I SURVIVED IEP DAY!!

It’s Thursday, October 27th, and the only reason I am certain of the date today is because it is IEP day. Otherwise ALL the days are just blending together like one endless loop.

Some brainiac downtown, in a quiet office, with daily lunch breaks, and a well defined start and end time to their day, decided that it makes more sense to have one (maybe two if need be) designated days a month to hold all IEP meetings. And even smarter, this idea requires the team of school site specialists to get together before school even starts to schedule the entire’s year worth of IEP meetings. Nothing says “you’re a valuable, contributing member of the IEP team” like scheduling the meetings without first checking the availability of the teacher or the parents of the student. What is also not considered, is how many one teacher may have in that one day!

Writing IEPs is a TON OF WORK! First, I have never written one shorter than 43 pages. But it is not just the length of the IEP but the collaboration with the team and parents ahead of time, the assessing the student, the thought behind where the student’s current level of functioning is, where they need to progress, and how exactly to write goals to get them there. Writing IEPs is mentally taxing and the actual meetings can be, depending on the people involved, even more so!

I initially had 4 IEPs scheduled for today. I was the only teacher with meetings scheduled. That’s a HUGE issue with other people scheduling your meetings for you. Lucky, lucky me! So that has been what I have been ferociously working on this past week. It’s not like I also have students to teach as well, right?!?! Lesson plans to develop and prep for!?! I was blessed with a pardon, and 2 of the parents simply could not get out of work to attend their pre-scheduled IEP time, so I did get to reschedule those for next week. Which does help, because after the 2 I had today, as well as the 2 observations from my favorite Frequent Flyer Parent this week, I am so mentally exhausted I have never been more grateful for the already open bottle of wine!

Time to recharge…Staff Training Day tomorrow. UGH!