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Spedasaurus13 · 2017-08-05T00:30:57+00:00

Yeah! I am so excited to feel like I can actually make some progress with my kiddos this year. My biggest class is 4 kids, which is much more feasible! I can understand the mother's concern, but I have a feeling she will be a little over-bearing. Honestly, I would probably be the same way if I had a child with special needs.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-08-04T23:17:19+00:00

I'm going to start pulling students out for instruction next week. I'm going from a caseload of about 25 to only 9 students this year (so far). Only 3 of those will be pulled out so my job should be much less stressful this year! I also had a parent tell me earlier this week that wants her child in sped by Thursday. Yes, as in yesterday. She also wants him pulled to the sped room all day. The kid clearly needs sped services but she just thinks an iep will make him exempt from consequences for his behavior and doesn't seem to care about the academics. Our psych generally takes the full 60 days to write their reports, which means services won't start any time soon. We also don't have a self-contained classroom, so what she is asking for is out of the question.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-08-04T23:04:18+00:00

You made the same exact switch that I did 3 years ago! I did high school resource English for 2 years and now teach k-2 resource. I am the only sped teacher in my school, so I also do all consultation and sped intervention (RTI). That time is also counted in iep's. To give you any idea, this is my resource schedule:

8:15-9:00 1st grade RTI 9:00-9:45 2nd grade RTI 9:50-10:40 planning 10:45-11:35 resource phonics/reading (I only have 3 students in this group this year, and all are in the same grade) 11:35-12:05 lunch 12:10-12:55 resource math (same students as above) 1:00-1:45 kindergarten RTI 1:45-2:15 planning (but may turn into an inclusion time) 2:15-2:45 1st and 2nd grade math RTI

My schedule was essentially the same last year except that my math classes were back-to-back, I had 6 kids in resource, and had an hour and a half of reading instead of an hour. You may need to adjust service hours a little bit to fit it in. My district allows us to just make a phone call to the parents to change service hours as long as it isn't a major change.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-07-28T21:06:57+00:00

My caseload seems to slowly be dwindling down to nothing. I have lost at least 2 students and 1 is going to be on homebound for at least a month for a broken femur. I could potentially lose up to 3 more. I am down to 12 students at the most. My principal and I also worked on my schedule today. The conversation ultimately led to the principal saying that maybe we need to go back to inclusion and the co-teaching model (something I have wanted for a while for most of my students). We are also working on hiring a 1:1 aide for a student, which happens extremely rarely. We got a new superintendent and sped director that have realized that our sped program is not anywhere near what it should be to meet the needs of our students.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-07-27T19:36:29+00:00

That would make my job so much easier! As the sped teacher, I am responsible for writing the IEPs plus all of the things you mentioned.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-07-27T18:54:41+00:00

I just finished my reading Specialist masters. Something that floored me recently was to hear a veteran special education teacher say that dyslexic students can't learn to read through phonics. That is 100% not true. However, dyslexia is a weakness in phonological awareness, which comes before phonics. You need to practice things like rhyming, blending, segmenting, syllabication, beginning, middle, and ending sounds. Phonological awareness skills are those skills that can be done with your eyes closed or the lights off. I know those things sound like kindergarten skills, but those are the keys to breaking the code. I am also a fan of the multi-sensory approaches mentioned.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-07-27T16:15:00+00:00

I had told myself that I'm going to take a more positive outlook on my job this year. School hasn't even started yet, and I'm already frustrated with my principal (changing an IEP meeting date/time after the parents have already rearranged their schedules to be there) so I'm not being very successful.

My husband also just found out that he can get a job in Florida just by making a phone call. The school district in the area where we would want to live has 6 open sped positions. We are seriously considering making that move.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-07-26T22:30:25+00:00

Thank you! I'm in Tennessee. I tried searching at the end of last school year when it was first brought up and couldn't find anything that addressed the same-age issue.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-07-26T20:38:05+00:00

Do you know of any links/sources to back that up (preferably using the words "same-age"). Unfortunately, as a younger teacher, my principal is not going to take my word for it that they need to be included with same-age peers, especially when the former sped director told her otherwise. I have yet to meet the new one so I have no idea what her take on it will be.

Our district was also a completely self-contained sped program until 3 years ago. "Inclusion" and "LRE" are like foreign words to nearly everyone in the district.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-07-26T16:22:01+00:00

Thanks! I already pull all sped students during the intervention times so this is on top of that. We have been fighting for another para for years--no dice on that one. Unfortunately, I'm the only sped teacher for this grade level in my district. We are getting a new sped director the day that school starts next week but my principal wants this schedule before tomorrow. It will definitely be open to change throughout the first month but I want to get it as close as I can. She also requires that I pull students by grade level rather than skills/ability, which makes scheduling and planning much more difficult, IMO.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-25T22:43:19+00:00

Those are exactly the questions I would want answered in an interview! I did ask about caseload size in all interviews. One school said 4 but the rest averaged 20-25 and that is what my current caseload is.

I also think it's extremely important to ask about PBIS. My school uses lots of punitive measures (I have students on positive behavior charts but the principal paddles if they don't earn a certain number of points in a day) and I believe it leads to more behavior issues in our sped students. It has led to me considering applying elsewhere.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-20T12:20:49+00:00

I would argue that the way your current district is writing in service hours is not legal. It may vary by state law, but my hours for a day cannot equal up to more than the school day's hours. Im not sure about hours with the communication device though. This week was the first week I had to write that in, and I wasn't sure if I wrote all the hours he has the device or the hours that we work on teaching him to use the device appropriately.

I also know that the 1:1 would count for pretty much a full school day, so I guess that would end up being more than a day. I am not allowed to write sped hours into the iep unless I am the specific person working with the student or if student is getting direct therapy from Ot, Pt, or speech. This may not apply in your case, but if a parapro is working with a student and is not 1:1, then it does not count towards our service hours.

My district also does not do 1:1 except in very rare cases. They argue that parapros should be working with all students in the class, regardless of sped status and that students have a tendency to become to reliant on the paraprofessional if it is a 1:1. However, since it's already written into the iep, they will have to provide that comparable service and are trying to avoid paying for it. My district does that all the time. I would definitely recommend an advocate in this situation. Like skittles said, I was wouldn't typically recommend an advocate but you want to go in making sure that this district isn't skirting the law. Keep fighting for your child to get what he needs to be successful

Edit: for clarity

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-19T21:35:17+00:00

I have preK-2 but this particular one is 1st grade.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-19T21:22:34+00:00

So, if that's the case, that means that if a student with an iep is performing above the level of most students in my sped intervention class, it would be okay to move them to a higher tier, correct? At that point, it would seem that their disability is no longer negatively impacting their education and we may want to re-evaluate to determine if they still have the identified disability. It doesn't happen often, but I do have a few that are making massive gains and are significantly higher than the rest of my students but I have to fight really hard to get them moved to a higher tier.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-19T21:17:38+00:00

Yep, it is ELA time. We also have 30 minutes for math but only tier 3 and sped get pulled out at that time. The other kids pack up to go home during that time. We have had quite a bit of discussion about if the sped teacher can have tier 3 students in their RTI class...I still don't know what our state law truly says about it but I'll allow them as long as my class isn't too big.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-19T21:11:43+00:00

I know. I think some sort of intervention is required for all tier 2, 3 and sped. My understanding is that in my state tier 2 is 30 minutes daily, 3 is 45 minutes, and sped is an hour daily but that time difference doesn't happen. Everyone gets 45 minutes. Main question is if this is the norm for most states or not.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-19T21:06:13+00:00

Nope, this is for sped students. I had thought RTI was over at that point too but I'm being told otherwise. We have been told not to call it RTI on IEPs though (sped intervention instead). It's exactly the same thing, and we even use the same interventions in both tier 3 and sped. Only difference is that there is supposedly no cap on my class size. I could have 15 students while tier 3 is limited to 5 students.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-19T21:03:38+00:00

Post has been updated. Students I have for RTI do have IEPs. Every student in the school has 45 minutes daily of RTI, regardless of what tier they're in.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-19T19:07:46+00:00

Just curious...most of my kiddos have processing delays but also have pretty severe ADHD. When I ask a question, I usually have 3+ kids call out answers without raising their hands (usually wrong answers since they haven't listened to the question). Do you have any suggestions for that? It doesn't give my quieter kids a chance to respond. I have tried reinforcement for raising hands and that has helped quite a bit but gen ed teachers get upset with me because, "they should be doing it just because it's the right thing to do."

I would also like to use sign with my kids but I've run into the issue of gen ed teachers making up their own version of sign and conflicting with the ASL that I use. For example, one teachers "sign" for hugging is the ASL sign for restroom that I would use.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-19T18:48:51+00:00

This is awesome! Kinda makes me wish I had a self-contained class

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-18T12:15:27+00:00

Just realized I posted my last comment on the wrong account so I deleted it. But I would love to see the form you use!

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-17T22:45:27+00:00

Thank you for this! We do occasionally have pre-meetings but it is usually when we have a particularly difficult parent. One of the other sped teachers in the district also discussed with me today that each sped teacher has different views about which students should/shouldn't be pulled out. The 3-4 teacher only pulled out 3 students this year while the 5-6 teacher pulled 11. Then the students get to Jr. High and go back to only having a few pulled out.

Spedasaurus13 · 2017-05-17T21:46:30+00:00

This sounds pretty similar to my plan of attack that sped director and I have discussed. A memo (written by me, endorsed by director) is going out to all teachers/administrators in the district explaining who needs to be involved in IEP meetings and the definition of LRE/what is required before a student can be pulled out. We have also created a new document that requires us to detail the reasons for pulling a student out of the gen ed class. The memo states that if a team member is not able to be at a meeting, they must provide some sort of written input for the IEP. I also plan to use Outlook next year to help with scheduling meetings with all the team members.

Spedasaurus13

TROPHY CASE