The Complete IEP Guide: How to Advocate for Your Special Ed Child

Gary just can’t seem to fit in. He doesn’t have any friends, his school work is always sloppy, and his teachers endlessly criticize him. But Gary has a way to escape—he spaces out. Then one day Gary accidentally hurts someone, and now he’s being sent to a new school for kids with different learning styles. Will Gary finally be able to catch up and fit in, or will he remain the Spaceman forever?

In this essential work the authors lay out a complete, step-by-step approach for parents, educators, and others who work with developmental problems. Covering all kinds of disabilities — including autism, PDD, language and speech problems, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and ADD — the authors offer a new understanding of the nature of these challenges and also specific ways of helping children extend their intellectual and emotional potential. The authors first show how to move beyond labels to observe the unique profile — strengths and problems — of the individual child. Next, they demonstrate the techniques necessary to help the child not only reach key milestones but also develop new emotional and intellectual capacities.

Labeled “dyslexic and profoundly learning disabled with attention and behavior problems,” Jonathan Mooney was a short bus rider — a derogatory term used for kids in special education and a distinction that told the world he wasn’t “normal.” Along with other kids with special challenges, he grew up hearing himself denigrated daily. Ultimately, Mooney surprised skeptics by graduating with honors from Brown University. But he could never escape his past, so he hit the road. To free himself and to learn how others had moved beyond labels, he created an epic journey. He would buy his own short bus and set out cross-country, looking for kids who had dreamed up magical, beautiful ways to overcome the obstacles that separated them from the so-called normal world.

*This book contains adult language.

Kinneret feels terrible-she can’t concentrate in class, she’s having nightmares, and her teachers think she is lazy. She fantasizes that a big, white bird will come and carry her away from all of her troubles. Fifth-grade brings someone else to help her, though - a new special education teacher who recognizes that Kinneret is neither lazy nor irresponsible.

“Bad” Helen is in trouble. If she can’t improve her reading skills, she will be stuck in the sixth grade forever! An ace baseball pitcher and class clown, Helen must now face the fact that reading is not one of her skills. With the help of a sympathetic teacher, Helen decides to brave her classmates’ teasing and enter a special education class.

This anthology is comprised of two major components: thirteen full-length, autobiographical essays written by persons with learning disabilities and five analytical chapters written by education and psychology scholars. Speaking in terms alternately intimate and analytical, the autobiographical essays each tell of a sustained personal encounter with the challenges and mysteries of living with a learning disability. But these autobiographies are not merely personal, concerned solely with their writers’ private lives. Rather, they are also in various ways consciously analytical, offering astute critical readings of culture and society. The scholarly essays are written by such noted educators and psychologists as Lisa Delpit, Robert Kegan, and Janet Lerner. For any educator or parent of students with learning disabilities.