If you’d like to join in but aren’t sure what to write about, try the topic suggestion for this week: Communicating with Teachers and Paraprofessionals – how do you create and maintain a good relationship with your child’s team? What methods seem to work best for you?
Our Communication Plan
When my son was moving from the Early Intervention preschool program to kindergarten, I was very nervous about maintaining the level of communication I was used to from his preschool teachers. But I was pleasantly surprised by his new school being very willing to communicate with me on a daily basis.
The learning support teacher created a daily communication sheet that the classroom teacher marks on a scale for transitioning and following his schedule and the special teacher for the day marks how attentive, focused, compliant, etc he was in her class. There is also a space for written comments. The SLP and OT each fill out a similar sheet with more specifics related to his goals with each of them when they see him.
I initial the sheets and they then go to the learning support teacher the next day for review. I do have to say that the job of reviewing them and noticing trends or issues across settings seems to fall to me, but I am happy to have the information to do that with.
Talking to the Whole Team
With regard to team communication, the learning teacher sent out an email to all of the team members, including the specials teachers and the Behavioral Specialist Consultant (funded through MA, not a school employee), and we just have to hit reply all to email the entire team. This has been helpful for discussing the outcome of team meetings where only a few people attended or sharing information from home or the psychologist.
Support Staff
My son does not have a paraprofessional, but he does have a TSS, who is a behavior support person funded through MA. Since he also have 6 hours a week of home and community work with her, she comes to our house two mornings a week, which is wonderful for keeping in touch and making adjustments. Next fall we won’t have home hours, so it may be a bit more challenging.
Other Ideas
I am always interested in what other parents find works and doesn’t work for them. For instance, a friend of mine who has a daughter in middle school with an ADHD diagnosis and a 504 plan gets an email report once a week from the core teacher. Part of the plan is for the teachers to initial her homework sheet, so that comes home every day as well.
Please join in and share the creative solutions YOU have found to your own challenges, or feel free to post your own challenge for input from others. For more details on how to participate, read the welcome post.
Topic Suggestion for Next Week: Teaching the How and Why of Hygiene.
As the host of Try This Tuesday, Trish shares some of the solutions she has found to make life easier and invites you to do the same. You can also find her blogging at Another Piece of the Puzzle and Autism Interrupted.
I like the idea of e-mailing all the team members to stay on track.
Mine both get a daily report from the school to me which tracks their behaviour [not there academics - who care about that!] It’s a tick box with a scale of one to 5 about how they performed e.g. managed to remain in seat most of the time / some of the time / flat on the floor as much as possible wailing…….well, you know what I mean.
Often they’ll write a note at the bottom about something special that happened [not always 'bad'] that may affect their after school / home behaviour e.g. bonked head when fell out of chair……
Cheers
I think once the individual reaches the teen years, it becomes more complicated. My friend’s school sends a letter home with the students each day listing behavioral transgressions and assignments to be completed. This must be signed by a parent and turned in each day (he’s in a special school for teens with psych issues). This has never been successful because he can easily forge his parent’s signature/pay off a sibling to sign it for him.
[...] always curious about what system or arrangement other parents have worked out, and that’s why Communicating with Teachers and Paraprofessionals is the subject of this week’s Try This Tuesday over at 5 Minutes for Special [...]
As a special ed. pre-k teacher, I find that using a communication tool is SO vital.
I use what I think works just great, it tracks staying on(or off) tasks, transitions, and input from the teacher/staff.
I use TONS of visuals in my class – this tool also has visuals on it as well. That way the parent can show the kiddo – “look, Mrs J has said you sat during morning circle”..
I have parents who love it and parents who NEVER read them. That’s okay, I use them anyhow. It helps me track daily and I can use them as an anecdotal as well.
We have in our son’s IEP (he’s in high school and is a high functioning AS student):
Provide parents a Progress Report on his grades every 2 weeks.
This is now done online and ALL parents can see what assignments their child has done and their grade. They call it HAC (Home Access Center). There is also an easy email access to contact all teachers at his school as well.
When problems do arise we use email to set up conferences with the teachers.
When my son was in middle school the teachers would at the end of class check each and every student’s agenda book to see if they had written correctly their assignment(s). The teacher would initial it (or use a stamp) to confirm that it was correct. I thought this was a fantastic idea and it also made sure that the students had their assignments written down correctly and they would know when to turn them in on time. Parents also had to sign the agenda book daily to verify that they had read the above and understood what their child was supposed to do.
Parents knew this had to be done and if they wanted their child to succeed in school they had to follow through with signing the agenda book and making sure their child did their homework. I made sure I read my son’s agenda book as soon as he came home and signed it.
If the parents did not follow through with this easy task, it was their own fault that their child did not succeed in school. Parents must do their part to insure that their child is doing what they are supposed to do. They are the parent and they must act like a parent as well.
Thanks for these tips, Trish. I don’t have anything to offer on this subject as Jackson is not in school yet, but I enjoy reading things like this to help me prepare! Also, I’m probably the only one who doesn’t know, but what does MA stand for?
Jenny – Sorry for using acronyms, I try to avoid it. MA stands for Medical Assistance, or Medicaid, which children with autism qualify for in PA regardless of family income.
Amazing Grace – Our school district has HAC for high school now – sounds like a great thing!
Chrissi – I loved the preschool forms with all the icons and they definitely help to communicate with your child about their day!
Cale – I have to admit I was an expert at forging my parents’ signatures on notes for all three of us kids.
Maddy – I’m still laughing, rereading your comment. Maybe I should add a line for % of day spent on floor…
Thanks for all the great comments and participation!!!
We’re not in school yet, but what we’re doing with the daycare and school-district therapists is writing short reports and sending them to a private Yahoo! group. We’ve used the same group for a couple of years now. The daycare lady writes up notes on her day, the school-district SLP and OT and special-educator write reports on their sessions, and I write reports for the days that my daughter is at home. And, I’ve invited everyone to read my blog as well if they want still more information about what’s going on. (We also have staff with an intensive-autism-therapy program who are required to write their reports on particular paper forms, but most of them at least read the Yahoo group and blog too.)
The nice thing about the Yahoo group is that we’ve been doing it for a while, and it keeps all the reports archived in one (searchable!) place, even though we’ve had a variety of different staffers who’ve come and gone.
Don’t know whether/how this would apply once we get to school, but it’s been a great tool so far.
Thanks for the post, and it’s good to see what works for commenters too…