Success with IEPs

Solving Five Common Implementation Challenges in the Classroom (ASCD Arias)

Vicki Caruana

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781416623762
• eBook ISBN: 9781416623793
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

As the inclusive classroom becomes the placement of choice for many students with disabilities, the implementation of a student's individualized education plan (IEP) is no longer the sole responsibility of a special education teacher. Together the general education teacher and the special education teacher work to ensure each student's progress toward meeting carefully crafted goals.

Success with IEPs provides teachers with practical, research-based advice and solutions to five of the most common challenges posed by IEPs:

• Understanding the full scope of the teacher's role
• Doing the critical prep work for IEP meetings
• Offering modifications and accommodations
• Contributing to the IEP team
• Monitoring student progress

Author and educator Vicki Caruana explores principles that debunk some common misconceptions about how to work with students with disabilities. She offers insights, tips, and strategies that will help teachers fine-tune their practice to better meet each child's unique needs. For teachers uncertain of their ability to meet the needs of students with IEPs, this manageable guide is a great place to start.

Introduction

You survey your class roster during preservice and notice symbols next to the names of particular children. Your class list looks like an indecipherable code waiting to be broken. Maybe you learned some code-breaking techniques during teacher preparation; maybe you have a natural affinity as a cipher; maybe you only learned enough to know there is meaning in the code but not the meaning itself. Either way, you are responsible for ensuring a meaningful education for all of the students in your charge, whether or not they have a symbol next to their name.

At the intersection of No Child Left Behind and Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA 2004) lies the instructional responsibility of the general education teacher to provide meaningful access to the general curriculum for students with disabilities in their classrooms (McNulty & Gloeckler, 2011). For more than a decade, the implementation of higher state standards for both teacher preparation and curriculum for preK–12 students has defined for us all the responsibility we hold for all children. Students with disabilities are expected to (1) be educated as much as possible alongside their peers without disabilities and (2) access the general education curriculum with appropriate supports (IDEIA, 2004). Because the most common placement for students with mild, high-incidence disabilities is the general education classroom, the teachers in this inclusive setting need to be prepared to be responsible for providing that access to the general curriculum.

During teacher preparation you may have taken an introduction to special education, inclusive education, or response to intervention (RtI) course that outlined the characteristics and needs of students with disabilities and ways in which you might differentiate your planning, instruction, and assessment for these students. You may have even been required to take and pass a certification exam in the area of special education in order to obtain a dual teaching license. You may have had neither of these experiences if you took an alternative route to teacher certification. Whatever preparation you have, you still may feel ill-equipped to ensure that you meet the needs of students with individualized education plan (IEPs) in your classroom (Samuels, 2013). This book outlines five things teachers who have success with IEPs do differently and practical insights, tips, and strategies for how you can achieve this same success with your IEPs.

Confidence is built on the foundation of competence. If you are uncertain of your ability to meet the needs of students on IEPs, this book is a great place to start. Once your competence increases, your confidence will increase. The principles and strategies in this book offer you a chance to fine-tune your practice as well as clarify some of the foggy ideas you may have about ensuring success for students with disabilities in your charge. Let's get started!

1. Realize the Full Scope of the Your Role in the IEP Process

As the teacher, you are in a unique position to make the IEP process a success, but you will need to get a sense of how wide-ranging your role could potentially be. Not only will you be leading implementation, you may also find yourself asked to complete a mountain of paperwork, observe one of your students for specific behaviors, or even come up with other ways you can be an active, and not a passive, member of the IEP team. Such a broad range of responsibilities means that you need to know how to reflect on and maximize your influence. This includes taking a hard look at your own beliefs and biases, knowing what to look for as you observe the children's learning, and remaining an active participant in their learning.

Look at Your Own Beliefs and Biases

We all have biases. These biases tend to color our attitudes toward any particular individual, group, or topic. If you feel any apprehension about working with a student on an IEP, it can be due to several causes. It may be that you believe you have a lack of experience to work with these particular students. It may be that you are skeptical about inclusion (Cassady, 2011). It may be that you struggle with the nature or types of specific disabilities. It may also depend on what level of support you have from administration and other teachers. Whether you hold a positive or negative attitude toward having students with a variety of disabilities in your classroom, it's important to conscious of the fact that your attitudes translate into actions. Your sense of efficacy (competence) grows out of your confidence as well as your genuine concern for each child.

Avramidis, Bayliss, and Burden (2000) reported that teachers who did not fully agree with inclusion were less likely to differentiate instruction according to students' needs and were less confident that they could implement the required accommodations and requirements of an IEP. Unfortunately, when teachers have negative attitudes toward including students with disabilities in their classrooms, they may not provide the needed supports for those students. Often teachers are more positive about including students whose characteristics or needs are not as likely to require extra instructional or management skills from the teacher (Avramidis et al., 2000). Where are you on the Attitudes Toward Inclusion Scale (Figure 1)?

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Figure 1. Attitudes Toward Inclusion Scale

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Although you may have an accepting or even celebrating attitude toward working with students who have an IEP, you may not feel prepared to do so successfully. Efficacy is a combination of confidence plus competence.

One new teacher I once worked with, Megan, was painfully aware of the weight of the responsibility she held for the four students in her 5th grade class who had IEPs. She viewed their unique needs as puzzles to solve, not obstacles to her dream of a problem-free classroom. Immediately Megan took time to meet with the case manager of each child and map out a plan to ensure that both she and her students were on top of their IEP goals. She had a lot to learn, but she hoped her willingness would outweigh her inexperience. Megan read through each IEP and wondered how she would manage so many individual goals. As the year progressed, Megan began to understand how to better address Justin's reading comprehension struggles, Sarah's difficulty with remembering math facts, Kyle's organizational challenges, and Jacqueline's expressive language frustrations. Was it possible to meet each of their IEP goals? Megan knew that something is always better than nothing, so her willingness to try made a huge difference in the support she gave these students as they pursued their individual goals. At the end of the year, after Megan had targeted instruction to improving Sarah's memory of her multiplication facts, Sarah improved her retention from 5 percent to 65 percent mastery. Although the criteria of 85 percent was not met, the amount of growth is considered a success.

On the other hand, Carl, another young teacher I once worked with, looked at the fact that two of the students on his class roster had the IEP box checked and let out an audible sigh during his 6th grade level meeting. Why can't I just focus on my content? he wondered. Neither of these students were on grade level. How was he supposed to magically bring them up? Not only did Carl not feel up to the task, he was also concerned about how having these students in his class would affect his annual performance review. He saw them like flies in the ointment and not children in need of his teaching. Carl was a good teacher, and his students loved him. He made science come alive and his passion for all things earth and space make his class sought after. Instead of looking at the IEP needs of these two students as something he could apply the scientific problem solving method to, he saw it as something to avoid. He believed that his passion and good teaching was enough for any child to succeed and he didn't need help to ensure the success of Tara and Michael. Carl never even looked at their IEP goals. As a result, none of their goals were met that year.

An intolerant or even ambivalent attitude may mean that you may be more resistant to your role in the IEP process. It's important to conduct some self-reflection on this important part of your role. Although it is not always possible to meet every IEP goal by the end of the year, attending to the process will make a huge difference in how close your students get to their goals.

Understand the Nature and Type of the Disability

Perceptions and facts about specific disabilities are often at odds. Perceptions such as students with a learning disability are just not trying hard enough, students with an emotional or behavioral disorder are volatile, or students on the autism spectrum are difficult to manage are all perceptions not based on facts. They are, however, prevalent and have the potential to influence how you approach your work with students. If you don't understand the nature and type of the disability of the student for whom you are working on their IEP, then you won't provide the right performance information, instructional strategies, and ways to evaluate their progress.

Three areas that every teacher should know and understand about the range of disabilities that are represented in their classroom include characteristics and needs, recommended instructional strategies, and IEP considerations. For example, a common characteristic of a child with a specific learning disability in reading is comprehension. The student may need frequent practice with unfamiliar words (vocabulary) requiring the research-based strategy of explicit instruction (Archer & Hughes, 2011). This child's IEP should have goals targeting different subskills of reading comprehension with grade level texts. If you are unaware that poor reading comprehension is a common characteristic for students with a learning disability, and that their challenges include moving concepts from short- to long-term memory, then you will not plan appropriately to meet their needs.

The learning experiences you encountered during your teacher preparation may not be sufficient to help you discern the nature and type of each disability. To improve your knowledge and skills in these areas, do your own research and collaborate with the special education teachers in your school to learn more.

There are a variety of online resources to help teachers better work with students with disabilities. Your state offers the definitions of the different disability categories and the expected roles and responsibilities of teachers working with students, and the federal definitions and guidelines are provided through IDEIA. Bookmark both resources for future reference.

Another source of information is the special education teacher in your school, who can provide insight and practical tips to working successfully with your shared students. In addition, if not provided, you could and should request an IEP snapshot that will give you the most important information at a glance on a particular student (see the Encore). Once you understand the nature and type of disability that your students are living with, you will be better able to fulfill your role and responsibilities in the IEP process.

Know How to Observe Special Education Students

Part of the IEP process is for teachers who interact with the student to provide data about their performance, whether academic or behavioral. This goes beyond calculating what reading level the student is on or how many math facts he has mastered. How the student engages with the content and the classroom environment are just as important. Behaviors exhibited during instruction or assessment are important to observe and record. Often you will be asked to describe your observations of a student's disability and its impact during your class. Whenever possible, you will be asked to provide specific examples, including the frequency and severity of symptoms displayed in your class. You will be expected to conduct these observations in a non-biased manner and provide the data gained from the observations to the child study team or IEP team. There are two main types of observations teachers will employ: naturalistic and systematic.

Naturalistic observation is the most common and often referred to as anecdotal. This type of observation focuses on directly observed occurrences in the classroom. When making an anecdotal or naturalistic observation, you should reserve judgment or interpretation of what you observe. This is a recording of events as they happen. One of the most commonly used forms of naturalistic observation is ABC (antecedent, behavior, and consequence). Figure 2 represents one naturalistic observation of a child's behavior in the classroom.

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Figure 2. Sample ABC Chart

Date	March 10, 2017
Time	11:15–11:25 a.m.
How long did behavior last?	30 seconds
What happened prior to the behavior (A)?	Students were assigned independent seat work. The teacher circulated the room to give individual help where needed. The teacher was standing at Tommy's desk.
Specifically describe the behavior (B)	Tommy wads up his worksheet, then tears it up and throws the pieces to the floor.
What was the direct outcome of this behavior (C)?	The other students turn to look at Tommy. The teacher tells Tommy, "Get out another worksheet from my desk and start over." She waits at his desk a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Realize the Full Scope of the Your Role in the IEP Process
• Tackle All the Necessary Homework for the IEP Meeting
• Gain a Solid Understanding of What Modification and Accommodation Mean for an IEP
• Embrace Teamwork
• Stay on Top of Student Progress
• Conclusion
• Encore Divider
• Encore
• References
• Related ASCD Resources
• About the Author
• Copyright