Research has shown that the majority of educators and caregivers of students with complex learning needs desire effective and meaningful communication with one another and that students benefit most when parents and teachers work together to support them. However, with the ever increasing demands on the time and energy of teachers and parents alike, it is important to consider how we can communicate valuable information about our child to their new teachers in a way that is positive, proactive and efficient. A Student Intro One Sheet is a concise, easy to read, and useful “cheat sheet” distributed at the start of the school year that supports teacher understanding of the student and their unique needs before challenges arise in the classroom. The practice of sharing this vital information in an honest, informative, and respectful manner acknowledges your child’s teacher as a professional, opens a channel of communication and enables greater understanding of the student from day one. In this workshop, 2e advocate, parent coach, and writer Kimberlee Joseph presented the goals and benefits of creating a student one sheet, the do’s and don’t of an effective document, and when and how to support student self-advocacy by involving the student in the process of writing and distributing their own one sheet. Creating Your Student Intro One Sheet Starting the school year off right with positive, concise and proactive home to school communication. Monday, Aug 23, 2021, 7-8:30pm Zoom info sent the day before the event *This workshop focuses on parents of K-8 students - however we will do our best to answer questions for older students as well Research has shown that the majority of educators and caregivers of students with complex learning needs desire effective and meaningful communication with one another and that students benefit most when parents and teachers work together to support them. However, with the ever increasing demands on the time and energy of teachers and parents alike, it is important to consider how we can communicate valuable information about our child to their new teachers in a way that is positive, proactive and efficient. A Student Intro One Sheet is a concise, easy to read, and useful “cheat sheet” distributed at the start of the school year that supports teacher understanding of the student and their unique needs before challenges arise in the classroom. The practice of sharing this vital information in an honest, informative, and respectful manner acknowledges your child’s teacher as a professional, opens a channel of communication and enables greater understanding of the student from day one. In this workshop we will consider the goals and benefits of creating a student one sheet, the do’s and don’t of an effective document, and when and how to support student self-advocacy by involving the student in the process of writing and distributing their own one sheet. Participants will be provided with a one sheet template and begin the process of creating their own Student Intro One Sheet to share with their child’s teacher at the start of the new school year. ----- Kimberlee Joseph is a 2e advocate, parent coach, and writer whose primary focus lies in supporting the parents and caregivers of Twice-Exceptional learners as they navigate their child’s educational path be it public, private or homeschool. She holds an M.Ed. in Cognitive Diversity in Education and was among the first to receive a graduate certificate in Twice-Exceptional Education, a first of its kind course of study, at Bridges Graduate School.

Thurs, April 22 7-8:30pm, Zoom info sent the day before the event Join Dr. Melanie Hayes, founder of Big Minds School for 2e students in Pinole, CA, for a discussion about strength-based learning. When kids are far from the bell curve in both directions, parents and educators tend to focus on shoring up weaknesses at the expense of bolstering strengths. However, strengths are where 2e kids build energy to face their challenges, boost their self-esteem, and their likely future careers will lie. Focusing on strengths should be a cornerstone of any 2e student’s educational plan. Melanie will share the strength-based methods of Big Minds Unschool, as well as how strength-based learning can be incorporated into any learning environment. What can parents do to bolster strengths at home and advocate for them in the classroom? How can we use strength-based learning to increase student motivation and tackle challenge areas? How does focusing on strengths help heal school trauma? We will leave plenty of time for your questions on anything 2e from this dynamic fountain of 2e wisdom! ---------------- About Dr Melanie Hayes Dr. Melanie Hayes, Founder and Executive Director, Big Minds School. She holds a Doctorate in Educational Leadership with a focus on twice-exceptionality, a Masters of Arts in Gifted Education, a Masters of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy, a California Teaching Credential, and is currently working toward LMFT/LPCC licensure in California. Melanie has 20 years experience teaching, mentoring, coaching, and advocating for 2e persons. She won the Innovations 4 Entrepreneurs National Award for her work using adaptive technology for twice exceptional students, and the Jefferson Award in recognition of her contributions to the 2e community. She also received SENG’s Educator of the Year Award for her groundbreaking work in educating gifted and twice exceptional children. Melanie is a certified SENG Model Parent Group Facilitator and supports parents to help them develop their parenting skills. She also works with various other professional associations, such as the IECA, where she serves as the Affinity Group Co-Chair for Gifted/Talented and Twice Exceptional. If you’d like to learn more about Melanie’s expertise and insights, check out these resources: Embracing Intensity podcast featuring Melanie as the guest TiLT parenting podcast where Melanie is in conversation with Debbie Reber Melanie’s book “We Tried Normal” free on the BigMinds website Building Successful Schools for 2e Children a 4-part series she wrote for 2eNews

Thursday, January 21, 2020, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. Is your 2e child struggling in school? Have you wondered if a different approach to schooling might be a better fit to support your child’s strengths and needs? Do you sometimes think about homeschooling or flexible schooling, but feel daunted by the prospect? Has distance learning given you fresh insight into what a more optimal educational environment might be for your child? REEL is excited to host independent educational planner Teresa Nair, who will share her experiences helping families, in particular those with 2e and neurodivergent learners, explore non-traditional schooling pathways. As a homeschooling mom, special needs professional, and educator, Teresa’s goal is to empower and support families and students in their choice of personalized educational paths. With her vast experience and multidisciplinary background, Teresa currently consults on strengths-based and talent-focused educational planning for twice-exceptional students. Teresa has helped numerous parents navigate the range of non-traditional choices. She will provide an overview of options across all grade levels (from homeschooling via charter school to creating your own homeschool and more), talk about real-world students and their paths, address common homeschooling myths, and answer frequently asked questions. If you’ve ever asked “What might it look like to choose a completely different approach to educate my unique 2e learner?” then you will not want to miss this session! Transcript: A Conversation on Personalized Education Wait, maybe she introduced me to it a year ago; it could have been. And it was great to see that this work is being done because sometimes, even when you're in the field as long as I am, you can feel like you're the only one. But you guys have done a fantastic job of connecting people, and I'm so excited and so honored to be here tonight. As Kelly said, this is just the beginning of this conversation. You'll see from the information that I present tonight that there is a lot that goes in so many directions. You could probably get a graduate degree in 10 aspects of it or just spend your entire life as a parent searching after one aspect of it. So it's a community conversation that is living and breathing and changing for all of us, so I'll just kind of start that conversation tonight. Please feel free, wherever you're at in your personal journey, to jump in and ask questions about it when we have the time at the end because it is very personal. I've always said that special needs, but also raising a twice-exceptional child, is never a one-stop shop, and so I feel like I'm always shopping. Therefore, let's start shopping and looking for some opportunities. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen, and you'll get all of the beauty here. Thumbs up, do you happen to see the first slide? Excellent, great. Okay, so this is a conversation that was titled "From Homeschool to Unschool: Personalized Educational Paths for 2E Students," and my name is Theresa Nair. I do want to focus tonight on the personalized educational path idea of this, and some of the aspects that we'll start to include do include homeschooling and unschooling. The Starting Point: Recognizing Choices Let's see, let's move forward here. Where does it all begin? I think it all begins when we start to realize that there are choices. Whether that came to you as a need or as a want, choices seem to lead a lot of us down this path of what we can do. So we're looking for choices. The other, oh gosh, it must have been back in April, I want to introduce a story about a family that kind of rang true to me. I saw this story on a Facebook group that I'm a part of, and I asked if I could share, and she said, "Sure." I wanted to share because it's really close to me as far as it resonated. I looked at this, I saw this post, and she was talking about how it was April of 2020 and she was emptying out her son's backpack. As we all know, life changed dramatically in March of 2020, and a lot of our kids came home and were a little bit more under our noses than they used to be, and we were seeing a lot more. But she hadn't emptied the backpack, so she's emptying the backpack in April, and she sees this beautiful piece of art. Unfortunately, it really kind of struck her in the heart. I don't know if you can read it or not, but to me it looks like... I used to read a story to my kids by Dr. Seuss called "My Many Colored Days," and it looks like the teacher might have been going over that book with this young student. Her son was in second grade at the time, and this piece of art says, "On yellow days, I feel bad and sad. Go away. I'm alone. I'm down as can be." And she sat with this for a few minutes and decided she needed to talk to her son and find out about this. She knew he wasn't happy at school, but she didn't really understand the extent, and this hit home. So she went to him and she said, "But how often did you feel this way at school? How often did you have yellow days?" And he said, "All the time, Mama. Every day was a yellow day at school." And she said, "You know that's... I'm sorry to hear that. Now that things are a little different, we've kind of been working at home. Now we're kind of working on things you enjoy and doing a little bit more of a homeschooling approach. Well, how many yellow days are you having now?" And he said, "Only when I stubbed my toe." And I thought that was wonderful because some of us parents who've been in a place where we felt like we just couldn't save our kiddos from one bad day after another, she had found a solution where her kiddo was like, "Yeah, only when I stubbed my toe." And I was like, "Oh, you know, just having that lift off your chest and knowing that your kiddo's okay, except when they stub their toe, is good." You know, so this story kind of brought to me this idea that for a long time we felt, when we were put in that place of how do I help my child at school when they're having these rough and tough consecutive days over again or we can't find the answers and it's just a struggle, we had two choices. Sometimes it felt like it was black and white, one or the other. How do we make our public school work? How do we make private school work? But tonight I want to talk to you guys a little bit about the reality and how we can kind of sweep that away and that the reality of it all kind of looks a little bit different. There are more colors on our palette than we might know of, and with all of those, you can create a masterpiece for your child or your child can create their own masterpiece. To whatever degree you choose to use that palette is up to you, but the choices are there. About Me and My Journey So let's give an overview a little bit more about what I'm going to talk about. So who am I and why am I here talking about this? Well, my name is Theresa Nair as we mentioned, and a couple years ago I had one of my colleagues introduce me to a new client. And I think this is a new client that I was going to start working with. They were down in Los Angeles and in the email to the client he referred to me as an "out-of-the-box educator." And that kind of made me chuckle because I've been in education off and on for about 20 years. As Kelly mentioned, I started in high-tech, so I was working in Chicago for Fortune 500 companies, traveling the world, designing multimedia presentations. It was great, and I decided to volunteer in a middle school classroom teaching technology. I don't really know where that came from, but I did. I started volunteering in a middle school classroom and I realized that I loved it. I loved teaching, and I loved working with middle schoolers specifically. And so I went back to school and worked on my master's in the arts of teaching English degrees. I hit it hard and I had a wonderful opportunity for several years to work in public and private schools. I worked in one of the best private schools in the nation for several years, and it focused on gifted students, so I had a great view into these wonderful programs. My husband and I then moved from the Midwest, the Chicago area, here to the Bay Area. He's in tech, I'm in tech, and we decided, "Okay, you know what, for myself, I thought maybe I'd give high-tech a chance here in the heart of part of the tech industry." So I went back and started working for companies like PayPal and eBay, and I did that knowingly, not that I was leaving education forever, but one of the things I feel that is important to bring to education and to the experience and the people that I work with, and especially the students that I work with, is the understanding of what they're working towards and what the real world is. Sometimes it breaks my heart if an educator is preparing a child for a real world but they've never been outside of education. So I really embraced the idea of wanting to know what I am preparing my high school students for in this class that were, you know, here five days a week and however many hours. What am I preparing my middle school students for? And so I got a chance to work for some high-tech companies here in the Bay Area, and it was a reality check. It was another aspect of what the world is expecting from people and what the what industry is and things like that. And so then I went back into education and I worked here locally at a couple wonderful private schools. During that time, I became a mother and I am a wife, and so you'll see that a lot of this pathway for myself was non-traditional too. But we'll see kind of how that fits in. As I was going through that, in the last seven or eight years, I started to work with the homeschooling community. Now, I want to explain to everybody that this is an interesting time because I did not think I'd be having this conversation, but I think it's important to have this conversation. Homeschooling vs. Crisis Schooling In March of 2020, things got confused and I heard a lot of families saying, "Oh, homeschooling is horrible! Oh my gosh, I could never homeschool!" And my son and I had been homeschooling for two years at that time, and I thought, "Oh my goodness, this crisis schooling that all of us were thrown into, including myself, because my daughter was still at a traditional school, this crisis schooling that we were thrown into in March for children, for families, for teachers, for administration, it is not homeschooling." And it's very important, I believe, to make that differentiation so that we can have a clearer conversation. So, like I said, my daughter was still in a traditional school, and so when she came home in March and was going to do her distance learning, we thought, "Oh, you know, my son and I, like, 'Hey, we got you know, Evie's home with us and and we'll all be homeschooling together.'" But it was hard, and I found myself actually spending more time with her than I did with my son, and I was running interference, and I was caught up. It was a time of crisis definitely, but I started to think about, "Why is it so difficult to help her in this school from home versus my son who I've been homeschooling for two years?" Was it just new? And I started to realize that there is a fundamental difference. For those of you that are learning that your children are learning from home, you're doing what somebody else wants, when they want it, and how they want it, and it's brought into your living space. And that might work for some people. It might be helpful for some people to have somebody tell you what to do, when to do, and how to do it. "Thank you, that's great, I need that." For us, it didn't work. I realized we were homeschoolers, and so the traditional homeschooling idea and foundation is, as a parent, you get to choose what you want to do, how you want to do it, and when you want to do it. So you could choose to do a public school distance learning program, but you know, understanding that when you talk about homeschooling, it's a lifestyle, they like to say, because it does, it changes so much of the experience because of where its foundation is. So we're going to talk about kind of the spectrum in between that of distance learning from home and the possibilities there, but also this possibility of the lifestyle homeschooling, making all those choices, and what that could mean also. Legal Pathways for Homeschooling in California When we talk about homeschooling, we need to remind everybody that every state is different, and that's what's really interesting. There is actually no true homeschooling in California, as I used to think it was like, "You just... kid comes home and you start to educate." No, actually, there's a lot of organization that can help you along the way as homeschoolers, and so I wanted to mention first off, hsc.org  is one of the resources that I'm going to talk about tonight. This is the Homeschool Association of California. It's volunteer-run, it's a wonderful organization. They actually have a Homeschooling 101 meeting in February. I think it's on the 10th, but they've got this quick start guide and they know what they're doing. They are really helpful. They have a support line you can call, and what they do is they can help you organize not only your resources but the idea of what it means to homeschool in California. So there are three of the most popular ways to homeschool in California: is to apply for the PSA, which is the Private School Affidavit program, the PSP, which is the Private School Satellite Program, and then the third one that's popular is the Public Independent Study. Now, like I said, each one of these is different, but they're all supported by the state of California. This is how you legally homeschool in California: by following and going through one of these programs. The first program, the PSA , is where you, as a family or as a mother, however you choose to do it, you make your home your institution. Your itty-bitty school is just you and your child or your children. That is the private school that you have formed, and you are the administrator and the director of that, and you will only be educating your children. And you file that with your state, and you tell the state that you're going to be keeping the records that you need to keep. There are information... there's information of, you know, folders and files and and forms you can do to fill those out if you'd like to, but the PSA is quite a popular option right now. And one of the things about that is that once again, it's the true homeschooling of the parent is in charge, and they can seek as much support and organization and help as they would like or not like. So this is freedom to choose. And let's say you follow this all the way through high school, your child would be graduating, and you would be giving them the diploma from the institution or the private school that you had created. And so keeping the records, creating the program, however you choose and whatever support you choose, is part of the PSA, and there's varying degrees of that. The next one is more of a private satellite program (PSP) . This is where somebody else has created a private school, and the amount of leniency and opportunities and choices that you have is going to be based on their program, but they usually keep the records and things like that. One of the things we'd like to highlight and say about the PSP is, you know, you'll want to know what private school you're joining. And some of them are faith-based, some of them might have particular curriculums that they use and things like that, but it's another opportunity that sometimes really allows you flexibility, but keep in mind what that means. And the third one, the public independent study , is a complicated one only in the fact that, of course, everything changed in March of 2020. But this would be... like my son is enrolled in a public school. He goes to a charter school, a public charter school called Ocean Grove, and they support us. Now, because of his age, because of the program that we choose, we check in once a month with our specialist, our education specialist. We don't have a particular curriculum that we're supposed to follow, but they'd like us to do science and they'd like us to do math and things like that. So we have a scaffolding that they help us with, and I usually get to choose how we're going to approach that and what we're going to do with that. And as the child gets older, there are more resources, maybe, but what it is is more structured. And so they help you take the steps through a graduation program so that then your child would graduate from that public independent study school. Now what I've heard, and I'm just starting to get more familiar with, is that public schools in the area are starting to wake up on the possibilities of what this can do as far as helping the students in their districts right now. And so I have a friend who lives out in the Santa Teresa area, and I believe, I can't remember exactly where it is, but she had talked about how her public school... she would lose her son's quote-unquote personal physical place to re-enroll into the classroom if they chose to go in public or in-person eventually. But the program that they were putting together to support the homeschooling students that chose to go through this public independence study was actually turning out to be really robust, and she thought it was pretty valuable. So as things are changing right now, I'm not discounting your local public schools. I think it's important to look at them and see how they can help you on this. So what that means though is once again, so we've got these options. There are structures put in place. California can help you along those lines, and those programs are there. What makes it different now is we get to choose the resources and how we're going to go about this, and that actually is kind of where things get a little messy. No, I'm just kidding, that's where they kind of get a little exciting. So it can be very different and very colorful for everybody in the way that it looks. So I don't see it as messy, I see it as an opportunity. Finding Your Homeschooling Style And so, let's talk about what that means. Where would you even start, you know, now that you've got these three possibilities in California? I don't even know what that means though. Well, let me tell you a little bit about what that means. So the links that I'm sharing with you tonight are a great place to get started because you could Google every single one of these words that I give you or topics that I give you, but I've done a lot of research and I've helped several clients, and these are good ones. They're not necessarily the end-all, be-all great, but these are some good ones. And so I wanted to point out that you can take a quiz, and this is one from Homeschool On, and this is kind of a good way to start because what it does is it exposes you to some of the different styles of homeschooling. And so you can literally take this quiz. You start the quiz and it says things like, "I want to do school with my kids. Model the value of learning, reading, and writing." "Yeah, I agree with that." So let's agree with that one. You can also answer, "I prefer workbooks. I want to have children working independently." Now, this is where you start. Just think about this. "Oh, you know, I guess I never realized it, but yeah, I think workbooks are great and I would like my child to work independently quite a bit," so I'm going to agree with that. And there are, as you can see, 32 questions. I'm not sure what their, you know, analog is and how it all gets down to it, but at the end you're going to fit into one of these categories. And like I said, it's just a place to get started. It's not going to define you and it's not going to make you know who you are for the rest of your homeschooling lives or for the rest of your independent journey lives, but what it's going to do is it's going to give you some information. So let's say you didn't know it, but you fell into the traditional style , and that gives you a jumping off point. What does it mean to be a traditional homeschool style? Well, here on the side it'll tell you, "Well, that probably means that you like little desks and you probably love workbooks and you probably love schedules and planners. You probably make sure that you write down when recess is." And so this is when you enjoy the opportunity of bringing school into your home and replicating that how it's going to work for your family. You might fall into a traditional homeschooling kind of mold, and that's great. And there are others, so if that doesn't sound like something you want to do, it could be classical . Classical is a very logic-based; they, I heard, I read somewhere that they kind of rule out color, and that makes lazy. They have lots of repetition and studying Latin and grammar and things like that, that there's a lot of public speaking and memorizing, and it's a very beautiful program. Most of it is faith-based also, I believe in the Christian faith. There are unit studies and then there's the unschooling  style and the eclectic  and then Charlotte Mason . So it might be fun to take this quiz and see what it comes up with, but read a little bit about all of them because it'll then take you on a journey about maybe what what's your style, what are you even starting to look for. Unschooling and Deschooling One of the ones that we wanted to talk about tonight was a little bit of what is this unschooling. Unschooling is probably something that you've heard about, and one of the things that I like to tell my clients and the families that I talk with who do unschool, they talk a lot about how it's more about facilitating. It's not necessarily that you just, you know, let your kid sit on their, you know, phone all day and do nothing. You become a facilitator and figure out how to help your child when they find things they're interested in. I've even had one unschooling mom talk about how she would place books, interesting books on topics that she thought her son would really enjoy. She'd strategically place them around the house so when he had, like, downtime or no-tech time and he was just, you know, wandering around looking for something to do, she knew he'd run across some of those books. And if you just happen to kind of express an interest in something, she'd be like, "Hmm, well, what if we enroll in this class or how about we do a Google search on this?" And so she would kind of start to facilitate that interest and then back off whenever they wanted her to jump in and, you know, however it needs to be. This is a great source if you're interested in kind of getting to know that style a little bit more. I really like her work; I believe her name is Sue Patterson , I might have got that wrong, maybe it's Peterson. Let's see, it's right down here. Yeah, Sue Patterson. And as you can see, she's got a beautiful site and there's an FAQ, and if you're going to choose the unschooling route, I would recommend looking into deschooling . I don't know if you've heard of this one yet either or not, but especially if you're going to just really leave the system behind and let your child do what they want to do or if you come from a dramatic degree... if you're coming from a traumatic experience, deschooling is really helpful in this because I, as a parent, needed to deschool. I needed to get out of the idea of what school had to look like, and my child had to deschool and let go of some of the trauma. So look into deschooling. She has great resources here. She also has wonderful resources on research in homeschooling and unschooling. So as the night goes on and as my conversation hopefully goes on with all of you, it's going to be about knowing that there's support out there. You're going to be not necessarily recreating the wheel, you're going to be recreating whatever vehicle you want, and there is a lot of support out there to do that. So looking through these and understanding them a little bit more is helpful. She's got great videos, she's got "Find local groups," she's got guides, so we can start to point you in the direction of maybe a style that you're interested in or getting to know something a little bit more. My Family's Homeschooling Style: Secular Eclectic Now my family... so like I said, I might have mentioned my son and I started homeschooling about two or three years ago when he was having trouble at school, and he was definitely not enjoying the experience. I was missing him every morning. I would look at him and he'd say, "Mama, do I have a temperature?" And I would... it would just break my heart. He did not want to go. He was hoping he was sick as opposed to going to school, and those kind of things just kept coming and coming. And so when we decided to homeschool, like I said, I'd been working in the community for several years. I still felt like I was jumping off into this, "I am on my own," but you're not. Let me... that's why I'm here and that's what I'm hoping to help everybody understand is whichever path you choose, now is a really exciting time. So what we chose and what I've kind of found out over the last couple years is that we are secular eclectic somewhat unit homeschoolers . And so what does that mean? Well, the secular  means that we don't... we're not faith-based. We don't practice through a specific religion. We're eclectic  in the fact that I choose my resources from everywhere. I really am a believer that people and children can learn from everywhere, but that doesn't mean I don't buy curriculum out of the box and that I don't have steps and help along the way, that's for sure. I like some organization there too, and I say a lot of times that part of what we do is I get a curriculum that I enjoy and then we jump off, and I pull in novels and I'll pull in a movie or I'll pull in a class. My daughter's a big history buff, so she decided she wanted to do the Titanic. So as an eclectic homeschooler, I can now start to pull together some of those things, but then I also keep an eye on standards and where she's at and things like that, so I'll talk a little bit more about that. That's the idea of eclectic, it's taking from a lot of different places. Unit studies  being kind of the idea of the unit of the Titanic being that single unit and how do we make it work. Like I said, I don't fully necessarily do unit all the way, but to each his own. Once you get this understanding of, "I have a style, I kind of like the idea of traditional. Tell me what is California public schools doing right now and how do I find that and where are the workbooks," and we're going to go through that and thank you very much that's great. There are traditional curriculums out there. You can see some of them will be possibly faith-based, you can choose not to use that one. There are... there are some that aren't. You'll see that there are a lot of places to go once you start to dabble in this and a lot of things to choose from. Now as I said, resources are going to be everywhere. Resources and Getting Started I want to flip back and kind of give you guys one little short slide that might help out because resources might seem overwhelming, but let me give you just a quick summary of these links that I went over tonight. Okay, you can start with figuring out what does California allow, and that's the hsc.org  link that will help you know what are the rules and regulations around what I can do in California as a quote-unquote homeschooler. Hsc.org is a good place to start. "What kind of homeschooler am I?" Here's the quiz link, so if you want to screenshot this and look at it later, or I have a feeling that the wonderful REAL group will put this together for you guys too. We can get you these links, but what I've done is I've chosen places for you to start on this journey instead of getting overwhelmed with a Google search. These are pretty good places to start and get curious. The Secular Eclectic Academic  one that I spoke about, this SEA, they have a magnificent private Facebook group with over 70,000 members. It's amazing, it's extremely active, it's extremely inspiring, but their website is also fantastic, and so is their magazine. You don't have to recreate the wheel in so many ways, and you can just be inspired by a lot of what's out there. I wanted to point out that in the fall issue they actually have "Teaching the 2E Learners," so the community of homeschooling is beginning to be familiar with and embracing the understanding that we have unique learners, our twice-exceptional children. Sometimes do well with their own path, and so Kimberly Joseph wrote a wonderful article even in this magazine. So there's representation out there, there's information out there, and we're going to keep exploring a little bit more about that. Creating a Personalized Educational Plan So what does it mean though? What do I do? Well, usually families come to me and they're ready to figure out what does this look for like for them personally, and I want to thank everybody who signed up tonight. Several of you, many, many of you put responses in the comments and had specific questions, and that was really helpful. So what Cali now and I decided to do was create some profiles of hypothetical students based on my experience, based on some of the feedback and comments that we got in registration, and how would I create a personalized education plan for a twice-exceptional student based on some of the comments and feedback that we got. So thank you for being a part of that. None of the students that I talk about going forward are actual one child, okay? This is an amalgamation of a lot of different kids. And so I usually start with a family, and and we start out talking about what are your priorities as a family ? It's really important to know what's important, what do you want for your child, what do you want for your for your family as a unit? Does it mean, "We... I both of our, both of us in the family are working and we really don't have a whole lot of time, so we want to take our child out of the school system because it's not working for us. We're ready to go full bore, but we need as much support as possible." Okay, or, "We would like to make sure that our child maintains bilingual and is fluent within these two languages," and we can make that work too. So it's really this very personalized time to to look at what it means for your family, what are your priorities as a family, and make a list and have conversations. One of the conversations I had with my daughter when she decided she wanted to finally homeschool... my son and I have been homeschooling for a couple years and she's always had the choice to join us but she's chosen school and she loved the school she was at. When she did decide to start homeschooling, I was like, "Okay, well, so what's important to you, sweetie? What are you interested in? What do you want to do?" And she said, "I want to study history." And I thought, "Great, okay." So these are important conversations because they can then help us create this unique path. As a parent, I would also ask, what's working ? What is working for your child at school? What is working with any of the extracurriculars that they're doing? What is working, and what's not working? And what's not working can be, they just can't be on Zoom for eight hours straight or six hours straight, or what's not working is their organizational skills. And so then we start to piece together this... it's not a puzzle because we don't know what it's going to look like in the end. I'd say it's a quilt. We start to piece together these these pieces of a beautiful quilt that we don't know what's going to look like the shape or size of all these pieces, but they're all important, and so you start to organize them. One of the main things... I come from a strength-based background , strength, faith, talent-focused. It's important. And so when does your child shine? Dr. Susan Baum, I can remember sitting, having a one-on-one conversation with her, and she she looked at me and she said, "You know, it comes down to when does that child shine, you know?" And I think that's wonderful, and I want all of my parents and everybody that I work with to think hard on that and identify it. You know, I can remember thinking, my son, I didn't see him shine very much first and second grade, personally or academically. He was struggling, it was hard, but when he was out on the soccer field, he was just lit up, beautiful, happy. I mean, he was in a good place. So how do I build off of that as a mom? How do I build off of that as somebody hoping to find a larger educational experience on the things that make him shine? I also started to realize math made him shine. I didn't know that, and so we started having conversations. As a parent though, don't forget what makes you  shine and take time to sit with that question and flesh it out and analyze it for yourself because you don't want to be doing something for several hours a day that doesn't work for you either. So for me, workbooks work every now and then, but we're good conversation hackers. We like to talk, and I shine when I have time to research before I sit down and then time to research together. And so I shine with time, I shine with research, and so finding those things out because that's necessary then for me to start planning this educational journey for our family. So these are some questions that I would start with. Then the next thing I ask everybody to kind of keep in mind is that look at this picture and think about what this picture means to you. What does it mean to you? Redefining the Educational Path What does it mean to you in general and what does it mean to you in the idea of possibly education or in your child's well-being? I thought this was a great visual because a lot of times we forget, and especially in our asynchronous, twice-exceptional children's journeys. I've been working with gifted children for decades now, and I'm working on my doctorate in twice-exceptional cognitive diversity and education, and these asynchronicities play a big role in our journey and in our child's journey. When that leap is too big, it can stop the whole process, but what could that mean? So looking at this, for me I see that in some cases we have benchmarks, achievements, timelines, and competition, and it can be overwhelming to the point where it's hard to get started on that ladder. It's hard to get started on that aspect. But I want everybody to know that when we recreate a personal journey, we get to start to fill in those extra rungs with what we need or what our child needs. So, you know what, maybe in the beginning we need a couple more extra rungs in our path for social-emotional skills, and we need a couple extra maybe just throw in one for OT, and then we definitely need some executive functioning rungs in there too because we need a little extra of that. And so while other schools or environments might have set benchmarks, set achievements, this personalized path or whatever path you choose through these paths, through this palette of many colors, you can start to put in that little extra rung here and there by being aware of it and knowing that you have choices. So another thing I point out to parents is it's not that your child's not going to make those benchmarks or they're going to miss those benchmarks; we know as parents of twice-exceptional students that it might be possible that they reach that benchmark at the same time or they might just blow past that, but they might need more time to get to another one. It's that asynchronous experience where we need to put in place a little bit extra, but my child, their math benchmarks, he just blew those out of the water. So one of his benchmarks on a strength base is to get him a mentor. My daughter, we're going to get her a tutor, so it's all of these different ideas even within the same home of understanding. We'll get to those benchmarks. We will probably do it in a different timeline and with different steps, and that's okay. So the more you're willing to let go on this and kind of let it be, you'll kind of see it come together. Designing an Elementary School Path Based on some of the feedback, let's create a personalized path for an elementary student who is 2E and dyslexic. They are a big-picture thinker, they love math, have high anxiety, and this is in a social and in-school setting. So after going through some of those questions, I would start to put together some ideas, and so maybe one of the things I've seen in the past, and this worked well for us as we were going through our elementary, is I've heard that an hour per grade for direct and for direct instruction up until like third or fourth grade is about right. So as a first grader, you might want to be doing direct instruction with your first grader for only one hour. The rest of the day is playing and exploring and going and doing, which is kind of difficult but right now but it still can be done, trust me, it still can be done. And so it's that idea that you don't have to over-instruct; you keep in mind that if you're transitioning into a non-traditional path, that can mean non-traditional hours. As a teacher, I used to say you know probably 60 to 70% of my classroom time is classroom management. It's helping kids come in and get settled down. It's making sure everybody's quiet. It's, "Does everybody have their book? Do they not?" So a lot of school time can be put in other places, and when you're one-on-one working with your child, you get more bang for your buck. It's more about quality versus quantity, so think about using your time differently and maybe even less time but to do different things. When I have an opportunity to sit down with my daughter and do one-on-one math instruction, she gets a lot quicker, but we also repeat it several more times. I think that you'll find that these quality times will work better than quantity, so that's helpful for some parents who might be working. You might be able to find an opportunity, and this is kind of for both grades, I know of a family who does a lot of their work in the evening. As homeschooling parents, they sit around the table and instead of doing homework, they do homeschool work. It's, you know, three or four hours in the evening of sitting around, making a plan, going over lessons, homeschooling after their busy day is done. And instead of sitting down to decipher what the school wants you to do, let's sit down and decipher what it is that we want to do and what can I get you going on tomorrow during your day and well, maybe your nanny's here or a couple classes planned for you. So there are some things we can do and think about using different times now. Because our student in this scenario has dyslexia, this is also a good opportunity. One of the things that I keep in mind and help parents understand is when you take out all of those school hours, you now have an opportunity to add in specialists and mentors. And if you have a public school... if you're paying public school or private school tuition, you've got this private school tuition now to use in other areas, and it's helpful then to be able to schedule these things during the day instead of after school when they're just tired and exhausted and going to a reading specialist is the last thing they want to do at 4:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. So these are things that we now schedule through the day or you could schedule throughout your day so that gets us moving on that specific neurodiversity that we can start to structure. And I was... I've seen improvements and I know that there's some experiences here with different teachers also who've had opportunities to work one-on-one or in small groups with children specifically focused on dyslexia and reading improvement either through Orton Gillingham or the Barton method. Once you get one-on-one or small group and really give that focused time as opposed to a classroom full of several different reading groups and public school interactions and things like that, once again, quality can really help your child move forward, and they might make bigger steps and strides with that kind of opportunity as opposed to figuring it out in the in the public school classroom. Now, these are all just possibilities in a fictitious child as we as we go forward. Moving beyond the page, I would suggest maybe that because if this child is gifted, "Moving Beyond the Page" does a really good job. It's a curriculum that has science and social studies intertwined, which works well. But if we have, let's say, auditory issues, there's a Cellus , which is a program where they have videos that your child watches a video, they listen to it, and then they can rewind it if they need to. They can get... they're asked questions and then they can rewind it to the lessons. So there's also other things that we could tailor as far as a curriculum that we would put in there. And then Outschool  is a great way to bring in and sprinkle in some interest if you have an interest or talent that you'd like to explore. Park groups and social pods , this is one I can talk into a little bit more if anybody's interested, but these are really good opportunities, and there's more and more of these cropping up and they become an important part of your child's exploratory world. And so whether it's a park group, which is really popular with elementary students, when we were homeschooling before the coronavirus, there were park groups for every single day, a different park, a different group completely. So it might be that the unschoolers were meeting on Mondays, and you know, more of a traditional was meeting or classicals were meeting on different... So there's these park groups that meet all around this area. This area is a wonderful place to take a non-traditional path, and so starting to find those and now finding out how we can work those in is a new and interesting way. A math mentor ... as I mentioned, my son loves math. He didn't need remediation and support as much as I wanted to find somebody who would inspire him and help him enjoy math and see math everywhere, and so taking that opportunity to build on those strengths and take that talent to the next level. We didn't have time to do that before, but now we've got some time, and I can find somebody special. And getting out and involving your child... now I know some kids are not interested in team sports. I have no desire to do a team sport. There are ways to get outside that don't involve team sports, and sometimes, like tennis , I found to be kind of fun for the younger elementary students because, especially those with anxiety, because you don't necessarily... you're not, you know, necessarily communicating one-on-one with somebody or trying to make it happen, but you can still make a social connection. You're still there with somebody or maybe a golf group or things like that too. These are outside, very social distance, and at this time we can't necessarily do that, but as we get closer and things start to open up, these are more comfortable ways too instead of being in a classroom. Getting out and getting some fresh air and maybe meeting people in a less anxiety-provoking way. Now these can be done through the PSA. This can be done because the parent decides they're going to do a small private school, they're going to make their own private school, they're going to make the choices. They're going to keep track of things, which is not that difficult; we can talk more on that if somebody wants to know. And this is your choice and how you want to do this, and maybe that's what they look for for elementary school, and that's what they're going to do. So maybe this is a PSA choice. Questions from the Audience: Time Management and Logistics Theresa : Yeah, I just asked a question that I'm curious about personally: this looks incredible, I wish my kids had this. How do you have the time to organize and manage this and get the kids to all these different things when you're working? Theresa : That's a great question, and for me and for a lot of a lot of the families that I know that want to do these things, you need a flexible work schedule or you need somebody that you can hire to kind of help you get your children there. So there are a couple ways to do... we also... I mean, I know of some homeschooling families where, you know, Bev takes them on Mondays and she has the pod with her and and she takes them to activities on Mondays, and then JoJo has them on Wednesdays and she takes them to different activities on Wednesdays. And so it's kind of figuring out how you're going to organize your time, which might be outside of work hours or it might be a flexible work hour. But it's also depending a lot on each other and building connections too and sharing the opportunities. So in the homeschooling community, you kind of start to find your pod and you work with each other and say, "Oh, we're all going to take this class next week, great, can you drive them? Sure, thank you!" You know, and you're like, "And then I'll make sure to teach the lit circle in a couple weeks," you know? So it can become this really give-and-take experience where even parents who are working long schedules can find a group that they fit in with and then give back how they can. One of the things I'd like to say, and this is this is it's a tough point, but think about how much time we as parents are investing right now in reactionary, possibly. How much are we trying to figure out how do we do this? How do we control that? How can I make this work? How can I make that? When you choose to take it on proactively, it becomes a little easier because now your your palette and your canvas get bigger. So there are possibilities, and depending on which one works for you, it can be done. There are lots of blogs out there too about parents who work full-time and how they do it. Theresa : Great, thank you. Okay, I'm I'd love to see the middle school one because I have a middle schooler. Theresa : Once wonderful. Okay, I can jump onto middle school if we'd like and then we can come back and circle back to each one if people have... just anybody else has a question, please share it in the chat if you'd like. Excellent. Designing a Middle School Path Okay, so let me jump onto middle school so we'll have some time then just to kind of flesh it out if there are specific questions, but I put together this middle school one and our student... let's see, we've got a middle school student who is twice-exceptional. He is autistic, he loves his deep dives, he's very detail-oriented, he loves history. Also has some anxiety, and that's okay. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about this child and how we can start. Middle school specifically was my course, so I love teaching middle school for years and years, especially gifted middle school students, and one of the things you hear a lot about in middle school is this is the opportunity and this is the time for kids to take chances and learn how to fail. Now, for some of our kids, that's really hard. Just being a perfectionist or failing in general can be painful, and so finding an opportunity in an environment and space for a child who doesn't like to fail and try new things to try a couple new things at their own pace, wherever that rung is going to fit in, is good. And so this gives us some flexibility to maybe try a gifted curriculum specifically for history and writing. If you are with the independent, the public school independence study, hold on to the IEP  and see how you can use that for standardized testings that you still may need to do through the through the public school that you're with. Find out how you can get into gifted curriculum so depending on which route you go, the one of the three that we talked about, you can still use an IEP and use it well. You might want to use a couple extra rungs, put those in there for executive functioning or, um, one of the things we talked about with my daughter was how could we start a study group, and she started a study group now, based around history, and it was kind of fun. Theater classes  might be enjoyable. This is a fun way for kids who don't even necessarily want to be in theater but to take an opportunity to get them trying on new communications styles in a way that, "Hey, this is acting," but actually it's a really good opportunity to try on different communication styles and listen and watch and see what makes things, you know, work out the way they do. So I think theater classes can be wonderful, even online ones are that's, I found some wonderful ones. Writers' workshops  might be interesting. A math tutor  might be helpful. So let's say this particular student needs more of a remediation in math, take that time, you know. This is a time where now you can go back and review and review and review because they might get that point, and it might take four weeks and then they get the next one in one week and then you get to move on to the next one because you I mean your time frame is your own, and so using a tutor to help you get through a subject that might be difficult for you to teach your child is another way to go. Kind of hand it off and say, "We really just do not communicate well over math. You know, I I love math and I do math and in my sleep, my child doesn't seem to understand, could you help them?" And it might be a wonderful way for you to hand it over. I had one of my families tell me that they handed it over to grandpa because grandpa did really well with it, and it was a wonderful opportunity actually for them to bond too, and so not only do you find your tutors somewhere maybe through one of the sites, but you can also find them, you know, in your family and create these whole other opportunities. And all of a sudden you have a math tutor and grandpa, and grandpa gets to know your kid better than they ever thought over a subject they enjoy together. So there's all these possibilities once again. Getting outdoors, hiking groups ... there are several hiking groups in the Bay Area that are focused on homeschoolers, but also several of them open up to just kids who are interested in hiking during the day, and it's social distance or they have a list of some of the wider paths and some of the easier paths to take, some of the less populated paths to take. And so once you start seeking this, you can get out there and start hiking maybe, and this could be another fun way to get some fresh air. If you choose a middle school route that you want to start to make your own, so PSA... I had a question in there, what about math? Whether it's high school or middle school, this is where you as a family would want to sit down and say, "Well, what are we doing math for? Why are we doing math?" Is it because we want to get our child into college to study something for math? Well then, maybe we need to put some more research sources behind it and look for more opportunities. Or is it just something right now that if we've got the basic bare minimum, let's stick with that and and let it be or skip it for a year because there's way too much trauma around it. As a PSA, you can choose that. You can choose to skip it for a year, especially if you're going with like, let's say, an independent study school and you've got an IEP. You can say, "Yep, they did a worksheet once a week, here's your worksheet," and let it be and don't continue to go back on it every single day if you don't need to. And that's something you can do, and I encourage families to find what they need, and we can talk a little bit more about that. Audience Questions: IEPs and Career Exploration Theresa : Lisa, before you move on to the high school, there were a couple of questions that had come in related to middle school, and the folks who submitted those are on the call tonight, and you kind of touched on this a little bit in terms of the IEP. And someone, Melissa, asked, "Once you leave public school for homeschool, do you lose your IEP for going back or can you save it?" Theresa : Well, I'm I... I don't know if you can save it quote-unquote, and if there's anybody on here who wants to speak specifically to that, I've never had a family who tried to save it, and that's only because their child changed dramatically while they did the two or three years of homeschooling, and so when they came back to the table, they used the former IEP or the previous IEP as a jumping-off point, but they weren't looking for the same things. And so in and every three years, it's not unusual for educational environments, depending on whether it's private or public, to want a re-evaluation also. So you just might be in a very different place that you're not necessarily going to need that. I haven't had a family that that switched around quite quick quite that quickly, so like one year to the next. So if anybody has experienced that, I would love to know because I think that would be good to know, but my experience is usually the child has changed, and so it's a reference, but it's not the same. Does that kind of help? And I'm not an expert in this field at all, so if anyone on the chat knows more, feel free to weigh in, but I I do know like when we moved our daughter from a public school to a private school, the public school had to follow up on her IEP for a certain amount of time even though she was not enrolled there. There was some obligation on your public school district's behalf to follow that through. At some point that stopped, and I don't really know why because we didn't pursue it, but you know, it is important to keep that documentation up if you think you want accommodations for standardized testing or if you want to, you know, you really want to make sure before your child goes to college if you're going to request college accommodations. So we can maybe talk about that more at the high school, but right. Theresa : Yeah, and another question that came in ahead of time about middle school is, you know, when you have a a child that has high curiosity, especially in a lot of these kids who are on the spectrum have just such great passion for for things, and you want to start thinking about exposing them to potential career paths to give them role models and stories and that sort of thing. And someone was asking, "How do you help introduce that at this age?" Theresa : And that's a great question. So I was just on a seminar call with Berlin Blankin at the University of Iowa, and they were talking about career paths and how middle school... and I do some career counseling and some career working with our twice-exceptional high school students also. Middle school is a great time to explore and and yes, I know a lot of students think they know what they want, and I'm not saying deny that to them, actually enjoy it. It was funny, we had one student who was very into baseball and memorized all of the stats and statistics, and it was like, "Oh my gosh, how can we do anything around baseball statistics because that's where this child was at. This is what they lived and breathed, that's what they did." And so as coaches and as mentors and as people working with him, we tried to figure out like what can we kind of show in through that lens. And public speaking through the lens of of baseball statistics, whether or not he would study different historical aspects and and things like that happening through baseball. So those kind of things, we kind of peppered through the lens of it, but no joke, this kid ended up somehow meeting a announcer for one of the baseball media things, and he was doing his thing, and he was talking about how excited he was about baseball statistics, and the announcer said, "You know what, I need to get you with my assistant because I'd love to hire you, you are a great resource." So even though this kid focused on it for for 10, 15 years, he can do that for the rest of his life now because he found his niche. Nobody ever thought he would or that it would not work out that way, but you never know. And so it's kind of trying to expose through the lens and then just letting it be. Theresa : Well, and another mom that has a middle schooler was noting that she already homeschools, and she'd like to know, "How do you keep your the child accountable for scheduling and time management and organization, especially because she has two other children and everyone has household things they have to do and and so, you know, in middle school you're trying to release some of that to the child more and more, so how do you kind of manage that in that environment?" Theresa : Yeah, and that will work differently for each family depending on how also how they kind of do the discipline and the in the way things work in their house. And so for one middle school family, I know that they, you know, don't get tech... they don't get tech until after all their school work is done, and then they're allowed to have however much tech time they want as long as they've done their work and it's been done well. I know other families that have a window of time where it's no tech, and this is what school is. So from 10 to 3, find something academic to do, and you know, accomplish what you need to during that time because after that you may have your free time and choose to do whatever with it. And so it depends on the dynamics of the family. I really recommend finding what works, and it's actually something that I'm studying right now is finding what works for the child, and this is an executive functioning thing. This is finding the right kind of momentum without overwhelming, without stressing. So often we don't we we think that the pressure is going to be helpful and it's not, and so knowing your child and creating a a plan with them is something I would, you know, suggest starting with and saying, "Okay, what can you do, bud? We're going to sit down, we're going to figure out, what do you want me to hold you accountable for because you know what I'm expecting? What are you expecting? And let's be reasonable," you know? And that's one reason why I used to say I loved teaching middle school because you could start to have those conversations with them and and they were open to it sometimes. So start the conversation, find out what works, and find out in your family, you know, how you're going to structure the give and take of of earning and not earning or maybe that's not a part of you. Theresa : Awesome, those were our middle school questions for now and then we may have some more in the general Q and A after we get through the private the high school. Theresa : Okay, all right, so let me go through the high school real quick. And we're doing pretty good on time. I hope that leaves us a good window. Designing a High School Path Okay, so our high school student, this is going to be our ADHD, creative, out-of-the-box thinker with humorous aspects. They love humor, they love science, specifically going towards animals and biology. Once again, high anxiety is not unusual, and especially working on executive functioning skills is going to be something that I would throw in this mix too. Most likely it's going to be helpful. High school is one where families start to think about whether or not there is a college path, whether or not they want one. I've worked with some, you know, homeschooling and unschooling families that it didn't matter if they wanted... if my child wants to go to college, great, we'll figure out how to get them there. And I have some that say, "You know what, we're actually homeschooling because we would like to start college at 14," and that can be done too. So there are there's a lot of flexibility here. Whether you are on a very intense academic track or just an academic track that follows the dreams of your child, your child might be ready for college courses at 14 or 15, you never know, but you can find out when you start to do these things also. Parents are asking, "Will the child be able to go into a college?" Yes, I highly recommend that you research each college that you're looking at beforehand  though. They will have information on what they need from you as a homeschooling parent, which, you know, what do they need as far as transcripts, what do they need as far as examples. And one of the things that you really have an opportunity to do if you choose to homeschool for whatever part of high school is to make your child's high school transcripts, but more along the lines of their application, really stand out. This is where you can find out how your child shines and then when they go to do the college application, they can talk about volunteering and why they chose to do it or whatever it is that made them, you know, unique and find it and use it for that college experience. So let's say we've got this out-of-the-box thinker who wants to do some volunteering. Maybe he chose to do a stand-up routine for a senior retirement home, and on his college entrance, he's going to talk about in his essay what he chose to do to entertain senior citizens during his comedy sketch comedy sketch. And so it can be anything, but think about how out of the box that would put that unique application, and it might be fun for the child also or the student also. This is, like I said, a really good time to think about portfolio development . If you have a child who is in the arts or creative in any way, I say exposure, exposure, exposure, but then let them create and find ways for them to hold on to that and it will all come together and and find the people to help it come together. There are companies and people out there that help students develop their own portfolio for college applications, and this can be done and actually can be fun when you're in high school and you don't have the high school day to go through. You might have the high school curriculum to go through, but you don't have the set time of day because you chose to homeschool, and now you're going to use this time to work on your portfolio pieces a little bit more. And so these are opportunities to keep track of those things. Definitely keep track of everything in high school; it will be important and it will be helpful. There are ways to keep track of those things. Another thing is one-on-one  so you might bring in some of the one-on-one schools. They have great lab facilities or you have a child that really excels in writing and you want them to sit with a writer and an instructor that does well. This can be an opportunity where, you know, it might not be your ability to keep up with them in the sciences, but we can take that and use that with a one-on-one school that can push them and then help them succeed and help manage the science aspect of it, and they have the facilities and the labs to do that too. So it's possible now to look into one-on-one aspects because a lot of them do high school; some do middle school. Dual enrollment  is where a child can a student, I shouldn't call them children anymore because they're headed into college, they can do courses at the local community college without enrolling in the community college and sometimes get dual enrollment credits for it. Now, this is very specific to each college, to each community college and to the courses, and so you're going to want to find out what transfers and what doesn't. So literally there are books out there, and I'll I'll have to take a picture of this; I forgot to write it in the notes, but there are books out there. There are books written on this. This one actually was updated in 2018, so it's not too old. The author of it also has a blog that she does. I know families that have used her suggestions. It's called "Homeschooling for College Credit." They've used her suggestions even if they don't homeschool because what she does is shows how you can incorporate for some of our gifted students, some of our exceptional students, they're ready for a really challenging course. How can you incorporate that and make sure that it counts going forward? So there's literally books written on this topic and good resources for that, so look into dual enrollment or college credits. This is where I would start to bring in career exploration . I work with a company that I use as a tool. It's a great tool called Greenwood, and I use it for some of my clients, some of my high school students. I think it's fantastic, and it's a tool where we look and it gives personality, it does the Myers-Briggs, it does all kinds of values, and then it gives you the top 100 careers based on your child's values and interests and personality and things like that, and then it gives the last 10 careers that they definitely shouldn't be in. Like I had one student that shouldn't be a mortician, but he should go into broadcasting, you know, and so it was kind of funny to sit down with this student and know what we knew from some of the career exploration you can start to do during this time and that you can make space for. What I do with my high schoolers that I set plans for is we we make a plan, we we will do this career exploration tool. We'll sit down and we'll say, "Okay, it looks like you're headed towards animation, computer graphic animation, specifically gaming. Are you interested in virtual reality? Let's find some people who do virtual reality gaming." We are in a spectacular area to start to look for these kind of connections, and this goes back to that little green icon I had about resources. Building on the idea of creating a personalized educational path, high school is the ideal time to focus on career exploration and mentorships. By taking an active role in shaping your child's education, you can foster their unique interests, build on their strengths, and prepare them for a future that aligns with their passions. Key Strategies for High School Career Exploration:  High school is the right time to introduce serious career exploration, generally after age 15. Tools like the Greenwood  platform can help identify career paths that match a student's values and personality. This allows them to "deep dive" into potential careers through mentorships, community college classes, or other hands-on experiences. For example, a student interested in gaming might connect with someone in virtual reality development to see if that path is a good fit. Customizing the Curriculum:  This personalized approach allows for flexibility in the academic schedule. For instance, a student with dysgraphia and high anxiety might take two years to complete Algebra I, if that's what they need to master the material without stress. This is possible when you're not restricted by the standard 50-minute class period. You can focus on quality over quantity  and ensure the student truly understands the material. Entrepreneurship:  Give students time to be "dreamers and thinkers" and to pursue their ideas. This can lead to incredible entrepreneurial ventures. Simple ideas, like a dog-walking business for a student who loves animals, can become a reality when they have the time to pursue them. Addressing Common Concerns Finding a Mentor Finding a mentor to manage all of the different aspects of a personalized education is a common challenge. You can hire an education consultant to help you organize a plan or work with a school that provides a framework for independent study. Additionally, you can find flexible executive functioning coaches  or private assistants to help with organization and scheduling. The Cost of Homeschooling Homeschooling doesn't have to break the bank. Many families work together in pods or co-ops to share the cost of resources or a private teacher. You can also hire college students to tutor or mentor at a much lower cost than a professional. It's about finding creative solutions and building a supportive community. Navigating Public School Transitions Families often wonder about the process of moving between homeschooling and public school. Leaving Public School:  When pulling a child from public school, especially due to trauma or high anxiety, give them time to "de-school" and heal. This period, often a year or two, allows for emotional and social growth that may not have been possible in a traditional setting. Returning to Public School:  It is possible to return to the public school system, but it's important to be prepared. Keep detailed records of your child's academic progress and experiences so you can present a comprehensive picture to the school. Hybrid Models:  Some independent public school programs, like Connections Academy, offer virtual learning options. While a true hybrid model of attending both public and homeschool may not be widely available, the landscape is changing, so it's worth contacting your local school district to discuss potential options. The California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE) The CHSPE  is an alternative to a traditional high school diploma for California homeschool students. It allows them to demonstrate their proficiency in high school subjects and can be a good option for students who are ready to move on. However, whether this is a better route than a GED depends on the student's post-high school goals, so it's important to research the specific requirements of any colleges or programs they are interested in. Maintaining a Positive Relationship A good relationship with your child is crucial for a successful homeschooling experience. Partnership:  It's essential to have your child's buy-in. Treat this journey as a partnership, discussing what each person needs to make it work. Flexible Schedule:  A flexible schedule can reduce friction. If a child works better in the evenings, then that's when you do school. Not a Punishment:  Avoid using homeschooling as a form of leverage or punishment. It should be a positive choice you make together to find a better educational fit. What are your main priorities for your child's high school years, and how do you think a personalized path could help you achieve them?

Join Special Education Advocates from Lamborn Advocacy to learn more about supports and services available for Twice-Exceptional students within public school districts. Learn about 504 plans and IEPs and how to push for eligibility even when the district mentions that your student is performing at grade level and is thus not eligible. Learn various support options available under a 504 or IEP. Learn how to work with teams to creatively extend learning beyond grade-level curriculum. And lastly, learn how Advocates can support your journey. Laura Kimpton and Heather Johanson, both with Lamborn Advocacy, have over 20 years of experience in the field of 504 and special education as Teachers and Advocates. Both have worked diligently over the years in securing eligibility and services for Twice-Exceptional clients. View the slides See the transcript here: Yael Valek: For that, you are welcome to ask questions in the chat at any time. Just know that we are recording this part of the session um up through the presentation, and then we will turn off recording for the Q&A at the end in case you want to ask more personal questions. Um, so welcome to the 2e um IEP 504 Support Evening hosted by REEL. My name is Yael Valek, and I'm co-founder of REEL along with Callie Turk. And for those of you who are new to REEL, welcome, and for those of you who have been part of our journey, we're excited to be together with you again. So we're going to start off by defining what is 2e. So 2e, or twice-exceptional children, have exceptional talents, and they experience learning differences such as autism spectrum, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, and other things that may interfere—interfere with their learning. And because they don't often fit into the common understanding of IEPs and 504s, they may not be failing their classes. They may be able to compensate. Their profiles are inconsistent and are confusing to educators, so it can be difficult for parents to obtain the services and supports that they need from school. Um, so if we can go to the next slide—okay, sorry, I'm having a technical difficulty. I don't know why it's—what am I doing? Sorry, sorry. This is why—okay, why does it not want to go to the next? Okay, let's try this again. Okay, there we go. Okay, so for those who don't know REEL, we um are working to build bridges for twice-exceptional learners between their educators and their parents. We raise awareness and understanding about two-week kids, and we provide resources to help make school a place where they can be successful. We create two resources and disseminate them to help parents advocate and to help educators understand how to best support chewy learners at school. You can see our website there—reelpalowalter.org. You can sign up to receive newsletters and be part of our support group where we ask each other questions. And if you go one more slide—if it cooperates—uh, REEL just published um this new toolkit about distance learning. We actually had an interview with a bunch of REEL parents uh about what worked and didn't work in distance learning, and we have now created a one-pager as well as some more detailed blog posts that you can share with teachers and educators at various schools. So feel free to share it widely, and we've gotten really good feedback that has been very helpful for them to understand how to support people with distance learning. So what I wanted to say: Parents of chewy kids often find themselves struggling to get the supports and services that their children need because tui children often mask their challenges using their strengths. But this masking can lead to anxiety, low self-esteem, and exhaustion as they work twice as hard to keep up in their challenge areas, and they don't get to showcase their strengths. So Laura Kimpton and Heather Johanson from Lamborn Advocacy are here tonight to speak about the various supports that might be relevant for two-week kids, how to qualify for them, as well as discussing what's happening now with distance learning support. Laura is passionate about helping children receive the education and services they need and deserve. She brings over 20 years of educational experience to the practice as a special education advocate, a special education program supervisor, a teacher for moderate to severe special day class, and an independent homeschool teacher and principal. Having worked on both sides of the table, she's developed strong working relationships with district employees and understands how to brainstorm and collaborate to achieve the best possible outcome for her clients. Heather has over 20 years of experience in K-12 education as a special education advocate, an executive functioning coach, an inclusion specialist, instructional leader of special education, educational specialist, reading specialist, and an elementary school teacher—so she's covered it all. Heather is passionate about creating environments where all learners thrive and continues to provide training in the areas of universal design for learning, dyslexia, inclusion, and supports for students with ADHD and executive functioning struggles. So welcome, Laura and Heather. Heater Johanson: I think we also have to just introduce our founder, Renee, who is also on the call um, who will be here to just kind of help along the way with some extra things. She's got great ideas in our brains. We—we dragged her in. She said she's technically retired, but we're not letting her all the way retire. Perfect. Laura Kimpton: All right, so we just put in an agenda for the meeting just so that you could kind of understand the flow. First, we're going to talk about supports that are available both through 504s and IEPs for 2e students and what curriculum enhancements are possible and what you can ask for in terms of working with the school district to help your child. We are also obviously going to touch on distance learning um because I think that is forefront right now to most parent concerns: What is um school going to look like for their students starting the new year? And then at the end, we'll have like a Q&A session um, so feel free to ask any questions if there's anything um that you would like either further explained or have additional questions about. Heather Johanson: Okay, so kind of our first slide is the presenting concern. So when you have a student with 2e, a lot of the times you hear, "Well, there's—as we talked about earlier—they're coping so well, but where are those kind of popping areas where you could probably bring that to a school team and say, 'Hey, these are the things that are really concerning'?" And they kind of fall under all these categories. So have those social skills—when you're seeing students have a hard time with pragmatics on the playground, during group work, really having a hard time interacting with peers, even with adults. Those emotional needs—anxiety, depression is a big one, and sometimes that usually comes in—that can come in with another piece. Like you might see they have real big executive functioning deficits—hard time staying organized. The homework's done, but it never quite makes it out of a backpack. But then there's that anxiety on top of it. That behavioral challenge piece—impulse control, that like, "Just I'm stuck, and I'm gonna refuse to do this," and you know that they have it in their brain, but for some reason, it's just not coming out in a classroom. And then academic challenges—I think the number one we see for a lot of our 2e kids is writing. Um, that is usually the area of most challenging, but you also see it through reading comprehension, math calculation, and that fluency of being able to do tasks really quickly. And attention—trouble taking notes and that distraction piece and that boredom. Laura, do you have anything to add to that one? Laura Kimpton: Okay, so we we started off just um—you might be in very different places along um the process in terms of getting supports for your child. So the first step that we would always do is to request a Student Study Team. It allows for the beginning of the documentation in terms of what you're agreeing upon in terms of accommodations and supports. It's not um as formal as a 504 or an IEP um, and it has to be worked on every year. Every time you have a new team, you work on an SST again. But it begins a process of the documentation that your child is having struggles. If the child is not able to reach the goals or is still having difficulties, then you would request an eligibility to a 504, and that is also including an assessment. Um, I think lots of people don't know that schools do have to do assessments for—they don't for 504. They can—they don't always. You can get a 504 without assessments um, but a 504 again is reviewed on an annual basis so that um all the team is aware and understanding of what accommodations and struggles that child is facing. And assessment may involve record review or socially distanced in-person assessment. So depending on which district um, some are just doing record reviews for assessments, and that would qualify a child for a 504, or they are doing assessments as well. Um, you don't necessarily need the 504 to have an IEP or two to request an IEP. Again, it depends on the individual struggles of that child. But an IEP is a legal document. It mandates that all staff implement accommodations and services. It also has specific goals, so that the two main differences between a fiber phone and IEP is an IEP has specific goals, and it has direct service, whereas a 504 can be um just accommodations. Caveat: You can also get services for a 504 but um. And so an IEP again is always reviewed on an annual basis. You have to re-qualify a child for an IEP every three years. It's called the tri-annual evaluation. And again, currently during distance learning, those assessments can involve either a records review—which the team would review previous assessments, any other information they have from the district, and to re-qualify that child—or they can opt to do assessments as well. Some are doing them online; some of them are doing socially distanced assessments. It really depends on the district and the team. But that's kind of the um the makeup of different levels of support that you can get in terms of different intensities—so SST to a 504 to an IEP. Renée Lamborn: All right, so I'm going to jump in. Um, Heather and Laura asked me to do the 504 section. So in addition to being a school psychologist and a director of special education, I was also a 504 coordinator in a district for eight years, so I have a lot of familiarity with 504. And I think the best way to explain 504—Section 504, which falls under the Office of Civil Rights—is to think about the continuum. On one side, we have a general education student with no supports. On the other end of the spectrum, we have a student whose disability and struggles have risen to the significant level of being eligible for an IEP, and that falls under IDEA as an IEP. And then in the middle, we have Section 504, and that is a general education support um. So it's run by a separate team than the IEP team. And 504 in general um allows accommodations for students um, but when we get to the last paragraph on the slide, I'll I'll talk a little more about what it's really meant to be. So the eligibility for a 504 is that the student must demonstrate a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. And there is a long provided list of major life activities, but I've included the learning, concentration, reading, thinking, communicating—that sort of apply more to a public school setting because 504 is broad. It covers wheelchair access, elevators, everything else. But in the public school system, these are the major life activities that typically come up. Um, quite a few years ago, they changed the eligibility um criteria for 504 so that it would be a much wider net and it would capture more individuals, not less. So 504 has a very wide, fairly loose eligibility compared to what is required under special education to receive an IEP. Number two and number three: You can have a record of such impairment. So maybe you have um an outside private diagnosis of ADHD. Or you can be regarded as having such an impairment. So maybe a family chooses not to pursue a formal diagnosis of autism, ADHD, a learning disability, but the school views you as if you have some level of disability. Section 504 requires that the districts provide a free and appropriate public education who meet that eligibility criteria under Section 504. And this last paragraph—if you can put a big star next to it—this is the piece that even school district staff don't understand. And that is that a student who's eligible for a 504 plan, they're entitled to receive regular or special education services and supports. So school districts will tell you um over and over and over that a 504 plan only includes accommodations. And we're going to give you some examples later on. But the the truth of the matter is that students with a 504 plan can also receive special education services. So when I think about my clients, I've had 504 students receive occupational therapy support or speech and language support to address social skills. School districts again will argue that it's just accommodations, and I always show up at meetings with that bottom paragraph to really help enlighten teams that those students really are [Music] are eligible to receive more. And the main difference between the 504 and the IEP is that there's no funding behind a 504 plan. So districts are reluctant to give out direct services um, and if a student needs a lot of direct services, you can bet they're going to move towards that IEP eligibility piece. And on the next slide um, we we included this one. This is another um sort of section that we print and bring to meetings with us, and it's really pertinent to 2e students. Um, we hear a million times—both for 504 and for the IEP—that a student who's passing, who's getting good grades, who's got all C's, who's got all A's cannot possibly be eligible for 504 or an IEP. And I think what is really critical to remember is that it's not about 504 and even an IEP—they're not necessarily just about academics. They're also about social, emotional, and behavioral realm. And the 504 plan doesn't care at all. I think all three of us in the practice have students with straight A's who also have 504 plans because their disability—whatever it is—is impacting one of those major life activities. And I forgot to mention on the last side—the last slide—that even if your student doesn't meet one of those listed major life activities, you just write it in. The lovely thing about 504 is there is another line that says "other," and so we write in things like executive functioning, uh, processing speed—whatever you can dream up that can be a major life activity um—and your student could be eligible for the 504. Um, so this is another one to print out and bring with you. And then on the next slide, what we did is we gathered together some of the general 504 accommodations that all three of us um work hard to get on a 504 plan for students. And it really has to do a lot with both challenging the tui student, minimizing repetitive tasks, and then working with some of that—some of those social, emotional, behavioral sections. So um, you'll see a daily workflow list, check-in/checkout system, lots of executive functioning support. We use technology for a lot of writing assignments, including writing software, writing templates—lots of different things to help that writing process. Behaviorally, we really work with teachers and teams around avoiding those power struggles that can come up um—where can a child go to privately calm down, things like that. During group work, we do a lot of support where the teacher and/or another adult in the class is really facilitating the group that the tui student is part of if that's a real struggle. We do a lot of work with teams around challenging activities and tasks. So many of our t2e students can whip through an assignment—they're done in three minutes—and then there's another 20 minutes left to work on the assignment. So we set up a whole basket or online access to more challenging activities for them. Um, and then we often allow different ways for them to move throughout the classroom—stand while they're working, whatever they need in terms of movement. So that's kind of a broad overview of a lot of the accommodations we typically will do for two students. Laura Kimpton: Um, so this—we're beginning now to move away from the 504s and talk more about IEPs. There are 13 different eligibility criterias for for a student to qualify for an IEP. Um, when it comes to twice-exceptional students, these are the five that we see most often. Now that doesn't mean we don't see the other ones at all, but SLD is specific learning disability, and that really is what—if a child has dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia—that is what is the term used by districts. It's just is considered a specific learning disability. There's also OHI, which can be ADHD, it can be anxiety, it can be depression—it's any other health impairment that is impacting that student's ability to access the curriculum. Autism—again, um, you know, that that might be impacting them with pragmatic language; it might be impacting them with communication, um, executive function. Um, so that's another eligibility criteria. Speech language impairment—um, again, that's that could also be the pragmatic language. It doesn't necessarily mean just articulation; it could be pragmatic language—some of those social language skills that that child might be lacking, which does impede their ability to learn in the classroom. And then emotional disturbance, which is a—this can be the anxiety and disturb—and depression is normally more at a heightened level by the time that it gets to emotional disturbance um, but that would also mean that you would ask for a lot of other services in terms of counseling, mental health issues as well. So those are the five most common um eligibility criterias that we see for for two-week students. Renée Lamborn: And Laura, really quickly, if I can just jump into—I think the different—the main difference between the 504 and the IEP is the degree of the challenge um—how significant is the disability impacting the child's ability to access their education. So I think that really helps distinguish the two. Heather Johanson: So this next slide kind of says, "Okay, well, you—the district—you've gone through that process, the assessment process, and yes, they do qualify. So what would that even look like for for your student?" So one, they would have all those accommodations that we talked about earlier, and then there would be direct services. And here's sort of a list of direct services you could potentially expect on an IEP. So counseling services—a lot of the times these are called educationally related mental health services or services, but they would have a therapist on campus. They would check in with um speech and language. A lot of times this is around like social skills, pragmatic language. Some schools even have social cog programs where they're really working on those specific social skills that students need to really be successful. Behavioral support—and this would be you know having a behavior plan in place for that kid that's really struggling for just that um overall ability to stay in a classroom or like regulate in a classroom. Occupational therapy—you would usually see this a little bit more for the younger guys, but I have seen it for the high school guys. Kind of remember on that finding gross motor. Assistive tech—assistive technology is a really big piece, obviously more so than ever now um, but there's some amazing programs out there that can really help take that load off students and help them be very successful. Um, executive functioning supports—it's kind of like, as we know, that prefrontal cortex on their—our neurotypical brain takes a long time to grow in. But then when we're dealing with a student that has those kind of executive functioning deficits, they're really almost sometimes two years behind, and they're being asked to you know seven to six different operating systems, and that's really tough. So having somebody to support them with that. And then the good old specialized academic instruction—or SAI as it's called in the IEP world—and this is where you get that pinpointed support on math, reading, and writing. Laura Kimpton: Um, so this slide is really um—it kind of encapsulates some of the things that we have been able to request through IEPs for 2e students. Um, you know, lots of times as well—just you know my the students getting C's or B's in the class, so it seems to be fine. Um, I've also worked with lots of students who do the bare minimum because they're just so bored at school. Um, the curriculum isn't enthralling or difficult for them, so they just get very bored. So these are some of the things that we have been able to get districts to do. One of them is obviously participation in the district gifted program. The other one is really to differentiate the instruction. Again, an IEP is supposed to be an individualized education plan, so a lot of this is accommodating the content, the product, the learning environment—thinking of different ways for that student to show knowledge. So maybe rather than doing 25 math problems, they can create something. They they can create a model; they could do something that they find more intrinsically interesting than just pen-on-paper work. So that leads into project-based learning, where they can take their knowledge and demonstrate it in other ways. Sometimes just getting them intrigued and learning about something and excited about being able to do it in a different way is enough to to keep their interest. Also that for them to work on high-grade-level curriculum. Again, this doesn't have to be cross-curriculum. So let's say we have a student who is just exceptional at math—we can get it so that student can work at a higher grade level for math, maybe not necessarily for English or reading, but just to continually keep their interest peaked with school. Again, placement in higher-level grades. Um, I know it sounds a lot like the curriculum, but I've had students who—let's say they've been in the middle school—they actually go to the high school for math classes or for different classes um to allow them that participation in the class with still general education peers, but they might be older, but they're at their level intellectually. So it's just stimulating their learning. Um, it's making them feel like they can have that conversation with peers or be older just to stimulate their intellectual growth as well. Um, test out a class prerequisite. So this is really more for the high school students where we've run into a lot where the districts say, "Before they can take Algebra 2 or calculus, they have to do these these other classes." And I've worked with district to say, "Give them a—give them a test—whether it be the final from last year or something—to let them demonstrate that they have the foundational knowledge that they need in order to be successful in this class." Um, again, this is—it's kind of like advanced placement classes. Um, again, sometimes there's lots of prerequisites before you can take AP classes, but we have worked with with districts to allow tui students in those classes as well. As choice of topics—sometimes students, tui students, really have an interest in a specific topic um to the point where they probably know more than some of the people that are teaching those classes. Um, but to really allow them the independence to hone in on that knowledge and to hone in on those skills and again to do something that is of interest to them. Um, and rather than making them do um you know what might be basic knowledge in terms of in terms of their area of expertise, but to really be able to develop that knowledge and to develop that interest so that they're not getting bored and they're not losing their interest in learning. Heather Johanson: Okay, so moving on to where we are right now in distance learning. I know we're kind of all in this one together. Um, so basically how it's where we are right now: So if your county is on the watch list, you're going to start with this district learning, and if you're in the Bay Area, we're all on that watch list. Once we're off for 14 consecutive days, school can start offering to bring back students. So just to make it um—so that's kind of like the next step. Um, it will close—like, so let's say everybody's back, and that there starts to be cases are popping up. When at least five percent of the student body and staff are diagnosed with coping, everything closes down for 14 days. Um, and basically if a quarter of a school has been like been—has the that diagnosis, then the basically the district will shut for two weeks. Those pieces—I think is something to keep in the back your mind just as I'm sitting in IEPs and listening to all these pieces and talking to different directors. I think it's really those first two pieces where we need to focus right now is the idea that for the for the foreseeable future, we are going to be distance learning. Um, so kind of we got a little dicey in March. We weren't sure what was going to happen with IDEA and our current um presidential group up there. Um, Betsy Devos was kind of going back and forth about, "Should we just put IDEA on pause during this time?" And luckily, that did not happen. IDEA is there; it's not on pi—on pause. And FAPE is still free and appropriate public education, and the LRE is still very much a part of what drives 504 and IEP at this point. So that is still there. Here's what—what does that mean though? What does that actually mean? So basically, student—schools still need to provide the services that are provided in a 504—accommodations and services that are provided in a five and four—to the best of their ability. There's that statement right—"best of their ability." What does that exactly mean? That is not a concrete term, and it's quite gray. But kind of like basically what's guiding us is the best interest for individual students—not the system—should guide how this goes. Um, parents and recipients of services must be informed of any changes that are going on. I'm sure some of you that have IEPs for your students right now have gotten something called a PWN or prior written notice. It kind of tells you, "Hey, we're distance learning. Here's what you can expect." And services that were typically in person now need to be provided through alternative methods. So here's the word—I think—requiring creative and innovative approaches. And we're going to talk a little bit more about creative and innovative approaches in distance learning and what that's going to mean. So going forward, it's kind of like, "What can I do?" Laura Kimpton: So we kind of made this as a visual of of how we're working with districts. Um, again, this is all new; there's no real solid road maps. Um, so a lot of it is collaborating with the teams, communicating with them, and accommodating—asking for specific accommodations. We're going into each of these sections after this slide, but this really is a continuum of what we are doing right now in terms of working with districts. It's really the most positive way in order to get supports and help for your student. So um, this is in terms of collaborating with it with the staff. This is the first step is um if you don't have one, you can request an SST meeting, a 504 meeting, or an IEP team meeting. You can—if you don't have anything established formally for your child, you can request for any one of those things depending again on the the situation of your child. Um, I think it's really important to approach team with a positive and creative mind frame right now. I—I've um—I've been in a few situations when parents have contacted me because they've been in touch with the district and has demanded that their child go to school and have to be there physically. And I think part of the part of the misunderstanding is that districts are choosing to do this. And I think that's the important thing is—I most districts would much rather be teaching their students in a classroom right now. So um, I think to work with them in terms of, "What can we do during this time?" is better than making demands that they won't be able to fulfill. Um, I think again if it falls into the next one, which is retaining the insight into school district limitations—they can't open up a classroom for your child. Um, they're not allowed to. It's it's not as simple as just, "I'm going to have one teacher in school for that one child." That it's a—the system is much bigger than that. Um, I think it's important to try and quiet the emotions. We all feel the frustrations; we all feel the anxiety right now of not being able to live the life that we that we're used to or that your child has been used in terms of going to school. So I think it's really important for parents to think outside of the box. And what I always tell parents is, "You know your child better than anybody else, so be as inventive as you possibly can in terms of what you think really helps your child to learn." Um, so if it's that your child is good for 10 minutes and then needs a break, if it's that your child is much better with pen and paper than on the computer, if it's that your child is better in the afternoons than the morning—um, any any specifics that you can think of that somebody at the district might not know about your child is the ideal. And then I always say to gather the data regarding that. So take the data of your child—which I know seems very very foreign—um, but if you're having a really hard time getting your child to focus for a long time, take take data on how long your child is able to focus for—whether it's five minutes or eight minutes—so that you have some very hard data to share with the school team. I know as a parent myself, it's very easy for the emotional part—which is you know, "My daughter's very sad; she's very anxious"—but that hard data is is indisputable. Um, and that's really how you can get the additional supports that your child would need. Um, I kind of cover the next one in terms of the creative solutions. So specific accommodations your child needs—let them know prior to the meeting. Again, this is uncharted territory. Districts and case managers and teachers and and service providers have never been in this position either, so give them that information of what you're going to ask for before the meeting so that they can discuss it and so that they can try and think of ways to make it work for your child. Um, because it's the beginning of the year, I always always recommend to parents that if your child is old enough, have your child write a letter. If not, you write for a letter on your child's behalf—really and including a picture—really explaining to them who your child is. Um, you know, what their strengths are, what their interests are, what their challenges are. It's really difficult—and having been a teacher myself—you get an IEP; you get a piece of paper that's supposed to explain a child to you, and it's it it doesn't do your child justice. So if you can just before the beginning of the school year, you know, send teachers the latter explaining your child as you know them and say, "You know, since distance learning in the spring, this is what I have learned. This is what I have noticed. This is what works; this is what doesn't." Um, you'll find that teachers are very very receptive to that information. Um, and then the next one is just if you feel like you're not being heard, if you feel like your requests for your child aren't being listened to, follow the hierarchical chain of command. I have lots of parents who jump straight to calling the superintendent or calling this the director of special education, and I think that's really difficult for a team. They they really want to have a chance to do well and to do right, and if they're not, follow that hierarchical chain of command—which is the teacher. At the high school level, it can be the um the lead teacher for that department, then the principal, a program specialist, director of special education. You know, your every district has a little bit of a different um chain of command, but follow that as far as you need to. Um, but just don't jump to the highest level. I think that that that just naturally puts human beings on the defensive, which is not how you want to come across to a team. It just doesn't build the best relationships right from the beginning. Um, so those are just some of our methods that we use for working with districts. Um, I'm not saying that all of this works all the time, but this is just kind of a good good starting point for for starting the conversation. Heather Johanson: And I just had a little brain wave or sitting there in this very digital world we're living in—if your kid hates the idea of writing—writing anything makes them unhappy even to watch you write it—maybe have them do a little video of themselves and then send that along to your to your teacher for that year—especially if they're younger. I mean, that would give them such a nice idea of who this kiddo is and really having them talk about—when they hear when a teacher hears from a student, "This is what's really hard for me, and this is how you can help me"—boom. As I used to tell my high school students, "We teachers are suckers. The second you get a little vulnerable with us and tell us what you need, we're just we're gonna be putting in your hands." And that's a pretty good way to go about doing it. Um, okay, so for distance learning—our new reality—what are some ways we can work and give some accommodations? So kind of that that top one is for for our kids with social skills challenges. Um, that kind of online—like if they do have an IEP, getting though getting for sure getting into a group—I think is really key. So really pushing those pragmatic social groups would be great. Targeted skills during the distance learning—having that speech and language pathologist kind of really working with those general education teachers, getting that data back—what's hard? Has it been hard for them to go out into those group chats? Is a stuff a social story I should be writing with them so they can understand the process of this? Um, and then also just that speech and language pathologist really working with you as a family and giving you some tips on ways that you can support your student while we're away. Laura Kimpton: In terms of if your child has a specific learning disability, um, technology really helps. There's so much technology out there in terms of text predictive software, speech predictive software. There are some students who don't want to do anything on technology, and so you can ask for accommodations regarding that. Again, they accommodated over differentiated assignments—they don't necessarily have to do 25 of the same math problems if they can show demonstrate mastery after doing 5 or 10. That's all they need to do. Again, screen-free or email work. I have quite a few clients who really don't do well on on the computer, so the teachers are dropping off their packets at the house on Monday and then picking them up on Friday so that they don't have to be on on a screen all day. And then a little bit like I talked about before, which is um adjusting the time. Again, know know when your child works best, when they don't. Um, you know, again, just anything that you can think of that help your child, you can ask for. Heather Johanson And then the good old executive functioning one. Um, this one is—take executive functioning skills and let's just make it real tough, and that's kind of online learning for the for a lot of these kids. Um, one thing that's really been helping a lot of my clients is getting that check-in and checkout at the end of the day. And that can be with their case manager; that can be with an aide; that can be with kind of a person that's really going to help them plan their day, get in a nice linear fashion on a list, and then they have that person kind of checking in out with them at the end of the day—like, "How to go?" And then troubleshooting, doing that metacognition—like, "What got in the way? How can we change that for tomorrow?" And just having somebody help them make that daily workflow list and help them advocate for themselves with those teachers too—saying, "Hey, the writing assignment where I'm supposed to read that 20 pages and then write this paragraph—that's going to be really tough for me. Could I listen to it and then could I've used bullet points so you know what I'm thinking?" Um, and then just breaking those assignments into smaller chunks. So kind of every teacher is kind of in a different place, and they're learning how to use this technology, learning how to deliver instruction. Like it just—I actually had coffee with a good friend of mine. We used to co-teach world history together, and we were both sort of lamenting the loss of that classroom. Like, he is brilliant in a classroom, right? He's like, "Because he just feeds off his kids." He's like, "I just don't even know what to do. These kids are so frustrated, and I had no idea." So this—they're losing so much of that queuing they can get when they have those kids in a classroom. So just kind of once again, that communication piece is really really important. They're not going to pick up on things in exactly the same way because their environment is also totally different. So just kind of making sure that the advocacy piece for you as parents—I know it's tough—but just saying, "Hey, they're really struggling to get this done. We're going to break this into smaller pieces. Friday probably won't work, but we could probably have it into you by Wednesday"—type of thing. Laura Kimpton: If your students with ADHD, one of the things that does help is streamlined assignments in terms of making it very specific what's due when. Um, and rather than it—it flows into a little bit what was said before in terms of breaking assignments into smaller chunks. Um, you know, if they're getting an assignment that it just seems so arduous that they can't focus on it, just break it into specific assignments. Um, again, back what I was saying before with the frequent breaks. Students with attentional difficulties—this is tough learning at home for them. Um, you know, there's not as much um natural breaks. They don't get to go and run off on the playground with their friends and run around for half an hour, so make sure that in their schedule is our breaks. Um, and whether it's they can go for a walk around the neighborhood or they do 10 push-ups just to get that physical energy exerted. Um, again, the ability to move around. I I know that some teachers are much more flexible with this, but again, it is something that if your child needs, they can actually absolutely access. Um, they don't have to be sitting down; they don't have to have two feet on the floor; they don't have to be facing forward. They can move as they need to. Um, and again, if your child has any OT or sensory needs, you can request all those things. So if your child uses manipulatives at school or has a seat, any of those things, you can request from the school. They have a right to have those accommodations for them at home as well. Um, and then you know the flexible due dates. Um, this is on you—it's all going to be different. If your child isn't available to get everything done, um, again, with the higher grades, if they've got five assignments for five different classes due on the same time, let's break those up. Let's make it easier and more manageable for them. Heather Johanson: And then for the anxiety and depression piece—and I know this is rev and hard for a lot of kids right now—this is as hard as it's been on us moms, I think it's been very hard on them in a different way. And they will show it sometimes in a different way—kind of through that anxiety, depression, or some of that behavioral stuff underneath. But just some ideas that has worked that have worked for some of our clients is that camera. For kids with that anxiety piece, it is quite the push button, and I know every district kind of has a different policy right now—like, "Well, it can be off; it can't be off; it has to be on." That would be a really important accommodation for a student that really has a lot of anxiety about being on camera. Um, they're going to be doing a lot of breakout groups, so just—just like in a classroom, the idea is that the teachers being thoughtful about who is in this group—is are these people are going to be triggering? Are they going to be supportive? So that that same idea. Um, presentations will probably still be a part of our world, and just that good gold accommodation of one-on-one presentation with a teacher versus having to do it in front of a whole group. And then daily check-ins with a therapist or case manager—just, "How are you doing? Where's your levels? What coping mechanisms are we using?" All of that kind of stuff would be really important right now. Laura Kimpton: And then you know regarding behavior, I think that's one of the areas where there has been such a change because now the behavior is in the home. So rather than the school having to accommodate or help support the behaviors that the student demonstrates in a school environment, they're now having to adjust that for home learning. So really make sure that your behaviorist is involved in terms of what any of the challenges that you're facing in the home. Um, I think to have the behavior is to even push into some of the classes so that they can see what the difficulties are for your child online. Um, and then for the behaviors to work with you. Um, so for them to give you some ideas of of what you can do um to incentivize a program for them where if they work for this, they get this. And most of the time, students are working for things like you know time more than computers or movie time or anything that your child likes can be used as an incentive. Um, but to really call in that behavior support and now that they're in the home um and to really if your child has a BIP or a behavior plan to really start fine-tuning that to meet the needs in the home environment. Heather Johanson: That's been my number one meeting these last couple weeks is my the students that have that BIP and kind of redefining it for that home environment and what supports they can bring in and how they can help structure all that. Okay, group—there we go. You're up. Renée Lampton: So Yael and Kelly asked us to add a slide about sort of how—how do families know when they need to rise to the level of hiring an advocate? Um, and you know, we really support families at every step. We have families come to us and say, "I'd like to get a 504 plan. I'd like to get accommodations in place, and help me line that up so I have the best shot." We have—we also on the other end—I have failed at every single attempt I've made; now I need you to step in and and help advocate for my child. Um, the word "advocate" often has some pretty negative connotations. Um, some advocates are viewed as confrontational and angry and rude. Um, in in our practice, we are absolutely none of those things. Um, we have really great positive working relationships with team based on the amount of amount of experience that we've all had in the school districts. Um, we offer—in particular, and I think other advocates do as well—both behind-the-scenes support. We can set you up; we can give you the strongest argument; we can help you line up data, and then you go into the meeting on your own. And then we have other families who say, "You know, I'm a mom; I'm too emotional; I can't do it. Can you come with me?" And then we will sit in that meeting with you and work with the team um to to bring about some positive changes. Um, if you're thinking about hiring an advocate, there are no licenses; there are no requirements at all for advocates. So any person out there can hang a shingle and call themselves an advocate. So what we always encourage families to do is think about um does the advocate—has the advocate actually worked in the public school system so that they know the breadth and depth of what's available and how to work with teams and access those supports and services? A number of years working as an advocate—again, experience within the public school. And then also, it's really really critical to think about personality and style. What kind of person do you want to bring into a meeting with you to sit at that table to work with your team? Um, so I think those are the highlights that that we think about. Heather Johanson: So now it's your turn. We've done a lot of talking at all of you with a lot of information. Um, so questions? Yael Valek: I think we're gonna turn off the recording at this point so that people can ask personal questions.