0:00:00.4 VB: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vickie Brett.

0:00:09.2 AS: I'm Amanda Selogie. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education, civil rights and modern activism.

0:00:19.5 VB: Each week we're gonna explore new topics which are going to educate and empower others.

0:00:25.8 AS: And give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field.

0:00:33.5 VB: Welcome listeners. We're live...

0:00:39.2 AS: Yes. We haven't done a live podcast in quite a bit, I guess since the pandemic I think, right?

0:00:42.9 VB: Yeah. Well, we have a live audience and it's really weird to me because usually I just talk to you via Zoom, [laughter] so there's a lot of players here.

0:00:52.4 AS: We had a few live ones before the pandemic and then everything shut down and everything changed as everybody knows.

0:01:00.0 VB: Getting back into it.

0:01:01.8 AS: Yes. And we're very excited today to have a live audience and so you might hear some questions from them as we answer them and go through our episode today.

0:01:09.3 VB: Absolutely. So our focus today board, this is solo. We do not have a guest, you guys, I know it will be on the IEP team and process and really collaboration. Amanda and I started this podcast as a way to start conversations. Everybody will either go through a disability in their lifetime, getting older it happens, or they will know somebody with some type of learning challenge, physical challenge, intellectual challenge. And so today we really wanted to focus in on those people that we have encountered in our experiences that drive forward the collaboration and the cooperativeness in an IEP.

0:01:49.6 AS: Yeah. And how it relates to basically everybody that works with kids. I know that we talk to people all the time who are general education teachers or coaches or they run an after school program, and a lot of times the thought is, "Well, I'm not regularly part of IEP meetings or processes. It's not part of my daily job, so either I don't know much about it or do I need to know this." And we say anyone who is involved with these kids really should know a little bit more, because at the end of the day, any person who is involved with the child, no matter what capacity, has information and knowledge about that child that can be contributed to the IEP or if they don't have an IEP, but maybe there's something going on where they're sure of it, is someone that can really refer a kid to an IEP.

0:02:36.6 AS: So one thing that we love to do when we work with families is getting anyone involved. So we ask the families, "Is there any tutors or coaches or dance teachers or anyone that's involved in their life that can share information to the IEP team?" And it's really important that collaboration isn't just the school and the parents, it needs to be anyone who's working with that child because everyone that's working with that child knows something about that child and might know some unique part of them or their learning style that no one else does.

0:03:08.7 VB: And listeners, this might be a little bit of a review for you, but taking a step back in, what is an IEP, an individualized education plan program? It is one of those things that Amanda and I, we talk in acronyms, and so then we tend to forget that not everybody knows the acronym, [chuckle] and for the benefit of the live audience, we wanted to take a step back and wanted to review... Okay, we have an IEP, you guys listened to past episodes about how to get an IEP, but we really wanted to focus in on those annual plan work. Now, they're called plan review meetings but they're annual, so I don't know why we can't just still say annual IEP meetings, but it is what it is. It's new terminology. [chuckle] So they should be held at least once a year and it should be at a mutually agreeable time and place.

0:03:58.1 VB: What I would like to reiterate in the place is that now it could be via Zoom or whatever the conference system that your school district has. And that has just completely changed the way in which parents are able to show up to these meetings.

0:04:18.1 AS: Correct.

0:04:19.1 VB: Oftentimes they may have to take a full day off of work just to attend an hour or two hour IEP meeting, whereas now they can take a half a day when the child is in school preferably so that if the child can be part of the IEP, they'll be easily pulled and/or the parent doesn't have to worry about childcare. That has been a good thing of the pandemic, is that now everybody has the capability or should to have that be a mutually agreeable time and place.

0:04:46.1 AS: And we found too that this makes it a lot more accessible for anyone working with the child as well. Even if the meeting it's two hours, someone who's working with the child say after school, can hop on for 20 minutes and that's something that they really can share that input, whereas maybe before it was just not easy to do. Even us, we used to drive all over the place before the pandemic and go to IEP meetings and even that was only accessible as far as we were able to drive or fly up Northern California. And that is not as accessible for some of our rural areas.

0:05:17.5 VB: And if you're thinking about the team members, typically we have the parents, we have the regular education teachers, the special education teachers, we have a district administrator, we have anybody that can interpret or explain assessments. So do you have an occupational therapist? Do you have a physical therapist? Some of these individuals are only at certain campuses certain times. So to be able to have it via Zoom helps them. And then as you're thinking about middle school, high school, you have a lot of different teachers and so you're able to rotate the teachers out, especially if they're able to get onto a computer and do their part. And so we really wanted to focus in on that as the starting point. Okay we have the individuals that we want to be there. Everybody's gonna show up and what is the purpose of this meeting.

0:06:03.5 AS: Right. And so an IEP meeting is supposed to be developed really to ensure that the child's individualized and unique needs are met through this plan. And we're talking about what goals we're gonna be working on throughout the year. And so when we think about who should be there, as Vickie mentioned, a lot of times people think, "Well, maybe I don't need to be there, I could just provide written input." And often parents even get a note from the school saying, "Hey, such and such person can't be there, they're gonna provide written input and is that okay?" And a lot of times when we're involved we say, "Hey, let's try to schedule it when this person can be there." There might be certain meetings where you have... You're only talking about speech and so maybe you don't need the occupational therapist there.

0:06:46.8 AS: But when we talk about what makes a good IEP developed, it really comes from collaboration. And within that collaboration, in that meeting, you really are supposed to be brainstorming during that meeting. And so getting some written input from someone can somewhat be helpful, but I find if I look at a written statement, I often have more questions than I'd have answers. And it's not to say that that person can't provide those answers, but as we're trying to work through, what would it look like? What would it look like in the classroom to provide a certain service or work on a goal? What would it look like if we pulled the child? What does that classroom environment even look like? And we may not have those answers because that collaboration is really key.

0:07:28.2 VB: And I think the better IEP meetings that we have been in are those where the speech and language pathologist actually has consultation with... Normally we'd like to write it within the IEP so that we know that they have the time to do it, but where they're all either seeing the same things or the OT just said something that triggered something in speech. 'Cause a lot of the IEP meetings that we go to, it's like everyone is in their box and it's really hard for them to think outside of that box. And so when everybody is at the table or on the Zoom screen, and what our focus is is on this one child, and it's like, "Oh wait, he does that in your History class? Oh, he never does that in Math."

0:08:13.9 VB: "Oh, okay. Math, what do you do differently that the History teacher doesn't do?" We've had so many great conversations that way in that, "It's not just this, we have to get to this point and we have to... " I definitely want us to be on track. I love when there's an agenda, but with the IEP we are talking about the present levels of performance. We are talking about how Amanda had set the annual goals, what were the progress on the past goals? We are getting into accommodations modifications. Oftentimes, that gets rushed through and then we have like 30 accommodations that the Math teacher didn't even know existed because the child doesn't even use half of them. We wanna get those things out. We don't want to keep them in. Now, oftentimes... Sometimes you wanna keep certain things in just in case the child needs water and you don't know if the fifth grade teacher's gonna allow it. Yeah, okay fine, that's fine. But when we have some of these goals, it's like he hasn't used Text to Speech in three years. Okay, let him get rid of it. What else is there that we can put in its place? We don't want there to be 30 accommodations because when six new teachers are getting that in sophomore year and they have 10, 20 other IEPs that they have to do at a quick glance, it's overwhelming. And so those are the types of conversations that we want the teams to start having.

0:09:29.5 AS: Yeah. Well, if we're gonna truly figure out how does it uniquely fit this child in this moment, it's really important that we're really talking in real time. I had an IEP meeting the other day where the parent brought up a concern about the student eloping. And there's a bunch of field trips coming up this end of the school year and there's not really much in the IEP about elopement because in most of his school day it's very structured and they've never really dealt with elopements. But parent deals with it almost everyday in the morning on drop off. That's not necessarily seen by the school team, right? But now we have field trips that we have to be a little bit more concerned about and we started talking about what does elopement mean for that child?

0:10:08.2 AS: And if some of the team members were just asked outside of the meeting, do you see any elopements? Most of them I bet would've said no. But when we asked the parent what specifically... Let's define elopement in this scenario. And she defined it not as he's running off campus and running down the street. While that could certainly happen, most of the time it's he's expected to sit at his desk, he doesn't wanna do the work, so he gets up and he walks to the other end of the room. That is an elopement. But would many teachers think that's an elopement? Maybe not. Maybe they think elopement is leaving the classroom, but if he leaves the classroom, do they stay outside the door or does he run across campus? So this is the information that if you were to say the word elopement, and the same goes for behavior, we get this all the time. Unless you really define what behavior means, no one really knows what that really means, pertaining to a specific child, 'cause behaviors can mean so many things.

0:11:02.0 AS: So if we're sitting there having a conversation like we are now and we're talking through, "Well, wait, what does that really mean?" Rather than the teacher sitting there thinking, "Okay, I think I know what that means but I'm not gonna ask the question." Or, "Because we're reading it on the paper." So that makes a big difference in how we're gonna figure out how to support this child. So in that instance, it would've been very easy for the team to say, "Well, we don't see elopement so no big deal." But because they asked the question to the parents and because we stopped and said let's define it, we were then able to say, "Okay, this actually does happen in the classroom quite a bit." And what do we do in the classroom?

0:11:39.0 AS: Well, we actually do support them. We go over and we have a reinforcement system and we get them on that, we chunk the work and we do all these things. So we actually are supporting the student, but all that's not in the IEP. So what happens next year when we have a new teacher, if we don't define it in the IEP, the next year's teacher is gonna sit there and say, "Oh, I don't have to worry about any of these safety concerns or elopement. It's not even on my radar." So when we talk about collaboration, it's that twofold of gathering the right information but also asking the right questions so that way we can really do that brainstorming within the meeting.

0:12:13.4 VB: Yeah. I think especially when a parent requests an IEP meeting, sometimes they'll give just a short answer. And I think that, especially at the elementary school level, the teacher is there for the child, but also to build a relationship with the family they're with these children for an entire school year. And to be able to really understand where the parent is coming from, that communication is imperative between the teacher and the parent. Not only to also find common ground of how they will be able to connect with the child, but so that they can be that person that is the empathetic listener, the active listener that can speak up if a parent is... 'Cause pre-pandemic, it was very intimidating for a parent to sit across 12 people that are in IEP meetings day in and day out and, "We gotta get in, we got an hour, we gotta get going, da da da."

0:13:07.4 VB: It's really intimidating. And so our focus oftentimes is just being really curious. I can't tell you how many times it feels really personal and to the parent, there's no way, they're not gonna be able to be this objective reasonable person at the IEP. Well, they're the mama bear and they're the papa bear when they're talking about their child. And when it's something as, like I keep saying elopement, I keep saying I want reading intervention, and then the school's like "We do have reading intervention," and it starts to get really like almost combative. And it's that... The personal side of it comes out and for Amanda and I, those IEP team members that are curious, that take a step back like, "Okay, what do you mean when you say this? We do offer this." "What happened last year?" And really is able to have that open dialogue, we find that those are the better IEP team meetings because then we identify the problem, we know it inside and out, and then we're able to identify the solution and then the parent feels like an absolute equal participant. And that's like the buzz word of the law, right?

0:14:11.3 AS: Yeah. Participant.

0:14:13.0 VB: Because they have somebody in the teacher that is able to really indicate, "Okay, I think this is... Parent and I have been talking about this type of behavior and this is how we're gonna do it." And it helps everybody else see clearly.

0:14:23.1 AS: Yeah. And I think as we're having these conversations, a lot of times there's a lot of difference given to certain providers. So nobody else wants to talk about pragmatic language except for the speech therapist. Nobody wants to talk about sensory processing except the occupational therapist. No one's gonna talk about academics unless they're a teacher. And oftentimes that comes from just the rigorous... We go through very strict procedures and, look, the IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the law that we have to follow, has very strict procedures on how an IEP needs to be developed. But sometimes teams go so rigid in it that we forget that we are a team and that we should be collaborating with each other, and that every person that's at that table has information that can be shared no matter what subject matter or no matter what area we're even talking about.

0:15:15.4 AS: So early on in my career, I served as a soccer coach outside of my day job and I worked with kids with disabilities playing soccer. And I had a family that asked me to go to an IEP meeting, and I had the team... And I came like a soccer coach, they didn't know that I was also a special education attorney, so it was very different. And I got some pushback initially of, "Well, soccer, that is an extracurricular activity that's very different." And families hear this all the time, "What happens at home is a different environment and so therefore it doesn't necessarily apply to what's happening in school." And what I was able to share with the team is, "Look, you have goals in place, you're looking at progress on a prior goal," one of them was looking at two step directions and they were talking about how this child was following two step directions in the classroom.

0:16:00.1 AS: So they were looking at a full group setting. I had 20 kids on my soccer team all with disabilities and we had 10 high schoolers, so we're talking about a large group. I'm teaching them how to play soccer. I consider that a learning environment. And how often did I do two step directions? All the time. So one thing I was able to report to the team was, "Look, I'm not sitting here as the teacher for this student, but I have two step directions all the time and this student nails it every single time." So this is a situation where different environments do matter, but if you're seeing success on a skill in one environment, they can do it in the other environment and maybe we need to work on the language we're using or maybe we just need to talk about it. And I was able to share, "Look, these are the prompts that we use, these are the supports, the hand-on, the direction, the expectations we give at the beginning."

0:16:49.8 AS: And some of that can really provide a lot of feedback because maybe that language, and that particular child, language was so important, the specific language we use. And so I was able to provide feedback on how were we going to generalize that skill. So the same thing applies when we look at, say a speech therapist is working on a skill and the student is mastering it in speech on a one-on-one setting. And the parent is concerned because they don't see progress at home and we don't really see progress in the classroom because we haven't taken data because we're not even working on the classroom, 'cause the goal is for a one-on-one separate setting. And so it's important for those conversations between the speech therapist and the teacher on how can we work on generalizing it to the classroom. So the same idea applies, that just because that may not be your area of expertise doesn't mean you can't provide input.

0:17:41.1 AS: And even when we get into the idea of, are we starting the process of maybe this child needs an IEP in the first place? Anyone that's working with that child, that same idea applies 'cause you may not have a specialty in that one area, maybe you're not a school psychologist, so you can't assess. That doesn't mean that you don't know enough about this particular child and other children their age to be able to say, "Something's a little off," or, "They're great at this skill, but we're having some struggles with that." So really valuing each member of the team is so important in collaborating and really considering what everyone has to say.

0:18:19.0 VB: And I'm sure you're like, "Okay. Well, clarifying questions, but what else? What if we just don't have questions?" I think just being able to listen, summarize and regurgitate it. "Okay. So what I'm hearing is that you're saying that he is not following two step directions at home." This is what we do here as a way to show the parent... 'Cause in their mind they're like, "My child can't do this at home. I think you're lying to me about that he is doing it in school." That's a knee-jerk reaction we have a lot of clients express to us. And so I think that is really important as well to be able to really hear the parent, because some of the time it's them just having this cathartic moment with the IEP team. And you just need to be there to listen. I cannot tell you how many times I've been in an IEP meeting and a parent just starts breaking down crying. And nobody likes it when people cry, everybody's like, "What do we do? What do we do?" Honestly, it was just literally, I know this is pre-pandemic, but it was just like a this or like, "Here's some... "

0:19:23.8 AS: Tearful and...

0:19:24.0 VB: And the better district people were like, "Thank you for sharing. I know that was tough. This is what we have to talk about and how we can tackle that," or like, "I'm hearing that you're really frustrated and it just... " And then tension you just even go down... Even on Zoom, I feel like there's something about the Zoom concept, the video conference concept that is helpful to district people to be able to communicate more effectively to the parent. And I think one of the other things that we see that, it's just human nature, I'm sure it just happens, but comparison. "Well, this child has autism," and we're talking about some other child, I don't really know who we're talking about. And it's like, "I really don't care that we're talking about another child. We're talking about this child that's in front of us." It's so dismissive to a parent, especially if they just opened up and became vulnerable. I think it's different when you have a personal connection, you say, "I have a child with ADHD and she has the same type of issues." This is something that we can... I think that is rightful. But while we're saying like, "Oh, well, we have all these... " It feels very...

0:20:36.0 AS: We get the... Okay, this is a child who's five years old and is having certain distracting behaviors, and the parent is bringing up this behavior and saying, "This is something that we're concerned about." And the teacher would say, "Oh, this is really typical of five-year-olds." Or, "We have seen this all the time." Or, "And it happens with boys a lot." I also have a three-year-old boy, so I get this from his preschool teacher too like, "Oh, a lot of boys are like this. Boys, they're not as mature." These excuses. Or they specifically talk about it in other students. And the individualization part of the IEP needs to come in there. While it can be helpful if we're proposing a solution, if we are making an excuse, it is not possible, that comparison. Not just for what Vickie said of it really is hard for the family to hear, but it's not productive, because if someone is bringing up that there's a concern about something, we have to address that concern. And talking about the fact that other kids do it too, it's just not helpful, because there might be other kids where, and I had said this to a family in an IEP meeting because we had this exact situation where there was this comparison of, "Oh, a lot of kids in my class do that behavior."

0:21:49.9 AS: Well, at the end of the day, those other kids in the class that might be doing that behavior, maybe that's the only thing that impacts their entire school day, one thing. But this kid has like 15 to 20 things that impact his school day, so it has a bigger impact than say this other kid. So while it's not just helpful, it's hurtful to the parent to have this comparison and feel like we're not thinking about my child, but it's also the fact that we're not looking at it from the viewpoint of this particular child and how can we really help them in this moment, because it is gonna look different than that other child. And even if there's five other kids in the class that are having that behavior, it's different. And to put it in context, it's like, let's say the behavior is that the kid keeps getting up off their seat and they're kneeling. And we have a lot of classrooms now that are really good about having accessible seating and having the wiggle chairs and stuff like that, and that's wonderful.

0:22:45.3 AS: If we have four other kids in the class where that's the only time that maybe when they're wiggling, they're not listening to the teacher. So let's just say that that's something that impacts their ability to learn. They're not there for like five seconds, they're not listening to what the teacher is saying. So for that student who that's really the only thing that's impacting them, they're missing five seconds here and there, maybe twice in a day. Let's just say that. But for a child who has those behaviors where they're wiggling in their seat, but then they're also getting up because they have to have movement breaks, they have RSPs, so they're leaving for 20 minutes at a time every day. They go to speech another 30 minutes a week. They're having the teacher come over and give them one-on-one direction. Now we could be talking about an hour or two hours of their day that they're missing some instructions, so it does have a bigger impact now. So really thinking in those contexts of like, "What does it actually look like?" And that's a scenario that I just ran through that often is not explained in IEP meetings, even the parents, parents don't know what this looks like.

0:23:42.1 VB: I think parents are able to digest a part two IEP if they felt heard and seen. There's some districts out there that are notorious for having four part IEPs 'cause they just can't get past an hour. And okay, but then we start with an IEP in February, we're not ending it until May, and there's stuff that we got to change in there. And so I think some of the other ways that we can be collaborative and do this work outside, we give the homework to the parents to talk to the teacher. I cannot emphasize it. I know once we get to middle school, high school, it gets a little bit difficult, but you send an email at the beginning of the school year. You start having your child send the email if they can, saying, "This is my IEP. These are the things that I need in class," 'cause I cannot tell you... I was just in an IEP on Tuesday, and the mom, before the IEP had started, asked her son, "Is there anything that you think needs to be in your IEP that you don't think is already in there?" And he's gonna transition from sixth grade to seventh grade. So this was something important that we needed the seventh grade teachers to know. And he said, "Music. I love to listen to my music."

0:24:50.6 VB: And the teacher right now, she's amazing and she lets him listen to his music and things like that and it focuses him. But it's something that we actually had not talked about at the IEP, that this was just something that we did. And so when mom shared that, we're like, "Oh, my God, this is amazing. And the teacher was like, "Oh, my God, yes, he listens to music all the time. I don't know why I didn't think that we need to say that he needs this on. It's blaring, but he gets his work done." And so when we're having those conversations and those relationships are already started, and like I said, we give that homework to the parents reach out to the teachers. We already put so much on our teachers, we're not trying to make it more, but I think that you oftentimes as a teacher, when you're at these IEP meetings and you do have that relationship with the family, I've had a lot of teachers say they don't feel like they can speak up.

0:25:37.8 VB: And that is... Teachers are the boots on the ground. They are with that child more sometimes than the parent is. And so we want to empower teachers to be able to know your classroom and know that you're the one that's running it. And I think that that is probably the biggest takeaway when we do these trainings and we talk to different teachers and even administrators, of really trying to empower those people that are with the child so that that collaboration can actually happen.

0:26:10.7 AS: Yeah. And the more communication, the better. We have families that come to us that say, "I'm not sure what to say. I'm filling out these input forms, but I don't know what to say." Or, "Can you review it so I don't say too much?" And almost every time I say, "There's nothing you can say or do that is gonna make my job harder." Now, of course, there's caveats about it, of course, but let's say you're filling out an input form and you're being honest and forthright. There might be some attorneys out there, not just in special education law, but others that will say, "Oh, keep your mouth shut. Don't give that information." We really feel like the more you withhold information, both from the school side and from the family side, the more it leads to that breakdown in communication.

0:26:52.3 AS: And the breakdown in communication is 95% of conflict in IEP meetings, which leads to distrust, 'cause not only do we have a distrust when we feel like people aren't being honest with us or not giving us information or withholding, but we're not able to get to the root of the problem. A lot of the examples we've given so far have been talking about what does something actually mean? What do you mean? I had a family one time that came to me, were fighting for four years about getting a new program for their child. And they kept going to IEP meetings, I read the notes. They kept asking, "We think our child needs a new program." I asked the parents on our consultation, I said, "What do you mean by program?" And they go, "Oh, no one's ever asked me that before."

0:27:37.2 AS: Okay. What they were talking about with program is they were talking about a reading intervention program. They felt that their child might have dyslexia and that the reading intervention program that was being done in the whole class, in the general education class, they didn't feel like she was making progress. What did the school team hear? The school team thought they met a different special program, meaning a special day class. And every single one of these IEP meetings, they kept saying, "She doesn't need a special day class." Now, I hear that and I go, "No, we're not asking for a special day class." The parents don't understand that most of the time. So just that word program, we think that... And granted, there's always gonna be an issue with language when the family don't speak English as their primary language, so we have that problem. But even when everyone is a native English speaker, words don't always mean the same.

0:28:28.5 AS: We have the Webster's definition of a word. We have the legal definition of a word. We have what an average person who's not in the education realm thinks of that word. And then most of the time we have an education word. So we might be talking about four different definitions. And I mentioned earlier about behavior, behavior can be millions of definitions, if we talk about getting the curious, but asking questions. So a lot of times on goals, we have goals for kids on dealing with how to answer WH questions; who, where, what, when, and how. I tell parents, I tell schools, I tell teachers, ask these questions. You should be asking them. You should be understanding them. So if you look at anything in the IEP, or if you ever have a conflict, if you sit down and you run through those WH questions, I almost guarantee that you're gonna find a solution, because most of the time, one of those questions is gonna lead you to realize that either something isn't working 'cause we're not all on the same page or it's gonna lead you to think, "Oh, wait, I didn't think about it like that." Especially if you're having a room full of 10 people who are all professionals.

0:29:37.0 VB: I've had so many people look at me like, "How do you not know this? Giving me this look and I'm like, "You should be worried why I'm asking you that." Now, you ask it and then you have a couple of people go, "Oh, yeah. Okay. That's what that means, for sure. Yeah. Okay." And you're not gonna be the only person.

0:29:50.5 AS: And not just the definitions of things, not just as language, but also what the goals look like or accommodations. Often we look at accommodations in IEPs, and more often than not, if there's a problem with implementation of an accommodation in the classroom, let's say a general education classroom, it's because it was not written clearly enough. The accommodation was... I had this one the other day, use of Chromebooks. Okay, what does that mean? Who's is using the Chromebook? Is the teacher using it? Is the aid? Is the student?

0:30:21.1 VB: Is it in the classroom? Does the child have it? Is the teacher...

0:30:24.0 AS: When are they using it? Are they using it during whole group instruction? During independent work time? Are they allowed to use it during downtime?

0:30:31.3 VB: Is it an A&T assessment? How do we get here with the Chromebook?

0:30:38.5 AS: What program are we using? How are they using it? Are they physically able to use it by themselves or they need someone else? Are they able to go and grab it themselves? Who's responsible for this Chromebook if they're in middle school and they're going from class to class? So just now, we listed off how many questions. And so you see a teacher looking at that accommodation or someone who's not a special education professional, and how would they know how to implement that? So we need to be really specific, not just because... And we've been told that we're nitpicky with IEPs sometimes, or at least I've been told that because I ask them to be so specific, but there's a reason for it. We wanna make sure that it's being implemented correctly, but anyone that picks up this piece of paper that's the IEP understands it exactly.

0:31:18.3 AS: And for the parents too. Anyone should be able to look at that. And that's the same for if the parent goes to the SOP coach and says, "Hey, here is my child's IEP, I'd really love for you to have the information." When I coached soccer, I had a couple of parents that did that, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't even think to ask you about their IEPs. I do this for a living." But a few of them gave me their IEPs, and I was like, "This is wonderful because this really is helpful for me." And I started asking more and more students for that. So we all might have a vast knowledge of things, but kids in general are all different, we're all different. So especially kids who have disabilities are all gonna be different. And there's so many different varieties of children and there's so many varieties of classroom environments, that oftentimes it can become overwhelming and no one is gonna know everything about everybody. So collaboration is really key.

0:32:11.3 VB: I think before we get into questions, I just wanna leave you with this. When we build a home, we build it to how we want it to be. And then sometimes we think, "Oh, you know what? I think I need to be ADA compliant. Let me get a wheelchair in here. Let me put some of this accessible stuff." And the purpose of this conversation and starting it with you guys from the Boost Conference is simply we should have actually started with, how can we make this home accessible for everyone before we even built it? We're inviting them to the table to inform us what is it that we need and that is gonna have the stronger foundation, it's gonna have the best way for people to actually access that home than it would be for us to just have it in our minds of what we need it to be for our specific purposes. And we really hope that we gave you some tips and tricks that you can implement within the IEP collaboration meetings that you guys will soon have. And listeners, we will talk to you next week. Bye.

0:33:15.0 AS: Bye.