Dana Marie (00:01.35)

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Empowered to Advocate podcast. This is Dana marie, and I am joined here by Michelle, and we are here with the first episode of season three. Thank you to those folks who joined us for seasons one and two. Go back and listen to those if you haven't done so yet. But we are gonna jump in right today with a back to school, don't panic episode. We know that lots of folks are headed back to school soon, or you've maybe just started.

So we wanted to come to you with this episode to help ease you into the new school year and give you a couple really tangible tips, tangible strategies, things that you can implement right away to help make this school year run as smoothly as possible. So let's jump right in.

We heard from lots of parents over the summer that extended school year didn't go quite how they had hoped it would go quite how they had imagined it would go. We heard from parents and caregivers who were dealing with their children who either refused to go or were watching their friends go do something fun and didn't want to attend school during the summer. And this happens. It's not ideal when your child has extended school year services on their IEP. It's because the school team and you are trying to prevent regression or trying to help them get some of the services maybe that they missed during the year, or just trying to make sure that whatever gaps they have in their learning are worked on over the summer for five or six weeks. In an ideal situation, your child would be able to attend every day for those five or six weeks and get the services they need. However, we understand the reality is that's not always possible. Families go on vacations. Parents and caregivers can't always find transportation or child care during the summer. And like I said, we've heard from some parents whose children just didn't want to go to school in the summer, which we fully and totally understand. What you can do now is try to get a good sense of what they did accomplish. Maybe they only went for two or three days. Maybe they only went for two or three weeks. Maybe you got them there twice a week instead of four times a week. however long they were able to attend, what you can do is figure out maybe what they got out of those few days or those few weeks.

You should have received some sort of progress note from the extended school year staff. If you did not reach out and ask for that, typically they'll send you a summary of what was worked on over the summer, what skills, what goals were focused on, what services the child received. They should tell you how many times they attended their speech session over the summer or their occupational therapy service over the summer. But that's a good place to start, especially if you're meeting with the school team in the fall, and it might not be all the same people who worked with your child over the summer to just get your footing and kind of understand what did happen over the summer. Like I said, it might not be everything that you anticipated would get covered over the summer, but it's a really good place to start to just get that information to start with whatever data that is.

Like I said, feel free to reach out to the school team, the extended school year team, if you did not receive that information.

Michelle she/her (03:19.722)

I think this is a really good way to actually gauge how much regression potentially happens during the summer as well. By looking at where were they in their quarter four, end of the school year progress report and looking at where their skills are now. And potentially for some students, there may not have been as much summer slide, as much regression as was anticipated, which is a good thing, right? So I think sometimes, we forget that extended school year services are to help minimize substantial regression. And that is a big open statement of like, what is substantial? Right? And it takes into account that there would be more than typical regression over the summer because everybody has some regression over the summer. And it would be more than typical and then take more than a typical amount of time to be able to like come back from that either whether it's routines or it's reading skills or it's ADLs, anything like that. So there might actually be some areas, especially if your child is getting older and them wanting to go to ESY and putting up a fight is now becoming this huge struggle. It might just demonstrate that maybe they don't need as many services over the summer, which would then make it next summer maybe a little bit easier to compromise with them on being able to go.

This is a good time to be able to look at what was their progress in the fourth quarter. Where are they now? And this also gives you a good starting point for when you contact the school team to perhaps set up a meeting in the fall, whether if they're not due for a annual review first thing in the fall, I'd say before December. It's always a good idea to request a meeting in October-ish to be able to have a conversation, your school team, have them meet you, have you share a little bit about your child, just as a way, a get to know you sort of thing. It's a fresh school year, probably a lot of new paces. So having that data is a good stepping point of saying, this is why I want to have this meeting too.

Dana Marie (05:34.254)

for sure. And you just mentioned, I think this is important. And we were just talking to a couple of caregivers recently about this. The beginning of the school year is a great time to just introduce yourself and introduce your child, especially if they have new team members or an entirely new team. Maybe they're even going to a different school this year, moving from preschool to elementary school or elementary school to middle, middle to high school. Maybe they're going to a different program and a different school. It's a great time to just open the lines of communication. Like Michelle said, maybe waiting a few weeks, right?

We recommend doing this closer to if your child starts school around Labor Day, closer to the middle of September, end of September, maybe even October 1st. Let everyone get settled, get into the groove of the new school year, but then sending an email, sending a letter to the teacher, the liaison, the entire team maybe and saying, hey, I'm so-and-so, I'm the caregiver of this child. Looking forward to working with you this school year. Here are some things they did over the summer. They picked up a new hobby. We traveled, they went to extended school year. They attended a summer program or a camp. Here are some things that have worked for them in the past. We know it's a new team. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Here's how I can be contacted during the school day, or maybe you can't be contacted during the school day. Here is a backup number, maybe another parent or a family member or caregiver, it's a good time to kind of set the expectations for communication for the school year. I know that when we left the year in June, we had lots of parents who reached out to us and weren't honestly super happy with communication between them and the school team last year. It wasn't enough or it wasn't the way that they had hoped it had gone. And so now's a really good time to set sort of those parameters and those expectations and just open the lines of communications. You know as a former Teacher right we were teachers for a long time I always really appreciated when a parent reached out to me whether it was a parent with the child on an IEP or not At the beginning of the year to say hey It's me here. I am you know feel free to contact me looking forward to working together It could have been as short as three or four sentences, but it was a great way to Get that parent and that child on my radar early and make sure that I was communicating with the parent in the way that was comfortable to them and that they wanted to. So we do encourage you to do that.

Michelle she/her (08:08.37)

To kind of piggyback on that thought, when we were at the New Hampshire Parent Support Conference a few weeks ago, we had also talked about in this initial email bringing up a few things that your child did over the summer because as we know, your child probably goes home and when you say, what did you do at school today, they probably say, I don't know, nothing. But when they come to school and teachers say, hey, what did you do this summer?

Dana Marie (08:34.342)

What'd you do this summer? Ha ha ha!

Michelle she/her (08:36.774)

They oftentimes say, I don't know, nothing. And, you know, unfortunately for some students that might be actually really true. To put that into perspective, some students maybe didn't do anything this summer. So by putting it into a little email, hey, some things you might want to ask Sean about or Susie about are, you know, they learned how to crochet the summer. They spent some time every weekend with their grandparents who they typically don't see while they were here from Florida, something like that. So that gives the teacher or the staff member something to start conversation with, to start building rapport with. Because otherwise sometimes, especially for middle schoolers, it can feel like you're like really pulling, like come on, tell me something, tell me something, right? You're fishing for it. So giving them that information can make it easier to build that rapport. So send that welcome email.

Dana Marie (09:30.094)

For sure. Yeah, and I think, you know, when we were at that same conference, we had also talked about a welcome email or a welcome letter is actually a great time too, to bring up sort of a goal for the year. So if your goal for your child is to get them more involved in the IEP process, if your goal is, you know, maybe they're an older kiddo and your goal for them is to get a part-time job, like feel free to include that in the email to the teacher. Teachers love and specialists love to hear from parents about what sort of the goals are for the school year for the child for the family. So that's something that you can include as well.

Michelle she/her (10:10.55)

Yeah, so the second big thing, you know, when getting ready for the school year. So first, looking at your child's progress from last year, and this is gonna require looking at some paperwork. So one of the first things you can do in the first few weeks of school, or the few weeks leading up to back to school, is actually looking at those piles of paperwork. And if you've been listening to us since last year, you might already be in tip-top, super organized shape. If you are just starting to listen or even if you just weren't able to kind of pull everything together last year because it was so busy. This is a great time to really try to figure out, you know, do I have a copy of their active IEP? Do I have a copy of their most recent evaluations? When was that last evaluation? Trying to put all the paperwork that you do have together, whether it's electronic or in paper form, whatever way you organize best. And then if you don't have certain things you think you might be missing things, that's something you can also talk about and request a copy of when you meet with the team in the fall. So all these things kind of lump together. So back to school is really a, instead of panicking, thinking about it as a time for fresh opportunities. It is a brand new year, brand new opportunities, brand new skills for to get to know, right? And I know that can, you know, provoke some anxiety, but especially if you had a hard time last year, your child had a hard time last year, then this is a great time to kinda just start fresh, be organized, and just set the tone for the year and go from there.

Dana Marie (11:56.262)

Totally. And so we wanna leave you today with just two takeaways. I'm not gonna call them easy because nothing's easy, but two takeaways that you can actually implement right away. One we talked about was sending that welcome email, that welcome letter. Give school two or three weeks to start. Give everyone a chance to settle in, but then send that letter introducing yourself, opening the lines of communication. If you need some inspiration for that email or letter, we're gonna drop in the show notes.

We have a blog post that we recently put out that has some sentence starters, some topics that you can cover, ones that we talked about today and more. So click on that link, head to that blog and get some starters to start your email or letter.

Michelle she/her (12:42.158)

Great. And then second, we do have a free resource, which is a binder organization system that you can print out. It might be easier to even just print it at some place like Staples if you're able to do that. If you don't have a printer at home, you get a PDF, and it has all sorts of things that we think are very valuable for you to be able to have at your fingertips in a very organized systematic sort of way. So you know, oh yeah, I don't know where quarter three progress reports are from last school year. Oh, I'm not sure when those last evaluations were. You may not even know that you're missing those without this organization system. So we tried to put everything that we think that you should have at your fingertips in this packet for you to have printed out, put it in a binder, and then organize all of your child's paperwork in that binder so you have it, you're ready to go, it's at your fingertips.

So you can download that. We're going to drop that in the show notes as well. And you can reach out to us at any time with questions to set up an initial consult. Empowered to Advocate at gmail.com or using the link in the show notes to set up that time. Another great way to start your school year is with a record review. So if you're pulling all your paperwork together and you're like, wow, there is just so much going on here. And I.

Not sure if these goals are really appropriate. I'm not sure, I feel like this, you know, this objective has been repeated multiple years in a row. This is a great way to start working with us if that's something that you're interested in is after the initial consult, a record review where we go through all of your paperwork, put everything together and kind of look at where the like real positive parts are of the current plan and where can we make some improvements to make their plan even better for them so they make even more progress coming up. So those are all different ways that we can support you and that might be helpful for you and your child this school year.

Dana Marie (14:44.058)

And we just opened up all of our fall availability for those initial 20 minute consults. So when you go to schedule an appointment with us, we have lots of new availability that just opened up in September and October. So we look forward to working with you. We also look forward to chatting with you next week on the second episode of this season. So thanks for tuning in today. Thanks for joining us and we will see you next week. Bye everybody.

Michelle she/her (15:10.786)

See you next week.