Strength-Based IEPs
What is a strength-based IEP?
When considering an Individualized Education Program (IEP), the first thoughts may be about what a student is unable to do or what behaviors are causing the student trouble in the general education setting. However, while the acronym IEP may conjure up a myriad of learning disabilities and unacceptable social-emotional behaviors, writing a strength-based IEP focuses on the positive assets of a student and not their deficits. According to Pattoni (2012), “Strengths-based approaches concentrate on the inherent strengths of individuals, families, groups and organisations, deploying personal strengths to aid recovery and empowerment.” By focusing on the assets of a student and including families
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According to Jimerson, Sharkey, Nyborg, & Furlong (2004), “strength-based assessment can promote a positive arena for school psychologists, teachers, and families to monitor student performance and communicate with success.” Looking through the lens of positive student performance and achievement whenever possible provides a platform to build upon an area where the student does well. When the team collaborates with the student, they can work together to decide on a result that will draw on the individual’s gifts and resources (Pattoni, 2012). According to Goldberg (2012), “Every child has strengths and a child can and will be motivated by how teachers and parents respond to them.” This is the core of school-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) programs that are so popular because they are so effective. While it is still necessary to include a student’s weaknesses in writing an IEP, much can accomplished by focusing on the positive and building on the inherent gifts and strengths of each student. Finding a student’s greatest strengths and building on them affects the learning process and helps the student reach his or her …show more content…
Because of a need to save time, IEP teams sometimes preplan a meeting and present a strategy to the parents (Weishaar, 2008). This may result in an IEP that is not written from a strengths-based lens. As a result, parents are placed in position of reacting to the school’s recommended plan and are not part of its development. Without input from a parent, an IEP team may be less positive about what a student is able to do. Parents may not consider themselves as partners in the decisions being made for their child (Pattoni, 2012). If parents are involved in the IEP development, it is more likely they will be more active in its implementation. It’s well known that parent involvement in a child’s education is a win-win proposition. Family engagement results in greater success for the
In this case, the IEP requirements of the child Frank Evans were not met by the school and the district. The reading and the facts provided in the case show that the district did not have any IEP for the child prepared at the beginning of the school session (Wrightslaw - Caselaw - Evans v. Rhinebeck (S.D. NY 1996), n.d.). The IDEA states that the IEP has to be prepared in a meeting where the child’s parents, a qualified spokesperson from the concerned school, the child’s teacher and when possible the child himself. With the consensus of the people mentioned here a detailed document about the assessment of the child’s educational needs and an action plan to meet the same is devised. Frank Evans was within his legal rights under IDEA to have an IEP for himself which was not provided and hence severely undermined the child’s performance levels in the school (FindLaw's the United States Supreme Court case and opinions,
The IEP team may include the student, their parents, a regular teacher, a special education provider and other representatives, such as a social worker or relative child care provider. These meets are required to be held within 30 days of the student’s acceptance into the special education program. Every IEP has the two main goals of setting reasonable learning goals and establishing academic services that the school will provide. The IEP should state which state and district-wide assessments that the student will or will not participate in and why.
Parents have the right to be included in placement decisions, IEP developments, and evaluations. Schools should collaborate and communicate consistently with family members due to the fact they know their child better than anyone else and can be a powerful resource, as well as an advocate, for their development and education (American Foundation for the Blind, 2015). Furthermore, information regarding a student’s disability is highly confidential. IDEA clarifies that such information may be shared with only individuals who are working directly with the student (Friend, 2014).
Scheuermann, B., & Hall, J. (2012). Positive behavioral supports for the classroom. (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. ISBN # 10:0132147831
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has established procedures for the placement of students with disabilities within a school setting. Members of the child study team develop individualized education programs (IEP) ,which are designed place students in the least restrictive environment based on their needs (Jones & Hensley, 2012). Research conducted by Jones and Hensley (2012), indicates that students with disabilities in self-contained classrooms exhibit lower levels of self-determination than students in resource classrooms. The research study consisted of 51 middle and high school students and 12 special education teachers. Their objective was to examine the impact of classroom placement on student outcomes and relationships (Jones & Hensley, 2012). In this study, self-contained classrooms focused on life skills such as, cooking, jobs, interacting in the community, and so forth. Resource classrooms were considered "pull-out classes”, which maintained an academic core curriculum, but utilized a small group learning environment (Jones & Hensley, 2012). Students in the resource classrooms were well integrated into the general school population. Th...
Using Allison’s strengths and interests is important to helping her become a successful student. This is the method of helping Bender, Brian and any other student become successful in school. Building on the student strengths, while allowing them to work on their weaknesses is important for all students and especially for twice-exceptional students in the classroom. When looking at the student’s weakness it is important to understand that their behavior is not a weakness, but a result of an underlying cause. Examining the cause of the behavior will help recognize the challenge areas for improvement by understanding the underlying cause for the behavior. After understanding the student’s strengths and challenges, the teachers can then fully help the student learn to the best of their abilities.
There is an imperative need for parents should make an effort to get involved with the IEP process and what it entails and teachers should help them with that by including them in the IEP meeting Along with being in consent communication with parents’ in-between IEP meetings. Furthermore, it is important to use reliable resources to measure the child capacity, needs and desires to developed the best plan for them. The IEP team most collect data to help them develop the right plan for a student. Using this knowledge can help in many ways as an educator and teacher. Not only is parent involvement is imperative but students should be involved in IEP meetings so that they know what perversions that they are entitled. Partnership between parents, teachers and students in a student’s transition is a major factor in contributing to effective
I chose to do my paper on students with Individualized Education Program’s for this fact alone. The majority of these students do not look any different from the other students. They want to be a part of the general education classroom setting. They may have mainstreaming and inclusion with IEP’s which makes the lives for these students more thriving. The main goal I have discovered in my reading of Individualized Education Program is placing the student at the center. The student is the main priority and their IEP focuses on meeting their educational needs. In reading, Inclusion and Mainstreaming I learned in the past, physically and mentally disabled children were often stricken form society and placed in separate institutions. This ended on November 29, 1975 when the Education for all Handicapped Children Act was signed. The Act required the government to provide ample funding for all handicapped children from ages 3-...
A student will respond differently depending upon the actions and reactions of the individuals around him. Behaviors that occur repeatedly are often serving a useful function for the student. Positive behavioral support strategies make problem behavior irrelevant by redesigning the environment. Positive behavioral support strategies teach students new skills that are meant to replace the problem behavior with a socially-acceptable alternative. Addressing the larger social context surrounding a student can reduce the amount of time spent implementing intensive positive behavioral support plans. Functional assessment gathers information regarding the events that both immediately precede problem behavior and the situations where a student is successful.
Positive psychology refers to strengths as positive qualities we each have as individuals. There are a few base principles to remember when working on strengths. It is important to value and develop individual talents, maintain healthy relationships, reflect on successes, practice, and teach others. It is important to focus on strengths and manage weaknesses. Our schools of today need to find ways to promote students into using their individual strengths. In classrooms individual talents should be valued and developed. For instance, one student in a class may be very strategic who is able to see patterns and issues within a project. This same class may also have someone analytical who likes to search for reasons as causes. A teacher who was taught to look for and recognize these strengths could draw on the strategic thinker to share with the class the patterns and issues they see ...
The Individualized Education Program is developed by a team that includes the parents of the student, a general education teacher, a special education teacher, a school representative (principal), a person knowledgeable about evaluation (school psychologist), and others at request of IEP participants. The primary job of the IEP team is to plan a program of special education and related services that is reasonably calculated to provide a meaningful education benefit. The IEP Process includes a review of assessme...
After reading the article, First, Discover Their Strengths, the first thought that I had was how much all students, especially those with disabilities, would benefit from educators discovering their strengths and using those strengths to aid in developing other aspects of their learning. This is something that is not often practiced within the classroom and many students quickly become labeled in a negative way, those with and without disabilities. Because of this, many students are rarely supported in the way they should be educationally within the general education classroom. After reading the article I reviewed the information that I was to gather on a student and thought about which student would benefit most from
Students with learning disabilities can learn; each student has his or her own strengths and weaknesses. Educators must continue to focus on the strengths of each student and building on them, creating a stronger student and person. Identifying the weakness is at the core of getting a student help with their learning disability, but after this initial identification and placement, the focus should shift to the strengths and adjusting the student’s schoolwork to reflect these strengths. For instance, if a student is weak in reading but has wonderful group interaction skills and is good with his or her hands, the students' reading tasks should then be shifted to reflect these st...
IEP stands for Individualized Education Program. An IEP is a written document required for each child who is eligible to receive special education services. It is provided to a student who has been determined first to have a disability, and second, to need special education services because of that disability. An IEP is very important and should never be overlooked by anyone. The purpose of an IEP is to make sure that only students whose educational performance is affected by a disability receive special services. An individual program plan is designed to make sure that students get the kind of educational experience that they deserve; an experience that results in success. The end goals for students who are on an IEP are to be involved in
One of the domains the authors (Maton, et al. 2004) examined was in competence-based prevention. The deficits-based approach would navigate in competence-based prevention by treating the already identified problems (2004), whereas the strengths-based approach would look to build these competencies up in order to stop these problems from ever surfacing (2004). For example, a deficits-based approach would look at a child who is misbehaving and performing poorly academically and look to treat behavior problems as they happen, possibly offering tutoring to treat the academic problems and consoling of some sort to treat the behavior problems. Contrasting with a strengths-based approach which would look at nurturing academic skills as the child develops, which aside from providing an improved academic performance from the start by recognizing and building on existing strengths identified in the child (2004). As discussed in the lecture, this will also lower the child’s chances of misbehaving in school, as academic performance is a key element in fostering confidence within children.