I can still remember quite clearly the way I felt as a fourteen-year-old when I first walked the grounds of my new high school. It was overwhelming. The school seemed twice as large as my previous one, and I couldn’t quite make sense of the map of the campus. I was excited, nervous, and intimidated. I knew this was an important transition I needed to make, yet I was uncertain about my ability to succeed in this new, big place.
Next year, my son Kyle will be starting high school. This means that soon he will be making an important educational transition of his own. Children with special needs or disabilities must feel even more overwhelmed at these pivotal points in their educational journey. Making a change from one school to another, or one level of education to another, can be a complicated process. This is why transition planning for these children is so important.
IDEA 2004 (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act) recognizes that there are four natural transition points where children with disabilities should be assisted:
- Preschool to Elementary School
- Elementary school to junior high school (or middle school)
- Junior high school (or middle school) to secondary school (high school)
- High school (secondary school) to postsecondary school activities
How will my child’s transitions be handled?
IDEA 2004 indicates that transition planning should take place during your child’s IEP meeting. Ideally, an IEP meeting should be scheduled as the end of the school year approaches in which your child will be transitioning to a new educational phase. Prior to this meeting, the school district should have made a recommendation for what program is available in the new school that will best address your child’s needs. If you disagree with this recommendation, there are things you can do. See my blog, “When You Disagree with Decisions Regarding Your Child’s Education: What to Do.”
Who will attend this IEP transition meeting?
In attendance at the meeting should be YOU, your child, his usual IEP team–his current teachers, therapists, and assistants–and the new administrators and personnel who will be working with him at the new school. The meeting should provide you with the opportunity to meet these new educators, and also allow them and your child to become acquainted. For obvious reasons, there are typically more people in attendance at this meeting than at the IEPs you’ve become accustomed to.
What will happen in the meeting?
The meeting should address your child’s current educational, physical, and emotional needs and how they will be met at the new location. Class selections should be discussed. Classroom accommodations should also be addressed, as well as what has historically worked for your son or daughter and what hasn’t. If you have any concerns, you should make them known. When Kyle was transitioning from elementary school to middle school, I was worried about his getting lost in the hallways and/or bullied by other teenagers as he moved from class to class. I insisted that Kyle have an assistant in the halls to help him get to his classes and to help protect him. This seemed like such an obvious need to me at the time, yet no one else had suggested it.
What Should Parents Do?
Take special care to help your child plan for these important transitions in his or her life. Your child needs you to represent him in order to insure his overall well-being and safety at the new school. Attend this special IEP transision planning meeting and arrive prepared. Be involved in understanding where your child will be going and what will happen there. Get to know the people working with your child, and follow up frequently to see how things are going.
Kristyn Crow is the author of this blog. Visit her website by clicking here. Some links on this blog may have been generated by outside sources are not necessarily endorsed by Kristyn Crow.