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#52 How to Prepare Families for Transition and Beyond
Today's episode taught me a whole lot about what will become of the students I "graduate" from elementary school and I'm not gonna lie...it made me a little sad.
Transition services are intended to prepare students to move from the world of school to the world of adulthood and the end game is very rarely seen by an elementary special educator.
"The student should have the biggest voice...it is ultimately their life"
On today's episode of the Sped Prep Academy Podcast, we will be chatting with Heather from A Love of Special Learning about all things transition. This is not an area that I know a lot about because being a K-5 teacher, it isn’t a section of the IEP that I currently deal with.
With that being said, my state mandates that IEPs begin addressing transition by the age of 14 so when I used to have 6th graders, it was possible...uncommon, but possible...that I would have a student who was sneaking up on their 14th birthday and I had to begin the transition process on my IEPs. So I have done the basics for it and I actually have a product in my TPT store that uses student questionnaires and parent surveys to begin the transition process.
But Heather is going to help us truly understand how to begin the process of preparing families for transition and beyond.
Heather talks about...
- How to engage families in the transition process
- How the transition process applies to students other than just those in high school
- When IEP teams should begin looking at transition
- How to prepare and support the students through the process
- Suggestions to help parents move through this difficult & confusing time
- and Resources that can help facilitate the process more smoothly
Heather lives in Chicago and teaches special education transition and serves as a transition facilitator for her program. She is the teacher-author behind A Love for Special Learning on Teachers Pay Teachers with resources for consumer math, life skills, and transition. Heather has created the Confused to Connected Professional Development after realizing how undergraduate and graduate programs don’t adequately prepare educators with understanding available benefits or how to support students and families in accessing community and government benefits. Having seen first hand how vital benefits, services, and supports are to long term success for her students and their families, she knew she had to help other educators by sharing her process with others.
You can connect with her here:
Instagram- @ALoveForSpecialLearning
A Love For Special Learning website
And if you are interested in continuing your learning with Heather you can find out more here
Informal Transition Meeting resource
Mentioned in the Show...
Resource Library
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