Transcript E2A Podcast Episode 4: The Power of Student Voice in the IEP Process part 2 of 5: Students Aged 14-22

Transcript (this has been edited for formatting for ease of reading)

Michelle: hello hello welcome back to another episode to the empowered to advocate podcast we are going to head into part two of our five parts series about student voice today very excited to talk about the age group that were legally supposed to be really focusing on for student voice in there a lot of detail to dig in here but we're going to try to do this in twenty minutes or less for you today so actually turned this over to dana marie today to kind of kick us off this is a particular area of expertise for her so we are very lucky to have her to discuss this today

Dana marie what why what changes when students turn fourteen

[dana_marie]: so that's a great place to start so when students turn fourteen like michelle said they are you know legally invited to their i p meetings invited to participate in their iep meetings and this kind of looks like a lot of different ways so one of the ways is actually attending they're meeting if it makes sense for them and that's a conversation between the students their school team the parents the guardians in the family but we do really like for students when they turn age fourteen and up to attend their i p meetings like we said in our first episode you don't want a lot of people sitting around a room talking about you and having no input especially when we're talking about your future so once a student does turn fourteen school teams are obligated should be inviting them to their meetings um what would be really awkward as if those students came to the meeting and just sat there for forty five minutes an hour an hour and fifteen minutes two hours so what we really want to focus on today is actually participating not just being invited which is of course one step it's part of the process but we find that sometimes school teams and teams in general do that to kind of check a box but don't really think a little bit more in depth about what it actually means to be a valuable member of that team and a participant um in those meetings

[michelle_she_her]: oh what are some of the best ways to prepare kids to prepare students to prepare young adults for these meetings

[dana_marie]: yeah so i think there's a lot of different ways that you can prepare so i know a lot of teachers a lot of school teams who do really super simple almost like getting to know you activity like you would do the beginning of the school year but a really simple question air that they sit in an interview or fill out with the student a couple of days or a week or so before the meeting and just asks them some questions about their future what do you want to do in the future do you want to attend college do you not want to attend college are you looking into a trade do you want to go straight to work are you interested in the service so really some of those basic questions about the future I know it can be really difficult or interesting for parents when they have an eighth grade or a ninth grader to start already thinking about what happens after high

[michelle_she_her]: yes

[dana_marie]: school but we're here to tell you that time does fly and it will go by so so asking those questions as early as seventh and eighth grade even earlier but definitely as soon as the student is in high school so like i said you know what you want to do after high school but it goes even more broad than that thinking about community thinking about living in the future so do you want to live on your own do you want to continue to live with your parents or you guardian or your family do you want to continue to live locally or are you looking to move once you graduate high school do you want to attend to college in another state even if you're not attending college do you want to move to another state for for any number of reasons do you want to live with friends: do you want to get a roommate and then of course the question comes up how are you going to pay you get a job right away maybe already have a job if you're fifteen or sixteen that might be possible

[michelle_she_her]: yah

[dana_marie]: but starting to think about maybe we should think about a part time job where you can start putting some money away to save for whatever whatever it like so there are a lot of questions you can kind of ask ahead of time we i found that there are many ways for students to then kind of give this information in their iep meeting so some students like to go into their iep meeting and write at the beginning Michelle and I always talk a lot about the beginning of a meeting being a time and space for parents and care givers to be able to kind of voice their opinion concerns what they hope for their child so and so forth this is a great time this is the best time to also include the student and regardless of age but definitely in that fourteen plus category to speak if they are able to if they're willing to about what they hope for there their future what they want to do after high school what they want to accomplish while they're in high school in terms of types of courses they want to take extra circulars they want to take part in like I said a part time job community service there are so so many things that they can talk about and that they could focus on to really set the tone of the meeting and make sure that we're keeping the student that we're talking about in the focus we're making sure that we're not talking around them but that we're actually putting them at the center of the conversation what they hope for there are high school years but also what they hope for the years after which is really important

[michelle_she_her]: and i think that this framing of first of all being student centered and framing it around what they're hoping for what they see themselves doing in the future how they see themselves doing that actually better enable a team which includes that student to be strength focused as opposed to deficit focused and you're able to see all right the student wants to do hair dressing or wants able to line up where is the student then the courses they're going to take the experiences they want to have in the community right and that's going to happen to strength that the student has and how we can then make areas that may be they are not so strong and stronger that then allows us to build the iep to support that vision

[dana_marie]: you're so right it helps shift the focus a little bit so if you're in a meeting that maybe is going in that direction about really focusing on what the student struggles and so being able to bring it back it really does help to shift to talk about those strengths and the things that that student is going to need to succeed now this is all sure sounds great well and good you know a team might be thinking we'll do it if we can if we have time beforehand so on and so forth but the truth is that on the other side of this just being a nice thing to do a good thing to do there are also some parts of the iep that actually require at age fourteen that the student participate in helping to develop it right so this is it's a nice to do but it's also a you have to do It once the student turns fourteen so Michelle kind of alluded to some of those things at the beginning but on every iep there is a vision statement for the student it's usually actually within the firstor maybe first two pages of the iep what is that students vision for the future we recommend that as early as and we'll talk about this in a later episode but as early as your price kindergarten first grade students making sure that vision statement in some of their interests right and might they might not know exactly what they want to do at that age for high school after high school etcetera however it should include some of their interests once a student turns fourteen that should be written in statement so i want to do this with my high school years i want to do this after high school i plan to live on my own i plan to get a job in the service industry whatever that students goals are or their main goal that's how their vision should be written into their iep sets that tone like michelle said for sort of a clear how we're going to focus this meeting howwe're going to talk about the strength that the student has but also how we're goin to focus on the skills that they need in order to reach that visionlater on in the iep we also have what's called a transition planning form and we've talked a little bit about transition planning on our blog and on instagram but this is really where you set the plan with that student okay so you want to attend before your collegeor university you want to go into the military you want to like Michelle said become a hair dresser now what are the things that you need to do asa fourteen year old fifteen year old sixteen year old

[michelle_she_her]: right

[dana_marie]: so on and so forth to achieve hat goal and so to do that we sit with the student and we act go through that plan that's what aschool team can be doing a parent or care giver can be asking these exact same questions at home in preparation for the meeting but how are we going to get you there what are the courses that you need to take in order to achieve that goal have you taken those courses are there others that you haven't taken yet what part time job might serve you when preparing for this job you want to be a chef you want to be a cook will maybe starting as a bust person in a restaurant is actually a good part time job then for you over the next couple of years and then we think a little bit more globally about it not just in terms of class work and job but the community piece that i talked about too what are some things that you can do in your community right now that will help you prepare for the future whether that's service oriented or whether that's joining a club or a sport ora religious organization outside of school something that's going to serve you in your community to help you kind of develop not just as a student and academic based student but as a whole person as a whole individual as you leave high school and so that transition planning form focuses and not just academics but it focuses on employment community independent living everything that goes into that

[michelle_she_her]: right and this is actually something that should be done before the development of the iep right like this should be the driving force of ie p that's to come next again making this the student this focus the center of this plan yes the family's dreams and wishes for the student are also important but ultimately we are getting young person ready for the world and for adulthood and um allowing them to have such a strong voice in their education is really imperative to them feeling empowered feeling in control feeling sometimes even more motivated two do whatever they need to do in school to be post high school successful in whatever they're doing

[dana_marie]: sure and not every student fourteen to twenty two year old is going to be able to feel comfortable going into a meeting that might have five or seven or nine or eleven and adults and might not necessarily feel comfortable sharing out loud what their vision is some of the things that they included in their transition planning form so there are other ways to do it you can write something up maybe with your school teachers if you're a student and have somebody read that for you at the beginning of the meeting so you can be at the meeting but not necessarily have to say it out loud or read it out loud if you don't feel super comfortable you can decide that you want your parent or care giver to share that informatio is sort of part of their statement at the beginning of the meeting we have students who decide to put it in the form of like a power point presentation or some other visual at the beginning that tells us a little bit about them and

[michelle_she_her]: love that

[dana_marie]: their vision for the future and how that can sort of drive the meeting it's a great way to start a meeting um now of course we're talking about students right now as fourteen to twenty two who are able to do that who don't have communication challenges behavior al challenges so on and so forth that might inhibit them from being able to

[michelle_she_her]: yeah

[dana_marie]: through an iep meeting in a later episode we will talk specifically about students who might have some challenges that would make it difficult to sit through an entire iep meeting or might et difficult to use their verbal language in order to participate in their meeting we'll talk about that like I said in a later episode but there are many ways that it can be included and it doesn't necessarily have to be just sitting and starting the meeting and talking for ten minutes about themselves not everyone feels comfortable doing that it's good to practise but not everyone's quite there at age fourteen

[michelle_she_her]: and i think that's also a good point when um and like you said when we in a future episode we're gonna be talking about communication differences and different ways of express ing um their vision and their interests but that really helps to put the can do right as opposed to well this student can't verbally express themselves right now so i guess we can't include them right so i mean i don't know of any teams who do that but just to put that out there that you know always trying to think of what can this student do and then where is the next place they're going and for these fourteen to twenty two year olds the next place they're going is adulthood and you know the quote unquote real world right though the people talk about so what can they do now where do they want to be and then how is that school team going to help scaffold to get them to that vision for their lives

[dana_marie]: absolutely and i'm glad that you mentioned adulthood because there is one more thing before we end today that i think is really important we think of high school students a lot as ages fourteen to eighteen or so the reality is that many students are in high school until they are nineteen twenty twenty one or twenty two years old and at the age of eighteen the legal writes to that document to the iep in terms of who signs it go to the student default to the student of course there are exceptions to that but it's important to know that when you're preparing a younger student of fourteen or fifteen year old for their iep the reality is that once they turn eighteen they wi get to decide if they want to have individual signing rights to that iep if they want to share decision making with a parent care giver or guardian if they want to delegate their decision making for their iep to a parent or guardian they can absolutely do that but they will be making that decision at eighteen and so that's a lot of own us over your your programming and your education at that age even if you've not quite graduated yet from high school so the more that we can prepare all along in high school to get to

that moment the better for sure oh absolutely

[michelle_she_her]: so i think some of the top take aways here are that for all ages but especially for fourteen to twenty two we want to put the students more into the driver's seat of their educational process and that includes getting their participation either either or or and before the meeting during the meeting after the meeting right and really thinking about what their goals are what they can do and then how that iep how that individualized education plan is really going to be individualized for them to help them reach there goals and to see and have their disability be an area that is impacting them with certain challenges but not a something that can't be overcome or worked with so that they can meet their goals right

[dana_marie]: absolutely what i would love to see is once a school team obviously in collaboration with the parent the guardian and whoever else is on that students team once they draft an iep i would love for the team to share that with the student of course when it's appropriate to say hey did we get anything wrong here was this what we talked about at the meeting is there anything that you think we're missing did these goals feel like goal that you can reach in the next year so on and so forth i think that the more that we make this process transparent for young people and make sure they feel like they are at the nuclei of the decision making are the center of this process i think the better off like Michelle said earlier the better off the whole team will be in helping to support this child

[michelle_she_her]: absolutely so if anybody currently has a child or if you are an educator and you're tuning in today and you have

students who are fourteen to ten two and you have questions or you have ways that your team has included students in the iep process we would love love love to hear from you and these stories of how you have made these meet is accessible to your fourteen to twenty two year old you can email us at empoweredtoadvocate@gmail.com you can leave us a comment on youtube or on instagram wherever you are listening or watching this we would really love to connect with you and so everybody can also connect with one another and learn from one another so hope this was useful thank you

so much for marie for sharing your expertise i know this is you know I've always learned a lot from you in this area so all right in the next episode in three were going to be looking at middle school kind of that middle middle age middle age not really middle age i'm middle age looking at middle school as you know ten to thirteen year olds and what this part of the process would look like for them or could look like for them so stay tuned thanks for being here everyone