think the spectrum that they represented helped me know what to expect in the future.

The three year re-evaluation was nice as my first IEP meeting because all I had to do was draft the new IEP and the rest was handled by the school psychologist and my special education coordinator. However the simplicity soon dwindled as soon as the IEP meeting started. This student is in a strange “foster care” setup that nobody in the district quite knows the details of. So his grandmother still has legal rights over him and is the only person that can legally make decisions about his IEP meeting. I was told that it has been very hard to get her to the meetings, so my coordinator was to pick her up…she shows up without my coordinator. We find out that my coordinator went to the wrong address.

Keep in mind that I had nothing to with who was invited…or not invited to this meeting. The whole morning I was wondering if the student’s foster mom was coming to the meeting. I walked into the room and realized that she was not there and wondered why, but did not think anything of it. Through the course of the meeting we decided as an IEP team to shorten the student’s school day until his behaviors could be brought under control.

Well, the grandmother clearly knows nothing about what is going on with her grandson. She is totally out of the picture. The changes made to the school day do not affect her at all. So the foster mom called irate with me. Obviously I as the teacher receive the full extent of the anger. She accused all of us of not caring about the student and just trying to get rid of him.

It really hurt my feelings. I was depressed for the rest of the day. I could not stand to be at work any longer. I was upset with the IEP team because I know that legally we did not have to invite the foster mom, but our decision did most directly affect her. There I was stuck in the middle of it all.

The second IEP I had that same week was entirely simpler. I did make the mistake of not reminding the father of the meeting the day before. He was late because he overslept. I was in control of the meeting. The father had no objections to the newly proposed goals and even suggested a few more goals that I was fine with adding into the IEP.

So my first two IEPs ran the spectrum. In the aftermath of one I have new goals to work on. I am still living in the aftermath of the more tumultuous meeting. The foster mom withdrew the student from school. He is truant now for weeks and not getting any kind of education. All because the “higher-ups” did not see fit to extend common courtesy and invite her to the meeting that would affect her life.