Transcript: Challenge

For the seven years Mr. Longoria has taught special education at Central High School, he has seen many students make the transition to employment or further education. He always believed himself to be somebody who did student-centered planning just by having some of his students attend their individualized education program or IEP meetings. Recently, however, Mr. Longoria attended a training on student-centered transition planning, and he now recognizes his belief as a common misconception. He has become convinced that, with assistance, some of his students could take on a more prominent role in their IEP meetings and the overall planning process.

This said, Mr. Longoria is a bit skeptical that all of his students could handle this added responsibility. In particular, he wonders about two of his students, Donzaleigh and Jeremy.

Donzaleigh is an eleventh grader with a mild learning disability in reading and an articulation disorder. She has strong math and organizational skills and wants to be a fashion designer when she leaves school. Mr. Longoria knows that Donzaleigh does not like to initiate conversation or talk in front of groups because of her articulation disorder. Because of this, he anticipates that she would find addressing a group of adults in her IEP meeting an uncomfortable experience.

Jeremy is a ninth grader who has an intellectual disability. When he gets out of school, Jeremy wants to work with animals. Though he enjoys school, he struggles in most academic subjects. Jeremy loves socializing with his peers and teachers alike and seems unaware that he even has a disability that requires supports. Mr. Longoria knows that Jeremy has a difficult time staying focused and does not have much interest in talking about school subjects. He further wonders how Jeremy will react when the IEP team starts discussing his disability.

Mr. Longoria wonders whether Donzaleigh and Jeremy have the skills to be active participants in the transition planning process. He further begins to question what supports need to be in place to facilitate their participation.

Here is your Challenge:

What is student-centered transition planning?

What are some ways to involve students in student-centered transition planning?

How can teachers successfully implement student-centered transition planning?

Transcript: Jim Martin, PhD

Basically, people who are self-determined will know their interests, skills, and limits; will act on that information; will develop a plan; implement the plan; evaluate their process; change sections of the plan that need to be changed; and then take action on that. So that fits perfectly into what we do in special education in the whole IEP process. It’s a real natural fit with what we do in special education. We teach kids to apply those skills both through their IEP and then in a more directed way on particular goals that they want to obtain in their life, whether it be a school goal or a personal goal.

What we now know is that when kids get actively involved in their IEP meeting, their levels of self-determination increase. And we now know that when people are more self-determined, they do better both in school and better outside of school. Self-determination then becomes the engine that drives transition education practices. It is what we teach students to do when they’re in school. So many times, people just equate transition with employment, but way before kids are eligible to get a job or before they become old enough to have a job, there’s a lot of critical skills that they can learn in school and at home to prepare them not only for doing better in high school but also for life after high school. And a lot of that comes back to teaching them to be self-determined.

Transcript: Erik Carter, PhD

Every young person in our schools should be equipped to make important decisions about their future education, about their future careers, about their future lifestyles, and that’s just an important part of growing up and becoming more self-determined and assuming adult roles.

Self-determination gets defined and described in a whole variety of ways, but put simply it means having the capacity to steer one’s own life in ways and directions that ultimately improve your own quality of life. That capacity gets enhanced when students have the knowledge and skills across seven different areas: the ability to make choices, decision-making skills, problem-solving skills, goal-setting skills, self-advocacy, self-management, and self-awareness. And so as you hear those different skills, you can really see how the process of preparing for and participating in your own transition-planning meeting can really help you learn about these aspects of self-determination and to put them in practice. So in a meeting you’d have an opportunity to make choices about the courses that you take and the extra-curriculars that you’d be involved in.

Students have chances to make decisions about their future career path or their pursuit of college or not. They have to problem-solve a host of issues that can arise, such as a desired class or opportunity that is just not available or even disagreement with someone else about what’s the best decision for you. They learn to set short-term goals for their upcoming semester or school year, as well as identify when those goals have been met. And they have to learn to advocate for their support needs or for their own perspectives when someone else sees things a little bit differently.

It’s also important that students with disabilities have that chance to learn how to set their own goals and to identify paths towards reaching their goals and identifying the supports and services and relationships that they’ll need along the way. They have to self-manage or keep track of their own progress towards their goals, and all of that’s enhanced by having some level of awareness or knowledge about their own strengths and their needs and their interests and their preferences. Student-centered transition-planning meetings provide meaningful opportunities for students to set their short- and long-term goals, to become more aware of and to learn about their strengths and interests and preference and needs, to reflect on their progress over the past year, and then to communicate their need for specific opportunities or supports or linkages to others.

Transcript: Joy 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 pilots 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. It’s never too early to begin working with students on self-determination skills. 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: Erik Carter, PhD (audio #1)

Student-centered transition planning places the goals and aspirations and the needs and strengths of the student with the disability right at the forefront of planning efforts and their decisions about their future. And I think the most prominent voice heard in planning, at least for younger children, whether that’s at an IEP meeting or other planning meetings, are usually those of teachers or therapists or parents or even administrators. That shifts during the transition period, because the future that we’re planning for is the student’s future, and so they should really have the loudest voice in that discussion. And so best practices would tell us that all of transition planning should be student-centered, but we add that phrase “student-centered” just as an explicit reminder of where our focus should be fixed.

In some ways, I think student-centered transition planning is sort of a commitment, a philosophy of thinking about where do we place the primary accent that we’re building our programs and experiences around students, not fitting students into existing programs and experiences. And so that student-centered perspective is one we’re called to adopt, and we achieve that through things like student-led transition-planning meetings. That’s a way of making sure the student really is at the center by them having an active and explicit role in leading their own transition meeting.

Transcript: Erik Carter, PhD (audio #2)

The involvement of students either being present at their own planning meeting to actually being deeply involved varies widely from state to state, from district to district, from school to school. It’s very uneven. I think part of it’s an expectation issue. I think a lot of teachers and parents may wonder what a student would really bring to that conversation. They wonder whether they’ll be able to contribute in meaningful ways, and so part of our efforts need to be on raising those expectations that a student would have something important to contribute to this particular area of planning, even though it will take a little bit of work to prepare the student to do that. So I think expectations is one.

Opportunity is another. I think the way we do meetings and when we choose to meet and the logistics of those sometimes squeeze out student involvement. We think our role is done when we invite the student, rather than really encouraging their presence and their participation. I think preparation is also a reason why it doesn’t happen very often, and we struggle to find the time during a school day to prepare students to be part of their own transition-planning meeting. And so when they do come, they have little involvement, and they make few contributions, and then we chalk that up to either their inability to do so or a mismatch between their presence in the meeting when really it’s that they weren’t really well prepared to be part of that meeting. If you think back to the first time as a teacher you ever went to a IEP meeting, how uncertain you were about what was going to happen. Maybe you practiced what you were going to say and what you were going to share, and students need that same kind of preparation and practice, as well. I think at the end of the day, we let the busyness of our school day and all the competing priorities say this is not the most important thing to do, and at the end of the day it may be one of the most important things, because the students aren’t aware of their own transition plans and aren’t fluent in those and didn’t have a voice in those. Then all the other busyness that we’re invested in is not well aimed and well-focused in moving the student forward.

Transcript: Erik Carter, PhD

Annual IEP goals and transition goals are different in a number of ways. One is primarily their time horizon. Post-secondary goals are really those that focus on life after graduation, and they’re also outcome-focused. What is it that the student will do in the early years after leaving high school? Where will they work, where will they live, where will they go to school? They address areas like future training, future education, and future employment and future independent living, and they also are required to be based on age-appropriate transition assessments, which is a little bit different than the requirements for annual goals. Annual goals have a much shorter time horizon, and they’re really focused on what happens in the upcoming school year. They have a shorter time-focus.

If you’ve done a transition plan well, you should have annual IEP goals that link to and lead to those post-school transition goals. They’re connected in that way, that each year of progress you make on an annual goal should be moving you closer towards attaining that post-school goal or preparing for that post-school goal.

Transcript: Jim Martin, PhD

I think the biggest innovation that happened with IDEA came about with the inclusion of transition assessments. Transition assessments have really helped get transition education more focused. We have a battery of transition assessments we have to do, and one of them has to be a formal assessment, meaning that it’s a standardized assessment that has adequate psychometric properties that we know is a good assessment to help students plan for their life after high school. That sets the tone and gets the boat going in the right direction. But the engine that really drives the motor to get the boat going are the annual transition goals. And we now know that there’s a set of generalizable behaviors. They’re non-academic skills that when students learn these behaviors it increases their likelihood of post-secondary education or post-secondary employment. So as we assess students we need to focus on assessments that will look at these generalizable, non-academic behaviors, establish our strengths and needs using those assessments, and then based on the needs develop annual transition goals to ensure that we teach students those generalizable non-academic behaviors, like student involvement in their IEP meetings, disability awareness, interacting with others, knowledge of strengths or limitations. When they learn those generalizable, critical, non-academic skills, it will help them attain whatever their ultimate goals are. That’s probably the most important thing we can do in transition, is to teach kids those generalizable non-academic skills.

Transcript: Erik Carter, PhD

Transition assessments tend to be much less formal than other assessment processes throughout a student’s special education career, and they tend to include less often a battery of standardized tests. Instead, what you’re really trying to do is identify what a student’s interests and strengths and preferences and needs are. Given that focus, it’s really prudent to involve the student in that process. It’s very difficult to speak to someone’s interests and preferences if they weren’t actively involved in aspects of exploring what those interests and preferences might be and giving feedback and input into that assessment process.

There are also transition-planning tools out there that have a specific place for students in that process. One that I used widely as a transition teacher was called the Transition Planning Inventory. A variety of other tools have the same approach, but essentially there’s a version that’s completed by the teacher, there’s a version completed by parents or family members, and there’s a version of that tool that’s also completed by the students themselves. That gives the student a chance to have input on their own perspectives, on their needs and strengths in different domains around transition. It gives them a chance to sharpen their ability to really self-evaluate effectively, especially when you compare their assessment perspectives to those of teachers and parents. We would use these different approaches where we’d ask the student and the parents and my team to complete that assessment. We’d compile all that information in advance of the meeting, and we’d see places where everyone was in great agreement about strengths, and needs and areas where we had very different perspectives. Often it was the student who had overestimated their abilities or had aspirations that were a bit higher than anyone else might have had. And so that would become a context for us to talk about, “Why are there differences of opinion? Why are you seeing the student in a different way than we do?” and then preparing the student to be able to share their perspective at the upcoming meeting.

The role of school psychologists and others around assessment doesn’t change as students are involved in IEP meetings in middle school and high school, but there’s added focus on planning for life after high school. It means we have to think beyond some of the traditional assessments and bring in perspectives of different people. The student’s perspectives becomes really important in those areas. It’s not intended to replace the assessments that would already be part of the planning process but to round them out and add a different voice and different vantage point to those, as well.

Transcript: Kelly Smoak

When we are in class, we do a number of assessments, through interest inventories, inventories that we have, pencil and paper we pass out in the classroom. We may also do some assessments online. Gathering that information, we come back after it’s done the next class period and really go over it with the kids independently, maybe in a group setting with a couple of students, and they can share their information with one another, gives them an opportunity to discuss what they like with their peers or what they found out about themselves with their peers. It also allows me to walk around and engage with them and find out how they’re assessing themselves.

They have Google Docs, and we have a bank of all of their information. It has a copy of their IEP. Anything that we do that is related to building on that IEP, we have them save it in that file so they can pull that back up when it’s time for the IEP, to prepare for it. I’ll pull them aside independently, and I’ll have them pull that up and say, “Let’s go back and look at what your results were from your various assessments throughout the year. Let’s see what your interests are,” and then it’s more of an independent time, just a casual conversation with the student, and that’s when we begin to talk about how that fits into the IEP.

Transcript: Erik Carter, PhD (audio #1)

For a teacher who really wants to make their transition planning process much more student-centered, I think the first step is really to make an investment in the preparation of their students and find time within the school day to prepare the students for these kind of meetings. I mean, very few students when even asked about the prospect of coming to a meeting filled with teachers and staff and others are going to probably be excited about that idea. What adolescent would feel really comfortable and confident in that kind of setting? So really preparing students so they understand the purpose of a meeting, the value of their presence and voice in that process, and understanding of the kind of things that would be shared, what their role would be in sharing some of that information and what the roles of others who are going to be invited to that meeting are, it’s really an important part of that preparation.

And I think a second thing for teachers is to think through what kind of process would make sense for students to have that active role in the planning meeting. There are a variety of ways students can be involved in that meeting, everything from having a list of steps that they would work through as part of that process from welcoming everyone to the meeting, making introductions, stating the purpose of that meeting, sharing the progress that they’ve made over the past year, and sharing some of their goals for the upcoming year. That step-by-step process needs to be outlined for students, and deciding what makes the most sense for your students in the context of the meeting is really important.

We encourage teachers to also think about what happens after the meeting. A student-centered planning meeting lasts an hour or two a year, and probably the place where students can have the most benefit and impact is what happens between those meetings. Looking for ways to encourage students’ continued involvement in their own transition plan is a way of making that continue to be student-centered, whether that’s having them self-monitor and self-evaluate their progress and keep track of that over the course of the school year, whether that’s having them share back their progress with team members at various points throughout the school year, or even sharing some of the lessons they’ve learned about having that leadership role with other students who’ve not yet had their transition planning. All those are ways that teachers can prepare and implement and follow-up on this whole idea of student-centered planning meetings.

One of the things that I want to emphasize is that the investment that we’re making of teachers in preparing students for this once-a-year planning meeting really does have a long-term ripple effect on students for the rest of their lives after they’ve exited school. They’re going to be part of these kinds of planning meetings, and the degree to which they’re prepared to contribute to those, to be able to advocate for what they need, communicate the supports and opportunities and linkages that they need to support them is going to be really important for living well long after graduation. So it’s easy for us to think in the very short term, wow, this requires my time and investment that we may struggle to make right now. That investment’s going to have a much longer term impact on students even after the meeting’s done and after they have graduated, so it’s worthwhile.

Transcript: Erik Carter, PhD (audio #2)

It definitely takes time to prepare students for these roles. I would emphasize that it’s not without benefits. It certainly has payoffs. We know that youth who are more actively involved in their own transition planning are ultimately more motivated to work towards those goals and ultimately accomplish those goals. But they have to be equipped with the skills and the knowledge and the attitudes to participate meaningfully and effectively in those kinds of planning meetings.

One approach, I think, is to simply draw upon the growing number of existing programs and curriculum materials that are already out there that have already been designed to equip students in exactly this way, a number of them that offer fairly structured approaches, things like the Self-Directed IEP, the Who’s Future Is It Anyway? curriculum, Take Charge for the Future, Next Steps, and a number of others that have already been evaluated students with disabilities and really lay out a step-by-step what’s involved in leading an IEP meeting. I think incorporating out of those curricula into your class or drawing upon components that you know would be really helpful for a particular student can at least make the planning aspect of that much more efficient for you as a teacher.

There’s also ways that you can involve students in things like role-playing as a group for an upcoming transition planning meeting followed by a time of discussion and reflection on how that went. You might have students who have either graduated or who are a little further along in their transition process share with younger students about their experiences leading their own transition planning meetings, or you could even connect students to any number of community organizations or self-advocacy groups that also gives students opportunities to build those self-advocacy skills and skills they would need to ultimately lead their own planning meetings.

Transcript: Erik Carter, PhD

I would emphasize that student-centered transition planning is a both a philosophy, a value we commit to, but it’s also an effective practice. It’s a core principle of good transition and one that we’re asked to do if we’re called to implement the best as what we know works. What I mean by that is it’s more than just a philosophy that has kind of an intuitive appeal, it’s actually a practice that has a positive impact on students. And I think that’s really part of engaging the team in supporting this approach to transition planning and getting their buy-in.

There’s some real benefits to this. When we involve the student actively in the process, it actually ensures the plan reflects their interests and their preferences and their needs.

But it also ends up increasing their buy-in and their motivation to work towards those goals. I think for the team, it also helps the team see the plan as linked to a real person and perhaps to come to see the student in a different way when they’re there actually sharing their goals firsthand and their needs and their strengths in that area. What we’ve also learned is that it changes the nature of the conversation that’s happening at the transition-planning meeting because we tend to talk about students differently when they’re there. We think about their future differently when we hear why that future matters to them. We come to talk about them and view them as more capable and competent and more self-determined when we hear them talk about their vision for a good life. And I think all of that leads to us being able to move forward much more confidently as an IEP team when we know that we as a team and the student are aligned in that vision.

Certainly, there’s aspects of this that takes some more time and intentionality, but it also produces a plan that’s much more relevant and has more clarity and more personal investment. So whatever additional time it takes, it has a payoff that’s really important to understand, and I think that’s part of convincing the team that this new way of thinking about the planning process is actually one that’s not only better for the team but ultimately better for the student.

Transcript: Kelly Smoak

I know that it is fearful for some, and they may have some concerns, but one of the greatest things to help with that is building that relationship with that student and the team members. When that relationship is built, and they feel comfortable conversing with the administrator, with the other teachers, the gen ed teachers, the guidance counselors then there’s a buy-in, not just from that student but from the other team members. They’re invested in that child.

When you’re building relationships with the team members, when they come to the meeting, it’s not just a student, but it’s their life, and it’s someone that they’ve engaged with and know that, oh, yeah, you did really well on that test last week, or I saw you do a great job in that game, or I heard about your interview. How did it go? There’s more of a dialog, and there’s more of a relationship there. When we value people through relationships and getting to know them then we understand, and we want to spend time on that person and hear their voice, and we want what’s best for them. When the student starts to speak and starts to take charge of their IEP by talking about their interests and their present levels and where they are and where they want to go, it’s just natural, and I don’t see it as a laborious activity that’s going to add extra time to the meeting.

Transcript: Jim Martin, PhD

Expect them to be there. Expect them to participate. The biggest facilitator we found to this whole process are teacher expectations. Teachers expect their students to become actively engaged and be there, provide them the opportunities, and then make it a celebration of kids’ education and not just a rap sheet of all things they’re not doing well. Some teachers will help students prepare invitations for their meeting. They’ll go to one of the websites where you prepare an invitation, and they’ll go to their English teacher and say, “Madam English teacher, my IEP meeting is a couple of weeks from now. Here’s an invitation to attend. I sure hope you can be there,” and they’ll give it to their parents. They might give it to one of their best friends to attend, or the boyfriend or a girlfriend to attend, if parents approve of that, of course. Some teachers encourage students to get dressed up. They’ll bake cookies. They’ll make it a celebration of the kid’s education. And then it becomes something that they want to attend.

Transcript: Kelly Smoak

For someone that wants to start the process, start with small steps. It may be overwhelming to think, “Oh, I need to have all of my kids running all of their IEP meetings this year.” That can be a daunting thought, but start small through activities in the classroom. That can be something as simple as having the kids know who their supports are, listing them out on paper, and meeting those people so that they know who those members of the team are. Who’s going to be at my IEP meeting? Who is helping me through this process? Build that relationship. Then taking it a step further and beginning to break down the IEP for the students that can be very simple.

You can take an entire unit on it. You can spend time on it throughout the entire year. You can choose to build that into your day in many different ways, whether it be a 15-minute segment of your class period or whether it be a whole day that you devote, a whole class period that you devote to the IEP, but breaking it down and teaching the students the different parts of the IEP and what they mean and why do we have them, why do we have accommodations, what are accommodations, so that the students can begin to understand them, know what they mean, and then start to have a voice as to whether they really need that accommodation or not. Is it something that’s helping them or is it not? That’s just one aspect of the IEP. Their present levels, what does that mean, what does that look like, where am I currently, and being able to see that and verbalize that can be a part of your class. Students that have that opportunity begin to understand the IEP is not just a document that their parent comes and signs once a year, but it is a part of their life, and it will help them get to the next phase successfully.