Greetings,
Over the last few years parents and children have faced countless frustrations. Similarly, this extends to teachers who have had to overcome their own unique challenges. In many of the school districts we serve we are hearing from administrators that they are having difficulty attracting and retaining educators, that class sizes are likely to grow, and that services are declining.
With a new school year soon to be upon us, we have some advice to help you with the preparation that is critical to your child’s success. Remember, the sooner you act, the better equipped you will be to handle any potential hurdles. Be your child’s biggest proponent and take the actions you can to help them be successful in school.
What can you do?
Do the best you can to set up your child for success. Here are a few simple steps:
- Analyze and distill your child’s IEP into 1-2 pages containing the most important goals, services and accommodations. Most likely, your teacher won’t read your child’s IEP as thoroughly as they should. Help them to know your child’s needs—and make your child stand out.
- Your child’s teacher will not remember or retain all the pertinent information listed in the IEP, so give them a “cheat sheet” they can refer to everyday. Give them a holistic view of your child – what your child’s learning style is, their interests, enablers, triggers and challenges. There is an online tool we have recently found called Lernadu (https://lernadu.com/) that can help with this.
- As soon as you know who child’s teacher will be, send that teacher a welcoming note—email or otherwise—that introduces yourself and your child in a positive and warm way.
We hope this helps start the new school year in the most positive way for you and your child. We welcome comments, and feel free to share this email. We’d like to be able to help as many people as possible. If there is something specific you’d like us to comment on in later communications, or one of these points you want us to delve deeper on, please let us know!
All the best,
The BLG Team
