Individual Learning Plans
It’s a map that lays out the program of special education instruction, supports, and services kids need to make progress and succeed in school.
What is an individual learning plan?
Provide schools with resources to help provide teaching and learning programs for students with language disorders.
What is a Language Support Program?
This group matches parents with a buddy parent who has a child with the same disability, allowing each parent or family to have a contact to share information with and receive emotional support from.
What is Parent to Parent USA?
A special education center-based school
that provides service to all nine districts within Kalamazoo County. Students who attend the WoodsEdge Learning Center are between the ages of 3 and 26 years of age.
What is the Woods Edge Learning Center?
The Individualized Education Program (IEP) form that is used to create a comprehensive, individualized education program for a student with a disability.
What forms are needed when applying for support services?
-A full evaluation that shows your child’s strengths and weaknesses. The results allow you and the school to create a program of services and supports tailored to meet your child’s needs.
-Individualized instruction that focuses on improving specific skills.
-Accommodations, like extended time on tests, or related services, like speech-language therapy.
-Assistive technology (AT) is another type of support that can be part of an IEP. Learn about AT that can help kids with reading, writing, and math.
-Certain legal protections, it allows parents to be involved in decisions that impact their child’s education and learning goals.
What are the benefits of an IEP?
Speech-language pathologists (sometimes called speech therapists) assess, diagnose, treat, and help to prevent disorders related to speech, language, cognitive-communication, voice, swallowing, and fluency.
What is a Speech Language Pathologist?
A group led by young citizens, that works to build strength and "break isolation" among people with disabilities between the ages of 16 and 28. With a goal of creating a culture full of inclusion, sparking new ideas about how to measure success and ability and supporting youth with disabilities in leadership roles.
What is the National Youth Leadership Network?
ASK offers opportunities for youth with emotional, behavioral, and mood disorders to be empowered to impact youth services locally, within the state of Michigan, and nationally through it's Calling All Youth M.O.V.E. program. This service is available to high school aged youth in Kalamazoo County who want to speak up and be heard by adults, teachers, governmental agencies, therapists, counselors, juvenile justice, schools, and other authority figures in their life.
What is ASK Family Services?
-The Prior Written Notice (PWN): informs parents of each step of the special education process (proposed or refused)
-Meeting Notice: states when, where, and who will be at the meeting.
-Final Notice of Recommendation (FNR): a formal offer of special education services sent after an IEP Meet.
What notices are needed when applying for support services?
Ask to have your child evaluated by the school, for free. You can also pay for a private evaluation.
How can you start an IEP?
Occupational therapists help individuals improve their ability to perform tasks in living and working environments. In an educational setting, they work with students with cognitive, physical, developmental, or emotional disabilities.
What is an occupational therapist?
The M.O.R.G.A.N. Project stands for Making Opportunities Reality Granting Assistance Nationwide. This group, established by parents Robert and Kristen Malfara, supports families in their journey of raising a special needs child, be that child biological, adopted or within the foster care system.
What is the M.O.R.G.A.N Project?
ECSE at West Campus is a special education center-based school that provides service to all nine districts within Kalamazoo County. Students who attend West Campus are between the ages of three and five. The intervention program is designed to support children with significant language, learning and behavior difficulties in preparation for a Kindergarten experience.
What is ECSE West Campus?
-Classroom observation that describes how the student functions in school
-Results of any specific intervention or at-risk service the student received in school
-Report cards and samples of student work
-Progress notes from school therapists, teachers, and private providers (therapists, psychiatrists, social workers, tutors)
-Copies of the child’s annual physical exam and hearing and vision tests obtained by parents
-A written statement from a doctor, including the diagnoses and any symptoms of the diagnoses or medical conditions that impact on a child’s participation in school
What miscellaneous paperwork is needed to apply for support services?
1. Specifiic learning disabilty
2. Health impairment
3. Autism spectrum disorder
4. Emotional Disturbance
5. Speech or language impairment
6. Visual impairment
7. Deafness
8. Ortopedic impairment
9. Intellectual disability
10. Tramatic brain injury
What are ten of the conditions covered under IDEA?
Educational, vocational, and school counselors provide individuals and groups with career and educational counseling. They assist students of all levels, from elementary school to postsecondary education, and advocate for students by working with organizations to promote the academic, career, personal, and social development of children and youth.
What is a School Counselor?
This is the largest international professional organization dedicated to improving the educational success of children with disabilities.
What is the council for exceptional children?
NovaCare Rehabilitation provides an exceptional patient care experience that promotes healing and recovery in a compassionate environment.
What is NovaCare Kids Pediatric Therapy?
-Educational Diagnostician or School Psychologist.
-Special Educators and General Educators.
-Parent(s) or Legal Guardian(s)
-Related Service Providers (Physical Therapist, Occupational Therapist, Audiologist, Orientation and Mobility Specialist, etc.)
-Medical Doctors (including psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, and optometrists.)
What are some examples of professionals that can act as referrals to support services?
There are no IEPs in college or in the workforce. IEPs are part of a special education law (IDEA) that only applies until your child exits high school. But part of having an IEP is preparing for life after high school. This formal process of transition planning begins by the time your child is 16. And many schools start it before then.
The process may not remove all of the worries about the future. But it helps your child chart a path based on interests and strengths. And it creates IEP goals and provides services to help your child get there.
How do you transition out of an IEP?
A practitioner or specialist evaluates students with disabilities in order to help them become more independent and productive with the use of appropriate assistive or adaptive technology.
NICHCY provides information on disabilities in children and teens, programs and services for special needs children (including infants) and research-based information on effective practices for children with disabilities.
What is the National Dissemination Center for Children With Disabilities?
Valley Center School (VCS) is a collaborative special education program between local school districts and Kalamazoo. VCS serves students ages 8 to 18, with emotional or unique behavioral needs. As a center-based special education program, VCS offers a smaller, structured educational setting. As an alternative educational setting, VCS offers a general education curriculum.
What is the Valley Center?
1. Legal papers
2. Letter of intent
3. Written Instructions
4. Advanced healthcare and financial directives
5. Copies of any trust
6. A list of major assets and where they're kept
7. Guardianship papers
8. Name of government agencies worked with
9. List of government benefits used
10. Tax returns, and schooling paperwork
What are the ten must-have documents for any parent with a child with a disability?