What is person-centered transition planning?

Transcript: Joy Godshall Ivester, MEd

Student centered means local practitioners value the student voice and the student’s going to be front and center in their own planning process. Individuals with disabilities should be involved in all aspects of policies, programs, and services related to the disability community. So we think that any time a group of professionals are sitting around a table planning for a student, the student should be there taking the pilot’s seat in the process. With getting students more involved in leading their IEPs, there’s nothing more critical than starting early. Students in the elementary grades should be involved in the transition planning process, taught about the IEPs and their purpose of planning. How can we justify planning for a student without having them in the driver’s seat? Ultimately, you have to ask the question, Would you want someone else planning your life for you? With regard to stakeholders and getting them on board, you have to start early. So it’s not an initiative or a program or something that you’re trying or working on students with beginning at age 14 or 16. We should expect all students to begin participating and gradually taking on that leadership role early in their educational careers. And for older youth and young adults, collaborative planning and training is critical so that everyone is speaking the same language and holding the high expectations for all students.

Transcript: Bettie Ray Butler, PhD

It’s important to start with the student voice to understand their goals and to make sure that their goals are a part of the transition planning process because sometimes what the student wants is very different than what their parents want for them. And oftentimes, they feel ignored in the transition process. Being participatory in the process, being asked, “What do you want? What are your goals? What excites you about employment? What excites you about your educational plans? What excites you about living independently?” It’s leaning into what the student desires that makes them feel seen and heard and that highlight their visibility. It’s important to also make sure that the transition team does not participate in deficit thinking. And to do this, we have to focus on the assets that the students—as well as the families and the parents—bring to the transition team and to incorporate that expertise in the planning process as well. And this helps us to focus more on ability. What is the capacity of the student to achieve and meet these goals? So we must approach transition planning meetings as a team from a very asset-based perspective. It is unfortunate that sometimes educators cannot necessarily see the promise and potential of the students. And they may have assumptions about the family, maybe having a lack of awareness about the youth and their background. The communities that they come from may be perceived from a very deficit lens. And so making sure that that does not find itself into these transition planning meetings. It’s important to always make sure that the team itself collectively sees the potential of the youth and makes sure that they hold the youth to high expectation. For example, a student wants to open their own business. There should not be a deviation from helping that student to open their own business following graduation, to maybe encouraging them to go into a more hospitality-based career. And so it’s important to, again, maintain those high expectations, not to water down what the youth suggests that they need or what they desire or want based on what educators believe the student or youth is capable of doing.