I laughed so hard this made me cry, or did I cry so hard it made me laugh?
Do your IEP meetings give you a headache and make you cry?
If you have not already seen this, take a look at a satirical and slightly sarcastic look at a typical conversation between the parent of a child with special needs and an official from the school district who isn’t quite getting it.
We want it not to be true, but it often is. You may think someone taped your IEP meetings!
To be fair, not ALL school admins are like this. I expected the worst but we pushed back and presented our evidence to a panel that included 3 teachers/admins from a different school and they reversed the decision that our son could not be accommodated at his base h.s. school. We were prepared to get a lawyer, but not everyone is as closed-minded as this caricature. But yes, I’ve seen psych reports/evals about my son that were clearly cut and pasted because in random spots some other kid’s name popped up, mid “report”. Interestingly, our secret weapon was having his sibling testify before the panel. She’d seen and got to know kids at our base school with special needs and she knew her brother was fully capable of learning how to behave/change classes/attend in a larger group of students
this is like dealing with CPS & the Family courts
I think that was my first meeting, seriously. I just had a meeting last week and I told them if the director can not get the information correct, then don’t bother coming to the meeting!!!!
Oh my. This is funny, but sad. I am an educator and a parent of a child with a reading learning disability. I am currently fighting my son’s school to get him the proper help. They have been providing RTI Tier interventions for over a year but it is not working. I have provided graphs of their data, gotten an outside evaluation and had an IEE done at the school’s expense. Both the doctor who evaluated my son and the IEE evaluator said my son had a learning disability. The school discounts it all. They try to make me feel bad for trying to “label my child for no reason.” My son has a high IQ but is reading way below grade level. This video sounded like you taped my last meeting. To all parents in similar situations: keep fighting and stay on top of the school. Your child’s future is worth the time and effort!
That was a little too accurate for comfort.
This is so funny, and so sad…
I most related to the special education director using the wrong name for the student. My own child’s special education and general education teachers did this all the time. I would parrot back at least 5 times every meeting Patty is not my child’s name, my child’s name is Pam. Sometimes I would say, I don’t care what Patty does, Patty is not my child, Pam is.
Did you tape my last meeting? The supervisor reminded me several times I was the cause of the problems by being too involved in my sons education. By the end of the meeting he was suggesting I move to other nearby districts. The best part of the meeting was when he told me to act professionally (I was more professional than he) and I informed him that I wasn’t there as a professional, but as a parent. The last thing the CST wants are informed, involved parents. Fight on, you are the advocate for your child. Make sure you periodically review your child’s CST folder – I found notes where they had twisted things I said. Then send rebuttals in letter form – they don’t keep e-mails in the file. They charged me for a copy of the file ($100). Now I’m paying for an outside reevaluation to unveil all their mistakes.
Yes, definitely what I am going through!! Home schooling and private therapy sound better everyday!!
haha, “dr. johnson has a beard.”
It is unfortunate but sometimes these meetings do occur this way.
This gives me a great IDEA. I can use actual tapes from our IEP meetings to allow the Special Ed Directors actual words be spoken into the character.
She has a PhD and she will give you headaches. She has brought an Autism expert to the IEP table who has a beard.
Ironically, she nor the “Autism Expert” ever had any reason to suspect that my son my have Autism. “That is why we never mentioned the ADOS”.
I suspect the producer lives in my town…
OH MY GOODNESS!!!! This is so funny!!! This is so true. Very Sad that this happens all over the country. This was my IEP meeting.
This sounds familiar