- Over the last couple of weeks, the authouf of the blog "Successful Teaching" has been preparing for a summer graduate school class that she will be teaching on Special Education. She has been asking her fellow special education teachers in her knitting group for ideas of topics in special ed that are very important but that maybe aren't covered in a typical text book. This past week, she brought up the subject of how to prepare successfully for an IEP. Some of the ideas raised by her and her collegues were role playing what to do and not to do, creating a specific agenda, and appropriate time limits for the session.
My Participation
- I chose to comment on the post about Role Playing a Practice IEP because I feel like though I have learned about IEPs in my Special Ed classes, I don't have any real world idea of what this process will actually look like, and it is something that definitely concerns me as I get closer to being in the classroom. (I will be student teaching next semester) I let the author know that as a current student in a graduate program, the idea of a mock IEP, as she had suggested, sounded like a great one and one that I would be excited about were I a student in her class.
My Learning
- The author's tips regarding the IEP such as bringing an agenda and sticking to it were things that I will definitely want to incorporate into my future classroom. She also mentions commincating at the onset of the meeting the time limit, and the fact that if the meeting will need to go over this time, that the conlcusion of the meeting will need to be at a later date. This is an excellent point. Letting a meeting go on with no end in sight only leads to frustration and hurried solutions, which are no good for any one involved.
- Another tip that I will look to incorporate into my classroom is her system of record keeping for her students. She mantains all documentation, both good and bad, related to parent contact, disciplinary actions, even student work that was well done, and keeps it in the same manilla folder for the entire year. This way, when attending meetings related to one of her students, all she needs to bring is that student's folder and everything she needs is right there and can be referenced easily.
Final Reflection
This is my final journal entry submission for Edu 7666. It is unfortunate because due to my own negligence early in the semester I don't think that I took full advantage of what subscribing to blogs dedicated to teaching can bring. I somehow missed the middle journal assignment and did not really begin paying attention to the blogs that I was following until the last few weeks.
The reason that I find this to be unfortunate is because during these last few weeks I have come across so much great information that I will want to use and incorporeate into my future classroom. Just think what I miught have come across had I been following my sibscriptions all semester long. Ah well, live and learn I guess...
I think that the experience of subscribing to teacher-centric resources on the internet has well surpassed my expectations. I would recommend this medium to anyone looking for the newest and freshest ideas out there, and what teacher wouldn't be interested in that? In fact, now that I now how easy it can be to start blogging, look for me to be sharing my own ideas sometime very soon!
