Michelle she/her (00:01.014)

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another season of the Empowered to Advocate podcast. We are back for season four. We have some super fresh episodes coming your way. I'm Michelle, and I'm joined by Dana Marie. And for our first episode of season four, we are going to be talking about transition planning, transition planning forms.

Dana Marie (00:17.513)

Hi everybody.

Michelle she/her (00:29.246)

and why these are so important for the IEP process and who should be involved in these and who should be having transition planning forms as part of their IEP process. So.

Dana Marie (00:44.335)

So let's jump right in. Spoiler alert, who should be involved? Everybody. So, so, so according to both the federal government and local state, we'll talk a little bit about Massachusetts law today, but we can support you. We can help you if you have questions about a specific state. But according to federal law, once a student turns 16 all the way up through it, including 22 for some students, they should be involved in their IEP development process.

There should be transition planning talked about at their IEP meeting. And like Michelle said, there should be a transition planning form used as sort of the tool to develop that part of the IEP. Now in the state of Massachusetts, it's actually age 14. And why I started by saying, spoiler alert, everybody is in addition to the fact that

students should be included in their IEP meetings and in their IEP development by age 14. This is just like anything else, a team conversation. So students with their liaisons, with their special education teachers and the other folks on their school team, but also their parents, and also a big piece that sometimes is missed, community partners, especially as students get older, as children get older and we're looking at maybe services post-secondary after high school, or we're looking at maybe outside service providers, ABA therapists, counselors, so on and so forth. We want to make sure that all of those folks are at the table when we talk about post-secondary planning and transition planning. So when we say everyone, we kind of do mean everyone. The reason we're talking about this now, it's the middle of yet another school year.

And we keep track of some of the big things that come up for us as advocates and as parent coaches over the course of the school year. And this year, one of the big things that has come up is transition planning and the transition planning form. We find that it is something that either gets missed, quite frankly, in the process, or it gets added as kind of like an afterthought. And so what we really wanna focus today on is spinning it around and really centering transition planning for students ages 14 above, and not thinking of it as an add-on to the IEP or an add-on to the process in general.

Michelle she/her (03:14.954)

Yeah, I think that's a really important point, Dana Marie, is that oftentimes, especially at the middle school level, I think this might almost happen more often is, you know, you have a student in seventh or eighth grade who's 13 and is going to be turning 14 during the life of the IEP. That's when that transition planning should be beginning. And when we're thinking about transition planning, we're thinking about the student and their vision for themselves after high school. Like what?

What do I want to do after high school? Who do I want to be? Who do I want to live with? Where do I want to live? And then what kinds of skills do I need to learn in relation to my disability in order to be able to achieve that vision, right? And so if we're thinking about an school being preparation for real life, the point of school is to be prepared for real life. The point of an IEP is to help students with disabilities be able to access curriculum so they can be ready for real life. So when we're thinking about that, we want to know what the student's vision, what the family's vision is for that student, because it's going to make their educational process more relevant, more real, more tangible when we're thinking about, especially if you think about middle schoolers and high schoolers when so many of them are like, what's the point of this? at like, well, you want to be a YouTube star, you want to be in the NBA, you want to be a veterinarian, you want to be a teacher. These are skills that you need to learn in order to access that. It almost gives that tangible connection for a lot of young people into what the point of school is, what the point of the IEP is, and also helps to reframe for the adults at the table why we're here.

Dana Marie (05:05.08)

Exactly. And that's why the transition planning form is so useful as a tool. A transition planning form is supposed to be used as a tool to help develop the IEP for these 14 plus, 15 plus, 16 plus students. In the transition planning form, it's going to walk the team through this conversation that Michelle's talking about.

the conversation around what is your post-secondary vision? What do you want to do after high school? Do you want to go to college? Do you want to join the military? Do you want to enter a trade? Do you want to go straight to work? Are you already working a job and you want to continue working in that job? There's so many options, obviously post-secondary. But then, like Michelle said, it walks you through sort of, okay, how do we get there? What are the skills that we can be developing now and working on now that will help you to achieve that goal, to reach that goal. A lot of times what we see is in an IEP, there will be a vision statement for maybe a middle school student or a high school student. And then when you look through the rest of the IEP, there are no clear connections between goals, objectives, services, things like that, that draw back or go back to what their student's vision is, right? So, sometimes a student might have, I mentioned a trade, I'll go there, a vision or a goal of entering a specific trade. Let's take construction, for instance. Well, in order to enter the construction trade, there are very clear skills that you want to start developing and acquiring, but there's also some just sort of ancillary skills that you need to, you need to start looking at different schools, you need to start looking at different opportunities, you need to know what the credentials are to get into that particular trade, you need to know what you need above and beyond a high school diploma, you need to know what personality traits and skills they're looking for in this particular profession, so on and so forth. And so when you start unpacking that vision, that post-secondary vision, that's when you start to get to some of the meat.

It's great, obviously, if you're a high school student who attends maybe a vocational school or has vocational options within their local public or private school. If construction is it, and there's an option for construction, that's something that should be part of your field of study or your course of study while you're in high school, things like that. But unless we start with what the student's vision is, what their post-secondary goal is, it's really hard to unpack and uncover some of those other pieces, those skills that they'll need to achieve that goal over the course of many years.

Michelle she/her (08:02.322)

Right. And so when we're thinking about this as we have the student's vision and then what skills they have, what skills they need, and then how to build those skills through their education, this is why we wanna start with that. And then the IEP is built from there to really help, like you said, connect and make that bridge. And what we see a lot, is especially a middle school is it sometimes gets forgotten about or you know, you when you have teachers who may be taught third, fourth or fifth grade are now teaching eighth grade and maybe don't even recognize or realize that this is a thing, you know, or there just hasn't been good training on it. I actually honestly don't remember in any of my teacher training how if there was much conversation about transition planning. So I mean, I think we've talked about this before about teacher prep and teacher training. And then like, like what, like, what are we learning? What are we teaching our teachers when they're in school? Um, like where's the breakdown here? But anyways, that's a whole other conversation. It's a whole other conversation. You know, it's not, I guess, you know, it's not like educators are being.

Dana Marie (09:04.018)

Oh, we have.

Dana Marie (09:16.171)

Stay tuned for that episode at a later date.

Michelle she/her (09:22.614)

willfully negligent in most parts, like, I'm not going to do the transition planning form, right? It's usually just, they just, you don't know what you don't know. And it's, you know, we can all do better. So hopefully educators, if you're listening to this, you're like, oh, I want to learn more about this. And maybe you then take it back to your district, to your school and you can start to do better too, right? Because educators are also advocates for their students. So.

Dana Marie (09:49.059)

Absolutely. And I think this opens up a bigger conversation and it's a conversation we've actually had multiple times on this podcast, which is when we are developing an IEP, when we were developing a plan for a student, that student should be the center of that development. Not just when they're 14 or 15 or 16 plus, but throughout the life of that IEP, if a student is eligible for special education at a younger age. And so what stopping, pausing and focusing on transition planning does help educators do and helps the whole team do is take a pause and really start to center what that student wants, what their vision is, what their goals are, and making sure that their voice is included in the conversation. We have lots of episodes where we talk about student voice. We obviously feel very passionate that students should.

Their voice should be the center of all of these conversations. Even our younger students are ways to do that. But especially as they get older, as students get older, and they start thinking about life after middle school, after high school, they start thinking about adults living and what their life is going to be like as an adult, it is crucial. It is so important that we think clearly and thoughtfully about how we can include them. One thing we'll just leave you with, we had a conversation with a parent recently about their own student who is of this age. And one of the questions that came up, which comes up a lot from both school teams and parents is what if the student doesn't wanna attend their IEP meeting, what if they don't feel comfortable? What if being the center doesn't feel good for any number of different reasons? And I think the answer, there are many answers, but one of the answers that we give parents is this sort of careful, thoughtful planning. If you can include your child, if a teacher, you can include your student prior to the IEP meeting, have this conversation with them a week before or two weeks before where you're already talking about some of the things that they want included in their plan, some of their vision goals for the future, then A, they can just attend the IEP meeting for part of the time, not necessarily all the time, or B, they can go in feeling more prepared. It's not a conversation that's catching them off guard, we're not putting them on the spot for the first time at an IEP meeting. I think that one of the challenges of this process is that time is of the essence and we all know that and extra time in school is not a thing, it doesn't exist, but really being thoughtful about how we prepare students for this conversation, how we prepare them to be a part of the conversation is a huge, huge piece of this. And like I said, that's something that we've talked about, go all the way back. I think it's season one, we have a whole series on student voice and how to include students in their IEP development and process, but making sure, like we said at the beginning, this isn't just something that's added on at the end or kind of thrown in at the end. It's something that is thoughtful because we wanna make sure our students feel comfortable with this process as well.

Michelle she/her (13:04.662)

Yeah. So if you have a student, a child that is 13 going on 14 and these, you know, has an IEP or is going through an initial evaluation process, then just knowing that your child should be included and being able to have conversations with the IEP team when the meetings, when that time comes, especially if you notice their name isn't on the attendance sheet or anything like that. Just being able to know that this actually a pretty important part of the process. And if you notice that they are not being included, you then have that knowledge and power to be able to reach out and say, I want my child invited. They have a right to be there and they should be there.

Dana Marie (13:47.871)

And please reach out if you need additional resources. If you want more information, this just honestly scratches the surface. There are so many resources out there. We have a couple that we've put together for both parents and caregivers, as well as educators, sort of an overview of what transition planning is and what are the steps, timeline in transition planning. So if that's something that you would be interested in, please reach out. Like I mentioned, we also have a couple of specific episodes on student voice, so go back and listen to those if you have not done so already. We will drop some of the specifics around IDEA and our local Massachusetts lot into the show notes today. But if you think of anything and have questions, please reach out. This is the topic that this is not it today. We are going to keep talking about. We are going to keep diving into, and like Michelle mentioned, we're going to keep talking with other educators too about how we can do better with this process and support each other to do a better job with transition planning in general.

Michelle she/her (14:49.666)

Yep. All right. So we will see you in the next episode. We're so grateful for you being here. If you are new to listening to us, welcome. If you are returning, thank you. We always appreciate all of your listens, anytime you share our episodes with other folks to help and support them, helping us reach more caregivers and educators is a wonderful way to kind of spread the word on how to be strong advocates for our children with disabilities. So thanks so much for being here and we will see you in the next episode.

Dana Marie (15:25.711)

Bye everybody.