New Year's Resolution

Ok, if you're like me, you make resolutions every year and then fail to follow through. This year though, I'm going to ask you to make a resolution I hope you'll try to keep. I want you to try to learn more about special education law. Your child is served under IDEA from age 0-22 in Indiana so it's important to understand the law. You'll have to determine where you are in your learning curve and set a goal of taking that knowledge one step further.

According to Wrightslaw:
To be effective advocates, parents must learn new skills.

You must learn about your child's disability. You need accurate information about what works- about effective educational practices.

You need to learn about legal rights & responsibilities.

Since you negotiate with the school on your child's behalf, you must learn to negotiate and persuade.

I know it's overwhelming, so try to break it into chunks that you can handle. If you're not familiar with your child's disability and what approaches work best, start your learning there. You will be the constant in your child's life and it will be up to you to educate others about your child's disability. If you're not familiar with the law, try to at least get an overview of what your child is entitled to. If you know the basic law, then look deeper into one of the areas your child needs to be successful: assistive technology, a behavior intervention plan, accommodations and modifications, etc. If you feel comfortable with those areas as well, then look at advocacy a little closer. How can you best use your knowledge to work with the schools to give your child the best foundation?

A little reminder I use for myself to remember to work on new learning everyday is to subscribe to blogs in a reader. You can click the button to the left to subscribe to this blog so future posts about special education are delivered directly to you.

Ready. Set. LEARN.