E88: Parent Rights, Inclusion & Placement with Ashley Barlow
Welcome to a little bit of a more casual episode that's PACKED with information and context about the special education process! Today's guest is Ashley Barlow of The Special Education Advocacy Podcast. A former special education teacher, parent to a child with Down Syndrome, and special education attourney. In this episode we discuss: 1) Parent Rights 2) Inclusion (including a non-deffinition of inclusion...)
Welcome to a little bit of a more casual episode that’s PACKED with information and context about the special education process!
Today’s guest is Ashley Barlow of The Special Education Advocacy Podcast. A former special education teacher, parent to a child with Down Syndrome, and special education attourney.
In this episode we discuss:
1) Parent Rights
2) Inclusion (including a non-deffinition of inclusion…)
3) and Placement!
And Ashley asks me about the role of OT, patterns of parent advocacy that were effective, and goals!
**NEW** Freebie: IEP Process Step-By-Step Guide (& when to share parent input to feel heard!)
E88: Parent Rights, Inclusion & Insights with Ashley Barlow
[00:00:00] If you are not new to the parent IEP lab podcast, then you will notice pretty quickly that this episode is a little bit different and I’m really excited to share it with you.
Today, my guest is Ashley Barlow hosts of the special education advocacy podcast. She is a former special education teacher, a parent to a child with down syndrome and a special education lawyer
today, our format is a little bit different in that we are interviewing each other. So you will hear a little bit more about my perspective on things, but also I focus my questions to Ashley on parent rights, and she actually mentioned one that will save you a ton of money. And also others that are often missed as well.
I also ask her about inclusion and defining inclusion, which she surprised me with her answer there. And she gets into talking about placement for your child as well. So stick with me because it’s a little bit more of a mini topic episode with a lot mixed in, it was also super fun to record and i’m guessing that you will get a ton of information and just have a more relaxed experience with this one too so stick with me
[00:01:00] You are listening to the parent IEP lab, the podcast that helps you get an effective IEP plan for your child so that you can get them supported and learning in school. I’m Beth LEAs and Feld occupational therapist, who started to notice trends in parents who got effective IEP for their kids without having to fight with the school.
My mission is to help you turn insider knowledge from the school side into effective parent advocacy for your child. The parent IEP lab is all about the important parent input prepping for the upcoming meeting, but also talking about commonly missed opportunities for parents to get an effective IEP outside of the IEP meeting.
So let’s dive into today’s guest and think about. What we can change and tweak to get the right formula for success for your child to learn and grow at school. Welcome to the lab.
If you have a meeting coming up in the next few months, do not wait to snag my new freebie, the IEP process. Step-by-step guide it breaks down the. It breaks down the annual IEP process and includes what, and when you should share your parent [00:02:00] input. So you actually feel heard at your meeting, download your free copy at www.theieplab.com/iep.
Hi, Beth. Hi Ashley. How are you today? Good. I think we are mutually excited. Yes. We’re both grinning from ear to ear, although people can’t see that, but I bet you can hear it on the other. Maybe you can hear it. Maybe you can hear it. Well, we’re mutually excited because this is a mutual podcast.
Yeah. And I’ve never done this before and I’m so excited to do it with you and we’ve got some really, really good topics we’re talking about today too. Yeah, yeah. It’s gonna be, um, fun. The last time I did this, we had lots of jokes about who was gonna be the bossy person and then we both ended up to be bossy.
And it’s fun to like be interviewed and interview at the same time because. It’s a conversation. Yeah, exactly. I love it. Yeah. Good. Well, we did not plan this, friends. We have no idea who’s starting [00:03:00] and who is stopping. Um, but since I did the introduction, Beth, why don’t you take it away, . Yeah. So, so let’s just start with introducing ourselves a little bit.
So my name is Beth Levenfeld. I am the host of the Parent IEP Lab podcast, I’m an occupational therapist and really what I’m trying to do with my business and with my podcast is give parents a peek behind the curtain of what is actually happening from the school side of things.
There’s so many times where, you know, I, I was in early intervention for a while, and then I was in outpatient therapy for a while. And when I started in schools, there were so many meetings where I just wanted to pull the parent to the side and hey, this got granted like two hours ago because a parent asked this way.
And so my podcast is all about the behind the scenes things, how the system works, so that parents just have some context with how things work and how they fit into it. And Ashley, do you wanna introduce yourself? [00:04:00] Yeah. And I love that, you know, I’m like sitting on my hands because I wanna say, you should have told ’em, you should’ve done it.
Collaborate. I did sometimes and I made meetings go way longer than school team wanted them to go. Yeah. Well, who cares? You know? I mean, that’s the, that’s the whole purpose is to collaborate. Anyway, my listeners know that that’s the way I feel. Um, hi new friends. I’m Ashley Barlow. I am, a parent at the IEP table.
I have a little boy named Jack who has Down Syndrome. I am a former teacher. I am a special education attorney who has scaled her, law practice back significantly because I just took a full-time job working at National Down Syndrome Congress as the Director of Education. Um, and I have Ashley Barlow Company, which, um, has a mission of providing more reasonably priced resources to my friends [00:05:00] in, um, the special education community.
So we have a podcast. I’ve got two online training courses, one aimed to help, um, parents navigate the special education process and one to help people establish and grow their businesses as special education advocates. Um, and then I have lots and lots of resources available on my website. So I’ve got like an inclusion workshop and a behavior workshop and, um, downloadable PDFs and, you know, that are guides and checklists and that kind of thing.
Um, And kind of the stamp that I put on this is this really collaborative communication focused advocacy thing. I am a mediator by training, um, a mediator by trade. I do a lot of me, well, I used to, who knows if I still will, um, do a lot of mediation work. I don’t know. I’m still like, I developing my new identity position.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My who am I and what am I doing? Um, [00:06:00] and, and so yeah, I mean, you know, I think similar to you, I have sat at so many different seats at the IEP table that, um, collaboration and communication and negotiation strategy. Um, that’s kind of, that’s the heart of it for me. Yeah. Well, and that, that’s the thing, like I remember just kind of noticing patterns in the parents that really got amazing IEPs for their kids.
And I saw some that came in hot and were, you know, already amped and already kind of worked up about what was happening cuz there was some things that weren’t going very well. But then I saw the result of that IEP and how that kid really missed out on the creativity of the rest of the school team when it came to, to problem solving.
And I was like, this does not work. It doesn’t work to come in and not be collaborative because your kid is missing out. And really that’s, that’s the key is to kind of be the middle of the road. You don’t wanna be too passive. You don’t wanna be too, you know, telling people what to [00:07:00] do and maybe even aggressive a little bit.
You wanna be right in the middle and preserve those relationships and that’s what gets you a really good IEP in the end. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting, um, because over the weekend I presented at a, um, Diocesan conference, um, aimed to target teachers in, um, Catholic schools in Lexington, Kentucky. Ah, okay.
And then this morning I spoke with, um, someone that is associated with a, an organization that promotes special education supports and services in Catholic schools, um, and possibly other private schools, but I think only diocese in Catholic schools, um, in a different state. And both in my presentation and this morning, I said, you know, even if you aren’t required to follow idea because you’re at a private school that doesn’t, um, have to follow idea, you can still rely on the research that Congress did when it drafted [00:08:00] idea and the research that Congress has done every time it reauthorize idea.
And you can still. See, because if the United States Congress does research, it’s gonna be good, right? Mm-hmm. , and you can still interpret the data to say exactly what it says in that collaboration amongst the IEP team is important and students have better outcomes if their parents are involved in the development and the implementation of the i e It’s so easy.
So the word parent is in, you’ve probably heard me say this, the word parent is in idea over 400 times. Mm-hmm. . So like this idea of empowering parents shouldn’t necessarily be needed because we parent should be empowered. I think what we have to be doing and, and what I try to do here at Ashley Barlow Company is help parents understand the framework of the law.
Like what actually are their rights and what are the students rights? Mm-hmm. . [00:09:00] Mm-hmm. , and then understand. Actual teaching practices, or at least how to research teaching practices. You know, like look at your child’s profile, look to see what, what we need to capitalize on their strengths and address their needs.
And then identify curricula that do that mm-hmm. , um, and then identify the negotiation strategies that they need in order to get these services under the law and address those other two prongs. Yeah. So I think that’s the heart and soul of the whole parent process. Yeah. So I, I wanna take a deep dive into that if I can, because you mentioned parent rights, and that’s one of the things that, you know, we, we had a session on it in my summit about parent rights, but we haven’t talked about it on the podcast.
And so because you have sat, like you said in multiple different seats at the IEP table, I wonder if you want to hit the highlights of like, the biggest parts of the parent rights or procedural safeguards that get missed. [00:10:00] From what you see with working with parents and also being a parent yourself. Um, yeah.
So the, the one that everybody always misses that will save you literally thousands of dollars is the right to an i e e, an independent education evaluation. Um, I tell people that and they’re like, oh my gosh. Or people bring me private evaluations and I hate to break it to ’em that like, sorry, you just spent $2,500 on, um, ed psych testing.
So the rule with an i e E is if the district does an evaluation and the parents. Disagree with any part of it, the parents can get a second or competing or a more thorough or independent. The, the word is literally independent educational evaluation at the district’s expense, at the public expense. So all you have to do is say, this isn’t thorough enough.
This was, this did not address the area of need. This was not what I agreed to. [00:11:00] This was, um, too comprehensive. I don’t know if that one would work, but , you know what? Whatever the thing is, that’s all you have to say. Um, and then they give you one. So I think that’s pretty exciting. And if they disagree with that, they have to take you to due process and they don’t wanna do that.
Um, so I think that parent right can be super powerful and I’m a big proponent of comprehensive evaluations and then actually doing something with them. Um, so, um, Parent rights, um, the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the i e p, the IEP meeting and the process, um, the development and the implementation of the iep.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. , obviously that’s like, I have a whole business around that, so I feel very passionately about that. Um, and you know, there’s so many things that go into that. So like you saying, well, I made meetings longer. If you are a parent and you feel [00:12:00] like you don’t get what you need out of your child’s annual i e p, um, your like annual meeting, We’ll make it longer if it needs to be longer, so that you can participate meaningfully and say, I’ve got a right to participate meaningfully.
And so I would like to request an additional meeting. Mm-hmm. . Um, and I think that that can be super helpful. The ability to, um, have the, uh, meeting and the information relative to the child to be communicated to you in a language that is, um, understandable to you is a super powerful tool. And I’ll tell you what, I have used meaningful participation and the language, um, together for my parents that have auditory processing stuff.
Mm-hmm. , I love that. Yeah. To record meetings to say, can we record a meeting? And the district pushes back for whatever reason. And I’m like, first of all, we can record without, you know, in Kentucky it’s a, um, [00:13:00] one party consent state, so my clients can record regardless of whether they provide notice. They aren’t gonna get.
Um, arrested for, for criminal eavesdropping, which is, you know, the, the threat. Um, but also I need to do this in order to understand what’s happening. Mm-hmm. , so I could go on and on about parent rights, but those are a few highlights. I love that. And especially because, you know, I, I expected it, but then, you know, when I’m running my Ultimate Parent IEP prep course, a lot of the parents that come through will disclose that they have a disability to me, like with, within the first meeting that we have together.
And I’m like, you know, I expected that, you know, there’s some, you know, obviously like genetic connections between some of these disabilities that we’re working with, but it’s so fun because I’m like, oh good, I get to be your OT two. Like, how, what do you need? Like kind of practice advocating through me so that I can make this accessible to you.
But that [00:14:00] has come up where. You know, people are asking to record or something else and they’re just not getting it. And then they have to go through this whole advocacy process for them to even access the meeting, which I just think is a little bit over the top. And I don’t understand why some school IEP teams don’t automatically do that because they’re already set up for it.
Right? If somebody tries to advocate for themselves, you would think that they would respect that. But you know, the system is broken and you know, I mean, having both been on the school side of meetings, um, I just think it’s so absurd to not want more information, right? Like, I started off the year and solicited information from parents and if I had parents that didn’t give it, I would reach out to them specifically one on one on the telephone to say, Hey, I noticed that you didn’t fill out, you know, Jose’s paper.
And I would like to hear more about them. Mm-hmm. . So do you wanna do it in a phone call? Do you wanna shoot me an email? Mm-hmm. , um, How do you want to do that? And back then the email, yes. [00:15:00] It was like a dos looking page. It was like dukey cow looking . Um, and so, you know, I mean, I just can’t imagine that schools don’t want that information.
And if you can, nine times outta 10, 9.9 times outta 10, if I can train parents about how to communicate effectively, both in my law practice or through Ashley Barlow company resources, it’ll work. It’s not, Rome was not built in a day. It takes time because it takes trust. Um, but it’s super effective over the course of time.
Mm-hmm. . Um, so yeah, I have a, a kind of similar question. To you. Um, and it’s because, you know, same thing like you have sat at, um, at the IEP table from the perspective of the school team. Um, and I think your, um, you’re kind of [00:16:00] why behind doing what you’re doing now over at the IEP lab will be, um, super interesting.
So if you could, um, you know, kind of touch on like why this your business exists, um, and then in that, like, I bet you’ve got kind of two takeaways that you, um, I don’t know, maybe more, um, for parents, like if you, if you could like highlight just a couple of takeaways that parents, um, You know, specifically around this topic, okay. Here is the question. If you could tell parents two things about specifically their involvement in the IEP process, what would it be? Yeah, so, so a little bit more about, you know, the, the business and what inspires all of this is, you know, I, I, occupational therapists, let’s start there.
Occupational therapists are people who work with people that are experiencing a disability [00:17:00] and experiencing a barrier to participation in something that they need to do or something that they want to do. And. We are a very minor player on the team. . We are a related service in the schools, which just means in most states that occupational therapists can’t be the only service that your child gets.
There are a couple exceptions like Washington State, um, and New York City and things like that. But most of the time we cannot service a kid alone. And so what happens in meetings is I would have 80 meetings per year, but that would be under 10 different case managers and I would not be talking for a lot of that meeting.
I usually went last because we’re last in the paperwork order most of the time. Um, and what happens is I did a lot of observation and I observed a ton of things between like case managers and relationships and also, you know, what parents were doing that really got this, I. Team so [00:18:00] excited about implementing this iep.
Also coming up with the IEP in general and then also implementing it, which I know is a huge pain point for most parents because trying to, how do you do that? How do you get them to implement it? And I’m sure you can talk about the legal reasons. Yeah. But of course you want the team to like be excited about helping your kid.
Right? And so that’s what the IEP lab is doing is just kind of these themes that I saw in parents of this is how they got everybody excited about implementing this. And here’s, here’s the couple cool things that lead me to the takeaways. You already mentioned this, Ashley, that this IEP is not supposed to be permanent and there’s so much stress.
Coming up to that meeting, you think you’ve got, you know, you said you can request a continuation meeting, but so many parents are like, I have one hour to plan my entire input for the next year for my kid, and that’s it. That’s all I’ve got. [00:19:00] And that is so untrue. Yes, you can absolutely do multiple meetings.
You know, I’ve seen it drag onto. Continuation meetings. And by that time, everybody is kind of burnt out and done. Like, let me just be honest and, and tell you that. Everybody’s like, oh my gosh. Like, can we get something going? Can we just start implementing? But, you know, two meetings, three meetings, like that’s totally doable and you should totally ask for that.
But the cool thing, and I’m, I’m thinking of two particular parents stuck in my mind right now because what they did in between the IEP meetings was form a relationship with every IEP team member. And this does not have to be parents bringing school staff gifts. It does not have to be that, but it can be.
And, and that can help be if that’s true to you. Yeah, and it can be, you can bring, bring treats to the meeting. You can do things like that if you want to. But the other thing is just like stopping in and saying hi or [00:20:00] sending a quick email that says, You know, asking a quick question or checking in or whatever.
I would go above and beyond for this one particular mom. And she, she never brought us gifts. She never did any of that, but I knew that she cared. She cared about us as people, and she also would ask for things like, What are you guys working on? Like how do you even work on that? You know, she would ask questions for her knowledge so that she could build her knowledge.
And after that it was like every time I had something that I could send home that would demonstrate like what I was doing with her kid, I would send it home and I’d write a little note on it that said like, Hey, she did this with this much assistance, like she’s doing great or we need to work on this and this is how I’m helping her do that.
Or you know, summer, like she didn’t qualify for esy, which is extended school year, but I would always touch base with her and say, Hey, do you wanna packet for me to print off and send home? And I didn’t have to do that, but I knew that she would appreciate and I knew that she was gonna do it [00:21:00] if I sent it home.
Yeah, so there’s, there’s just like these little things, like I had, you know, probably 55 to 65 kids on my caseload, but I could count on one hand the parents who actually. Reached out to me even twice in a year. Yeah. That, that wanted information or like asked a question. And so you will stand out if you are somebody that just asks questions.
So, you know, there’s this continuous, like relationships are so important and that the IEP can be changed mid-year also, and you can make amendments to things. You can ask for another IEP meeting, midyear to like adjust things if things aren’t working. And that’s okay. That’s why my business is called the IEP lab because it’s all an experiment, it’s an informed experiment and that’s why we have data.
But goodness gracious, if you put all of this pressure on this one IEP and getting it totally right, then, then it’s gonna fail. Like you need to have a problem solving, [00:22:00] trial and error kind of approach to it, and that’s what works. Okay. So I have a follow up question to that about the related service thing that you talked about.
Yeah, yeah. Um, but first, I talk about this analogy. Okay, so like the annual meeting, right? Like, I only have an hour, or I only have, who cares? Even if it’s three hours to talk about my kid. Okay. So like the analogy is pretend that you’re at work or you’re doing something like personal. So maybe it is, um, you know, like planning your parents’ 50th anniversary party or join some charitable thing and like everybody follows a role.
So, you know, I don’t know, maybe there’s like a timekeeper. Think back to your like high school group work. There’s a timekeeper and there’s a secretary and there’s like the finance guy, and you know, there’s all that stuff, right? But at work, like you’ve got HR and you’ve got the marketing team and you’ve got like the IT team and all of these people that come together.
All right? So now you’ve got whatever your task is. And just for like, um, examples sake, let’s say that you’re planning a charitable. [00:23:00] And you’ll say, okay, we’re gonna have the charitable event in one year. It’s one year from today, and we’re all gonna sit down and we’re gonna develop goals. And, and I’m the, um, decorations lady.
So my goal is that I’m gonna buy $2,500 worth of decorations. I’m gonna have seating for 250 people and I’m gonna do all this stuff, right? And then everybody goes on their merry way. So we’ve planned it, we’ve set our goals, we’ve said how we’re gonna evaluate those goals. And three more times before the event, we’re all gonna spew a bunch of information out.
I only have 226 chairs and I have spent $2,700 and now I’m outta money. And I, um, there will be decorations. And blah, I spew out all the information. Nobody says anything back. Like the finance people don’t say, oh, it sounds like your finances aren’t working out. And the marketing people don’t say, maybe we could get you like some graphics to reduce your cost to make it more free.
And [00:24:00] none of the people say anything . Right? And then like we show up at the event and we all say, was it. Did we meet our goals? That’s absurd. And we’re treating our children’s education that way. So like the obvious parallel is then that’s what so many annual IEP meetings are. Yeah. We go to the meeting and we sit down and we develop the goals and we say, this is how often we’re gonna share data.
Nobody talks about the data when they get it. Nobody like lets the data drive the instruction for heaven’s sakes. And then we meet again in a year and we talk about what worked and what didn’t work and then we do the same thing over again. It’s so dumb. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t love that analogy more. I love that.
Yeah. Yeah, because, because also inherently in that it, you’re talking about people who have real knowledge and specialty, right? So of course, like you as the coordinator are best by knowing what everybody’s role [00:25:00] is. And that’s a lot of what I do in my podcast. I have an IEP team member, Series going on right now where it’s like, what does the special education teacher actually do?
Right? So what does that finance person actually do? Yeah. You know, what do they bring to the table? And you really wanna harness their information, like learn a little bit about what they do so you can ask good questions of them, right? Yeah. Yeah. How else can we do that? How else can we approach this goal?
What else can we do? You know, they have that knowledge, you just need to ask the right questions. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you start using that analogy. I love it. The book, um, five Dysfunctions of A Team by Patrick Lindsey. And if you read that, it’s like a getting to yes. Kind of advocacy book or never split the difference.
Those things. I, I, um, have a whole negotiation workshop where that kind of highlights lessons from these books. Mm-hmm. . Um, the, the five dysfunctions of a team. I was probably rereading that for the 17th time when I was like, oh [00:26:00] my gosh, this is like a business meeting. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, now it’s not such a natural follow up, but, um, my follow up to the related services thing.
Mm-hmm. . This, that fact used to make me really mad. So I just wanna say again what you said. So, ot, and by the way, PT are called related service Related services. So you cannot get a standalone IEP if the only thing you need is ot. And by the way, the same is true of pt. So you might have like, um, like a significant sensory processing disorder, but if your only service that you need is ot, then you don’t get an iep.
So like, can you geek out about why we should all be so mad about that? But I wanna say something first. Cause this is what makes me so mad about it. I just remembered, well, I didn’t remember, but like I meant to say this in my intro, see if the words aren’t coming out. My audience knows that I have that [00:27:00] like post covid thing where, where the words don’t happen.
Oh yeah. And so they’re just used to it. But my new friends that are, your listeners are gonna be like, what’s happening? Okay. So this is what makes me mad. It started with Sandy Hook, and I don’t remember everybody’s diagnoses or suspected diagnoses, but I think the, um, the kid, young man that, um, was the perpetrator at Sandy Hook had fetal alcohol syndrome.
Mm-hmm. . And then shortly after that, I don’t remember if it was Parkland or something, but like the big, the big ones, you know, that were in the news for weeks because unfortunately there were so many casualties. Um, like three of those bigger ones in a row had children that either had diagnosed. Really strongly suggested, basically OT needs.
I remember one of ’em was Reactive Attachment Disorder. I think maybe one of the shooters had been a, an adopted child and had like really [00:28:00] strained relationship with their adoptive mother or something. Um, and then fetal alcohol syndrome, I remember. And the other one was, I can’t remember if it was just like generalized sensory processing disorder or something.
But I was like, why can we not get special education services such as OT is a standalone service. So now you can get mad and tell us more about that. Well, and And I should say that there are workarounds to this, you know? Yes. So there, yes. Thanks. Yeah. There are places like Washington and New York City that have like additional funding or like, you know, they can layer on top of the I D E A, right?
So they can add more. They just can’t do what’s less than in the federal law. But some districts will allow us to see a child that has a 5 0 4 and be a service provider on that 5 0 4. But it depends on the district. Most of the time we were like allowed to do it in the districts I worked for, but only on [00:29:00] a temporary basis.
And that was to figure out what accommodations would actually work for this kid and what wouldn’t, because we are. Really, really good at that trial and error process. We love doing that as a profession. Um, and so we do that. But you know, it, it all comes down to the law, as you know. And I think what’s probably holding us back is that sensory processing disorder isn’t still, isn’t an official diagnosis.
It’s still not in the dsm, which is kind of the list of all the diagnoses. And you know, it is kind of disappointing because you see a lot of people that normally this sensory processing part will show up, you know, in preschool, in kindergarten. And then normally it will show up somewhere else later too.
Some, sometimes they’re diagnosed with a learning disability later. And so then we can, we can add on. But I started to see as we went along that even we can nest [00:30:00] under speech language pathologists cuz they can be case managers. And it was kind of rare that we would nest underneath them and them be the case managers and us be the only two providers.
But what we started to notice is that if they needed just speech and OT past a certain point, then it started to look like something else and it would be a learning disability later. But yeah, I mean OTs, you know, are our amazingness of being able to literally address any barrier. Also makes it really hard for people to understand us because we can literally do anything.
We started out as a profession of being mental health providers. We still are very much mental health providers, but then we kind of, for a while, because of funding and because of insurance, kind of got shuffled into this, oh, you’re just like a pt. We’re like, no, not really. We have a lot more kind of social emotional sensory work, right?
Yeah. We’re all you do is fine motor. Yeah. Yeah. But [00:31:00] really how I love to explain us is we’re functional neurologists. We really understand how the brain works both in a motor component and in processing component. And so we address that. Um, the thing that really stinks for me is sometimes I would be on the child fine team, so birth to three, and then we evaluate them to switch over to school services when they turn three.
And there’s so many times when. I would get really frustrated because I would understand all of that medical language and I would say to the case manager, Hey, do you have a nurse here, ? And they’re like, oh no. Do we need the nurse? And I’m like, yes, this is a nurse. This is a nurse need. And so we just understand what everybody does because we literally overlap with everybody.
And I think that’s probably why we get put in the related service. And so many times our roles are so different on the teams as well, because if there’s a special education teacher that knows a lot about sensory processing, then they’re in that building every [00:32:00] day. And a lot of times we’re not. I was covering 10 schools at once.
Um, but that doesn’t mean, so I love it when I’ve got really knowledgeable teachers, gen ed teachers or special education teachers that support a child. Mm-hmm. . But I always tell my. I mean, heaven forbid that wonderful, supportive woman have a stroke tomorrow. You know, and I’m not like, wishing anything on anybody when I say that, I’m saying that lady’s husband could get transferred or her, um, daughter could have a baby that needs a lot of support and she could be outta here tomorrow.
And then what are you stuck with? So you, I, I feel strongly that in a non-adversarial way, we ought to at least document the supports. And I totally agree that at the very least, a 5 0 4 or, um, I think you alluded to this, response to intervention. I’ve got a lot of districts here in Kentucky and Ohio that will do, um, [00:33:00] OT services or at least progress monitoring on supports that were probably originally designed by an OT and are implemented by a special educator mm-hmm.
um, relative to sensory processing and executive functioning. Yeah. Um, So, yeah. Okay. Thank you, . Thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s interesting. I’ve, I think I’ve gone, I’ve gotten so used to that role, but like literally my role will be different on every single team that I’m on, right? Because I see it as like the main providers are, are there and they’re addressing the needs that they’re best in.
And then whatever falls through the cracks, that’s what I’m catching. If they need sensory processing support, that’s what I’m catching to support. Or if they need, um, you know, handwriting support, that’s what I’m catching. If they need assistive technology support, that’s what I’m catching so that the ball doesn’t get dropped, um, completely, which is an annoyance of mine.
But, um, yeah. Kind of, kind of switching gears a little bit, I [00:34:00] want to ask you about something, you know, here in Colorado, and I think it’s a national thing so you can confirm or deny this, but what I admire about the Down Syndrome, Community is that you guys just like have so many resources that you share with each other.
And I know that about my local like Colorado organizations, but I, I’m pretty sure it’s a national thing too. And one of the things that I think the Down syndrome community loves is talking about inclusion and how we can increase inclusion. But here’s the thing, the middle school especially that I supported wasn’t very good at inclusion.
And I think there’s many different like definitions of inclusion too, of like what that should look like. Can you talk a little bit about what your definition of inclusion is and what parents can do if their definition of inclusion is different from the school’s definition [00:35:00] of inclusion? Oh, okay. Okay.
Okay. Yeah, that’s good. I like that question. Yeah, so I couldn’t agree with you anymore. And let me just say one thing, um, about that like amazing Down syndrome community that I am so proud to be a part of.
Um, it, it, it, and so first of all, down syndrome is the most commonly occurring chromosomal difference. And so, um, we just have numbers behind us. I mean, there’s really no, like, magic thing. It’s not, you know, I have a ton of clients and a ton of friends that have like, really rare chromosomal differences.
Mm-hmm. , um, and other genetic differences and Down Syndrome just is not really rare. And so we’re really lucky. You know, they say kids don’t come with books, well, kids with Down syndrome like literally come with stacks of books and it’s like, sweet. I know what to do with him. Um, I, I still, I thought I was very confident and know, thinking I knew what to do with him.
And he keeps telling me that my [00:36:00] confidence is completely misplaced. But regardless, we’re gonna keep chugging along. So, yeah, so that’s kind of number one. The other thing I wanna say about that is, um, services that are available for any one community, so autism services or down syndrome services or, um, there’s CP use, um, cerebral Palsy Unified, I can’t remember what they organizations are called.
Like, but you know, there’s Autism Speaks and there’s Down Syndrome Associations and, and whatever. That’s what I’m talking about. So like, our Down Syndrome Association here in Greater Cincinnati, um, will, we are very, very inclusive. So we will provide programming and services, et cetera for families of children whose profiles do not include Down Syndrome, but are very closely connected.
Mm-hmm. , the profile of the child or the adult, um, mirrors that of Down Syndrome or looks very similar to Down Syndrome. And here’s the [00:37:00] reason why, because you’ve met one kid with Down Syndrome. You’ve met one kid with Down Syndrome. Same thing applies to autism and any other diagnosis that is out there.
Yep. And so what I would say is I don’t necessarily care when I’m developing or helping a family develop programming for a, for a person with a disability. Um, what I’m focusing more on is the actual profile and how that profile impacts they’re functioning academically, functionally, adaptively, behaviorally, and all of the other ad verbs.
Um, so that’s kind of like, I, I think too many people are out looking for services and say, oh, that’s only for autism. Um, that’s only for Down Syndrome. And they don’t think like, well, my child, you know, a lot of kids with Down Syndrome have intellectual, um, disabilities and my child has an intellectual disability, and so maybe.
I could see if they’ve got anything for me. So yes. And if, and if I can interrupt you [00:38:00] real fast. Yes. I get, I’m so glad that you brought this up because we, you know, I did a whole eligibility series on all of the categories of eligibility and at the start I’m like, okay, do these matter? Right, right. And the cool thing that’s happening, and of course it’s slower than we want it to, but a lot of districts will have like these autism programs and you have to be under the autism eligibility category to do this.
Well, I was really, really involved with the traumatic brain injury. Uh, Association and kind of started an association in our, our district for support for traumatic brain injury. And what I’m hearing down the line is that we’re starting to change some of these qualifications for these programs because autism programs, well what are the needs of people with autism?
Since you’re processing executive functioning, you know, a lot of those things. Guess what? Those are a lot of similar needs to somebody with traumatic brain injury. So like, let’s knock off the labels a little bit. But it’s worth saying that like it gives [00:39:00] you some sort of context if you have a diagnosis.
But me, and I agree with you a hundred percent, that we need to focus on like the category of need. Yes. Rather than the actual diagnosis. Yeah. I love that. So one more pit stop on the way to inclusion that has with inclusion, and that is your disability category cannot drive your services. Mm-hmm. . So there’s all kinds.
Guidance from the federal government that says you should not have to be under the category of autism in order to be placed in an autism specific self-contained classroom. If you need that really restrictive environment, you should not have to have a certain disability category. Okay. I’ll step back off the soap far.
Yeah. And I will answer your question about inclusion. Cool. Which just took me 20 minutes to get to. Um, so definition of inclusion is really interesting. I, um, actually sat on, I was co-chair of a committee at the National Down Syndrome Society, uh, years ago, many years ago. And, um, it was, I think the [00:40:00] name, we, we changed the name several times.
Um, but I think it was like eventually called the Inclusion Task Force, or Inclusive Education Task Force or something like that. Mm-hmm. . Um, and we literally got nothing accomplished because I kept saying, all right, if you wanna add inclusion to the title of this group, then we should probably define inclusion.
And I’m gonna go first and say there is no definition for inclusion, which is why I was advocating to take inclusive out of the name of the group. . Um, and now people are probably like, oh, that’s controversial. I wanna hear more about it. Um, that’s as far as I’ll go there. But like I have maintained for a very long time that inclusion is something that is very broadly defined.
Um, and I think what we have to do is instead of looking at some kind of like checklist or, [00:41:00] um, amount of time spent in a classroom Yeah. Or, you know, whatever, like weird criteria that we look at. I think we ought to focus on the child. Imagine that. And we ought to focus on the law that says that we need the least restrictive environment that is appropriate for the child.
Mm-hmm. , um, and whatever that is. And then also look at the interest and values. So the law says we need the lre. Um, but I have many parents that come to me and say, and I’ll just go ahead and say the stereotypes. Almost everybody in the disability community is advocating for something that is more inclusive, more time in general education services.
Mm-hmm. and maybe even pushing in other services. Mm-hmm. doing OT and gen ed doing PT and gen ed or in Jim or something like that. The autism community and some other very specific communities are oftentimes advocating for more restrictive placements with more specialized services, and sometimes outplacement placement at a different, um, [00:42:00] facility or, um, school that is paid for by the school, right?
Mm-hmm. . So, um, to the point that we’re talking about more inclusive services, the definition to me doesn’t necessarily matter. It’s really about spending the maximum amount of time in gen ed because every single piece of research says that that’s appropriate. Um, but when we look at interest and values, you.
I have parents that say to me, I’m scared. Like it’s not safe. It’s not, it’s not a good environment right now. Um, I had a child that had a shunt in his head and he kept falling in his gen ed environment and they said, you can put all of the protections in the iep. Like I literally wanted arms length to an adult and they.
Once bitten, 50 times shy. Our, we want our child to ultimately stay alive. Mm-hmm. . And so we want our child in a smaller setting all day long. And is [00:43:00] that academically and functionally appropriate? Probably not. But is that interest super duper strong? Absolutely. Um, and we actually put him on home placement for a while because they just had no trust.
I also have students who could, who can do very well in inclusive environments, um, but something else is getting in their way. Um, maybe anxiety or that sensory processing or something else that’s getting in their way of being in the regular education classroom to the maximum extent possible. Because like, You know, my Jack Barlow is Jack Barlow, but anxiety and ADHD and all of the things that are secondary to those things get in the way of him being his true Jack Barlow.
And so does that mean at some point that I’m gonna consider a far less inclusive iep? Yeah. If his anxiety is such that he’s having panic attacks on the way into school, um, absolutely. You know mm-hmm. , absolutely. I would suggest a less inclusive environment. [00:44:00] So I think the real question with your second thing of like, what if the school and the parents disagree about Dun dun inclusion , um, what do you do?
I think the real question is how do you advocate for more inclusive environment? . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Right. It’s rare for the districts to say, ah, some, I do have one district here in Greater Cincinnati that is sometimes arguably too inclusive. And I’m like, this is a great problem to have. Um, well here, here’s an example that I think will clarify my question.
And it was really interesting cuz we had a series of three parents with kids with down syndrome all come through the middle school years all in a row. And what I saw happen was the, the first group of parents, they really, they just wanted a hundred percent inclusion. They didn’t care what it looked like, they didn’t care what it looked like.
And [00:45:00] so we showed up at the IEP meeting and they were like, okay, you know, what is he doing in class? Well, he was actually on a Chromebook kind of watching a video that was kind of related to what they were doing, but not really related and not really engaging in the classroom. And so, And they were okay with that.
The parents were okay with that. And so it was like, oh, well that doesn’t feel right. But again, me being a minor player, and I think that was the first year that I was in the district, I was like, okay. And then the next year somebody came through. Very similar situation. Very different needs by the way.
Yeah, same diagnosis, very different needs. But you saw this parent ask really good questions about, okay, well she had this goal in mind for her kid. And so she communicated that vision and then she was like, okay, well I want them included as much as possible, but they aren’t gonna make progress on this math goal unless they have that small group setting.
So then there was this kind of like, oh, well, maybe we include here, but we [00:46:00] don’t include here. Right? So, so there was this like, oh, that was like totally customized. But in this first situation, it was like, well, your definition of inclusion in the school’s definition of inclusion are totally different. So like, What if, like you really want a hundred percent inclusion or as much as you possibly can, but the school is saying, oh yeah, we can do inclusion, and they can watch videos in the back of the room.
Right. You know? Yeah. That’s okay. So you just articulated, um, probably intentionally many of the strategies that I have. So I, um, while you were doing that, pulled up the I have a document or a product on my website that’s called the Inclusion Workshop. Um, and it is, um, there’s a video with a workbook and you kind of follow along.
So I literally just pulled up the practical strategies, which are at the end of that and I’ll highlight a couple. Um, so one is to write that parent interest statement or future planning statement. Even if your district doesn’t require it or your state [00:47:00] doesn’t require it. What I recommend that you do in those is that you, um, address five areas of adult life, even if your kids in preschool.
So I always, I’m getting good at memorizing them, but I always say, let’s see if I can remember ’em, . Um, okay, so, um, further education, employment, independent living, social, emotional health, physical health, transp. Um, so this is what we expect for our child to do socially, emotionally, medically, all of those areas, right?
Like this is what I’m dreaming of. Now I realize that my child is 18 months old, but this is what my hopes and dreams are for my child. And that was sarcastic. Um, and then you back that down to high school. So like one of the things that we want is we want for Jack to find some lifelong sports. And so that means that maybe an appropriate team for him to be involved in in some capacity that’s safe, right?
Cuz it’s not safe for Jack to play baseball. It’s not safe for him to play basketball. Um, but you know, could he be involved with the tennis team, the [00:48:00] swimming team, the golf team? We always tease about country club sports. Um, so how can, how can Jack be involved in those and then back that down to, um, middle school and then to now?
So whatever now is mm-hmm. . So like once it became unsafe for Jack to play basketball, because if you aren’t here yet, you will be at some point parents. Um, but like the ball goes with and past you, a behavior might happen. He might just like plop down or lie down in the middle of the court. Um, and like it, you reach a point where parents no longer should be on the, um, on the court.
So literally in third grade, Jack became the manager for an AAU select basketball team. Um, he also played in basketball. That was developmentally appropriate for him. But we started with this like kind of training to be the manager of the high school team. Mm-hmm. . We want him to have interest in sports because we know that’ll be a pathway for him.
What do dudes do when they’re 25 and finish with work? They go, we live in Kentucky. They [00:49:00] go watch Kentucky basketball. Yeah. . And so he’s got no basketball, you know, and that’s a social thing for him. So you back things down to now and I think that’s super important. I also think, um, it is important to state your reasonableness and your objectivity super early on in the discussion.
So like, listen, I want him in first grade math, gen ed, math. We are talking patterns. We are talking basic addition. We are talking one to one correspondence. We are talking place value. Pull up whatever it is that you need to pull up on your state’s curriculum to, to talk about that. And then you can say, I am not asking today for trigonometry in 10th grade.
I am asking today for place value. And go through that list again. Um, so that they know that your objective and reasonable mm-hmm. , like, I know my kid has a cognitive impairment. I know that IQ thing says 40 something. I know that his IQ is probably closer to 70 something. Just say it out [00:50:00] loud. I had a advocate ask me that today, and I’m like, why aren’t you saying it?
I don’t understand. Like I’m a horrendous horrendously vulnerable person. And I didn’t know I was until I started reading Brene Brown and I was like, oh, other people have problems with this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh yeah. I just put it all out there. But that vulnerability is so super important, and I know it makes people feel uncomfortable because they see it in you, but it’s such a good advocacy tool.
Um, Then another strategy, um, that I use a lot is exactly what you just talked about, the scheduling thing. So I will say, especially in elementary school, what’s the schedule look like? Mm-hmm. , right? Just tell me what a typical first grade day looks like. And then from that typical first grade day, um, I will kind of like figure out places where really good inclusion can happen, where we can really access good gen ed stuff like centers.
What a great place to modify something. Oh my gosh. We were literally just talking [00:51:00] about this on my coaching call with my parents in my course, like literally an hour ago. We were talking about the schedule and then she said, centers, and she was like, what does centers look like? And I’m like, typically it looks like this.
And like, that’s typically a great time to ask for her to be in the, in the classroom. I love that you just said that. . Right. And, and like truly if, if you don’t under, if you don’t know, that’s a good point. If you don’t know, ask what are centers that doesn’t like something that happens in the rest of the world?
What are centers? Yeah. And then Oh, cool. So like lots of kids are getting individual things, reading groups. Oh. So like you break ’em out into four different groups. Cool. That sounds exciting. Mm-hmm. And so, You take all that and you say, okay, what are times that are naturally good times to go out for that specially designed instruction, particularly if your child is gonna get pulled out services because they need that more quiet or more small setting.
Um, and then like, how can we dance? How can we dance the dance and, and be a part of all of the scheduling nightmares that you can imagine are [00:52:00] part of a school Oh yes. Um, in its operation. And when are we gonna do those related services and all that stuff. So like really kinda getting deep into the schedule.
I, I have like a two page step by step thing as to how I do it in this workbook. I think that that’s super helpful. Mm-hmm. . So those are a couple of tips. I could go on and on, but I hope that helps. I love it. Yeah, that’s definitely a good place to start. And I think the schedule thing too, because you know, so many of the questions that I answer in our office hours are like, you know, what does this even look like?
And I’m like, can you go observe? Can you volunteer in the classroom? Like, what can you do to get in there? Because there is nothing like seeing it with your own eyes, even just for like an hour. Mm-hmm. . And you get that context of, oh, this is what they do. Because every single, and I know this from being a related service provider and pushing into all of those different classrooms over multiple schools, every single classroom has its own culture,
own methods, own routine, own, you know, structure to things. [00:53:00] Every single teacher is different and it’s it’s own little culture in there. So yes, I can tell you in a general way, like, okay, yeah, they probably have centers. Oh, they probably have a story time around lunchtime, you know, as a transition back, or they have a snack time.
But there’s nothing like parents being able to get in that classroom now that Covid is winding down, um, and actually seeing what’s going on in the classroom. And then you can start your advocacy journey from there. So I love those points. Those are great. Yeah, I think that that is very true and very effective.
Um, This is another gear shift, but it’s tied to that idea, um, because you’re talking about, you know, also providing modifications and accommodations in that gen ed classroom. So, um, my question is, um, how we can take the profile of a child and we can really kind of dive into like the executive functioning and the sensory processing and the, um, kind of the way that the brain works, which I know u u OTs are so good at doing.
[00:54:00] Um, and we can address the child’s needs, but really capitalize on their relative strengths or their objective strengths, um, in developing a good iep. So like what’s kinda best practice for creating an I E P that is based on the child’s evaluation? Oh my gosh, I love this question and I just geek out about the paperwork.
I love the IEP paperwork and people will roll their eyes at me all the time. But this is actually what we do in the decoding IEP data workshop that I do and it’s talking about this data and this information from your child as a funnel. So the top of the funnel is your last evaluation report, and you have those every three years.
Sometimes more frequently if something happens or something changes, but really you want. All of the information on all of your child’s strengths and all of their needs in the top of that funnel. And it can be so [00:55:00] easy to get lost in all of this paperwork and all of it in the shuffle and things like that.
So I love to tell parents that before you even go into an evaluation year, before you even get into the I E P, just takes some time, take five or 10 minutes to list down all of the challenges that you think your kid is having in the educational setting. So, you know, without being influenced of, of the team and just really thinking in your own thoughts, what are the biggest challenges that you think they have?
And then when you get like an evaluation report or when you get a draft iep, you can look at the present level section of that and you can compare it to your list that came from your own brain. And you can make sure that all of those challenges and all of those strengths are listed in that either present levels of the IEP or in the evaluation report.
And if not, then you need to speak up and say, Hey, you’re missing this piece. I didn’t see this piece in there. Right? Because the thing is, if you do these like little advocacy and [00:56:00] you know the system well enough to like catch them when that mistake is fresh, or if you catch something, you know it’s so much easier than getting to the IEP and trying to work backwards.
And it’s like that funnel, right? If you start at the bottom of the funnel, which is actually services, and you just say, oh, I want more OT for my kid, guess what? Everybody’s gonna be like, What? Why? Because you’re not going with the system now. You’re trying to go against it, which is the hardest thing ever.
Yeah. The IEP goes in order. You have to establish the need in the evaluation. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So going back to that funnel, okay, the present levels, you have all of the challenges listed. You have really good baselines. You know exactly what it looks like, and that should have two different types of information.
It should have the number data, but it should also the qualitative data, which is what is the para doing in the classroom for your kid? What do their cues look like? Are they tapping ’em on the shoulder? Are they giving ’em a checklist? Like what does that look like? Which obviously is some of your accommodations, [00:57:00] right?
And then after the present levels are like established and you feel like that’s a good picture of what your kid should look like, sound like if somebody’s new to the team, they can look at the present levels and actually feel like they know your kid. Because there’s nothing worse than taking over a new caseload and getting 45 IEPs and looking at those present levels and being like, I don’t know who this kid is at.
All right? It should be a picture of your kid, right? And so then it just trickles down. You need that information to trickle down to the goals. Okay, well let’s look at the biggest needs that they have. What are their needs? We’re gonna write some goals for that. And kind of in the same layer, you’re gonna write accommodations for that.
And um, I have to reference. Tim from Action Driven Education and he has this whole like around and through theory. So if you don’t know him, you should probably have him. I don’t, he’s amazing. Okay. Um, so goals are meant to address skills. By going through it, you are actually building those skills. And then accommodations are how can we get [00:58:00] around that skill so that they’re still accessing their education.
Right. So we could probably, you should just have Tim on, cuz he explains it better than I do. But, you know, accommodations and goals, they come directly from the present levels. And so if you’re trying to get an accommodation, If that isn’t in the present levels mentioned at all, then it’s gonna be really hard to advocate for that.
But if you have it in the present levels, you can say, oh hey, look up here in the present level. So we already said that this is a need. How can we accommodate that down here? And then you get to services at the very end of the funnel, right? And these are the services that are going to help your child make progress on those goals.
And the cool thing is when you look at it, you’re like, and again, as to our conversation before where every team is different and sometimes you know that sensory need, okay, so we get down to services and we have this goal for them to self-advocate or you know, whatever it is. We can look at who on the team is best equipped to [00:59:00] address that because we have a lot of overlap.
You have a special education teacher that could really help with self-advocacy skills. You have a school psychologist who could talk about that. You could have a counselor talk about that, and then you could have the OT talk about that. Well, what is gonna be the best person to really have your child make progress on that goals?
Because just as a reminder, your goal isn’t for your child to have more OT services. It’s for them to actually make progress and build skills on, you know, the needs that they have listed in their present levels, right? So it shouldn’t matter who the heck is seeing your kid, as long as they are somebody who’s really skilled.
Building those skills for your kid and having them make progress. It doesn’t really matter, in my opinion, on who’s actually doing it. Right? Absolutely. And that is exactly how I would’ve answered that question. I actually have a podcast that I did just myself on that. I think it’s called like getting more out of the iep.
Yeah. Um, the only thing that I would add is [01:00:00] how to get less out of the iep. Like if we’re advocating for inclusion and you know, they wanna, you can almost like once. Once you’re aware of it, if they want to create a more restrictive environment, the entire evaluation will talk about how the child did in small group settings and how the child did with one-on-one services.
And so you can start to combat that. But again, you’ve gotta do it up in present levels and then you’ve gotta address goals and maybe you cut goals out, you know, if you’ve got 18 goals, yes, it’s gonna be very hard to put 18 goals into gen ed and to, or to do ’em in pull out services in a, in a short amount of time.
So like, I’ll teach ’em how to sort his socks. Thank you very much. Why don’t you work on. Simple addition and reading. Mm-hmm. , um, and it like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that was good. I like that. Yeah. And I, and I love that you mentioned the goal thing, because I compare goals to New Year’s resolutions. How many New Year’s resolutions can we have as [01:01:00] adults?
Maybe one or two. Now, if we had a group support or if we like hired a coach to help us or something like that, we can totally have more than one or two New Year’s resolutions and make progress on them. But if we’re left to our own devices and we have 18 goals, we’re probably not gonna make progress on any one of those because we’re trying to do ’em all and then we’re feeling we’re failing in this area and things like that.
So I love that you talk about kind of looking at those goals with an objective mindset of like, what are the most important skills that we wanna build this year? Like that goes back to the vision statement too. And it should all align together. When this process works and when people know the process and know how to take advantage of it, it actually works really well.
We just have a lot of school teams that don’t understand the process. We have a lot of parents that are lost in all the jargon of it, that muddies up the waters, but when you actually have people who understand the process, it actually is pretty brilliant. Ah, I love that. That is so, so [01:02:00] very true. Oh, man.
This has been so fun. So fun. We are like two peas in a pod. We have very similar outlooks on this, and this has been such a joy.
Why don’t we conclude, um, by talking about where people can find us. Um, and, and you can go first. So where can people find you and what sorts of things do you have to offer folks? Yeah, so everything is listed at my website, which is the iep lab.com. And there’s a couple different things there. There is a freebie for a parent role cheat sheet, and that is just a really, like if you’re overwhelmed, you kind of need to know what your role is on the team.
That is a quick hit, like, okay, I know what I’m doing here and I know what nobody else on the team can provide. Because meetings without parents there are very empty. I’ve had a couple of them where we couldn’t get the, contacted even they were in crisis and, and that’s where that comes from is just, oh my gosh, nobody else can contribute this information.
So [01:03:00] definitely check out that freebie. And then if you’re interested, I have a couple different products and a couple on the way. We have the decoding IEP data workshop, and that is just, if you’re overwhelmed looking at all that data, we referenced that several times where, how do you even know if there’s something missing from your iep?
We’re gonna talk about that in that workshop, so it’s super affordable. Check that out. And then if you have a meeting coming up, my big offer and my most supportive offer is the Ultimate Parent IEP prep course, and that comes with three months of office hours with me. But it is a structured online course, so you can go through it as you have time and we go through you.
Knowing the steps of the system so that you can kind of stay ahead of the system so you know what’s coming and you know when things are wrong or things don’t sound right and catch those as it’s happening. And then the second step that we go through is the parent favorite, and that’s how to narrow down your priorities.
So you go with all these concerns, how do we go through some frameworks to help you [01:04:00] narrow it down to a couple things? We turn that into a vision statement and then we make a parent input plan so that you can take that to the meeting so that you’re not put on the spot when people are like, what are the strengths of your child?
Cuz they love to put you on the spot for that. Um, and we address a lot more things on that parent input plan, but that’s, that’s the main reason for that. And then we talk about getting the follow through. Um, so how do you cultivate relationships? Where do you go if there’s an issue? How does this system work?
Where do you go? Um, and so that’s the ultimate parent IEP prep course, and that’s open all the time. Um, that’s a change. Normally I would do it like twice a year, but man, I just had people kind of knocking down the door and they’re like, I have an IEP meeting in two weeks, can you let me in? And I was like, yes, we’ll just keep it open.
Sure. We’ll make it evergreen. Yes. That’s awesome. So that’s open as well. So yeah, website. The iep lab.com. Yeah. The i e P lab. Yes. Yep. Okay. So where do parents go to, to connect with you? So all of my stuff is [01:05:00] also very easy, Ashley Barlow company. Um, and I feel like I gave a pretty good overview at the beginning.
Um, and I love that our, we did not talk about our online courses, um, when we talked, um, to kind of plan for this. But I love that our courses address parent advocacy from different lenses. So my online course that is geared towards parents is. More about allowing parents to advocate through the framework of the law.
And so we actually go all the way through the IEP document, um, from like asking for an evaluation to evaluation results and eligibility meeting through development of the iep, whole module on, um, writing goals and implementation of the I E P. Um, it’s 10 modules long. It’s also self-paced. You just get access to it and you, and you start watching, um, about eight hours.
It’s pretty voluminous. Yeah. And, um, [01:06:00] and, but along the way we. Have all of these advocacy stops and advocacy, um, lessons. And so it’s really kind of advocating under the framework of the law, under the shadow of the law. Um, and then I’ve got the ABC course, which, um, can help you take that one step further and either start your journey as a special education advocate or, um, grow your advocacy business.
That is my course that’s only open two times a year because it does take a little bit of, um, uh, operation on my mm-hmm. part. Um, but my lab is also open. Um, It is an evergreen product, so Wow. I’m on Instagram. Lots and lots of free resources on Instagram and Facebook. Um, and yeah, this has been awesome. We need to do this again.
This is amazing. And I feel like when we talked and we were like, well, what do we wanna ask each [01:07:00] other? We had a lot and we had to narrow it down, so I would totally be up for this again so far. Yeah, we might need to do it again. This, this, who knows what, what could happen. We could turn it into a series.
Yeah. And thank you so much. This has been great. Thank you so much too.
And this is why I love having guests on the podcast. Right. Ashley is so deeply knowledgeable that her answers to my questions were something that I wasn’t even expecting. Like her definition of inclusion and that there isn’t really one. And I just absolutely love talking with her. She’s such a great resource.
Just a quick reminder though, if you don’t yet have the IEP process step-by-step guide, which is a free resource on my website. Then you definitely need to check it out. It breaks down the IEP annual review process and includes what, and when exactly you should share your parent input so that you can actually feel heard at your upcoming meeting. So download your free copy.
At www.theieplab.com/iep. Or the link is below this podcast in your podcast [01:08:00] player. Also, if you want to find a community that is there to support you through your IEP process. Then happened to our Facebook group. You can find the link to join below this episode in your podcast player again, or by going to the IEP lab.com/podcast. Thank you so much for spending extra time with me today
and learning with me through Ashley. Definitely check out her resources as well and we will see you same time same place next week thanks so much Buh-bye.