Corner CAFE CoP #4: How might we engage families with children with special needs?

Nikevia Thomas:

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for joining us at The Corner Cafe. It is the interstate Community of Practice for professionals in Maryland and Pennsylvania. We’re going to get started in just a few moments. Just a few seconds actually.

Today’s topic is how might we engage families with children with special needs? We have a panel, some amazing professionals to hear from. So let us pause the music and get started. So we would like to get to know you and all about you who’s here today. We would like you to please type in the chat, your name, your state, the entity that you are representing and your role there. Also, for our Community of Practice, we have a Community of Practice Padlet. To access the Padlet, it’s password protected and the password is mochalatte. When you enter the Padlet, there is a icebreaker question that’s on the left hand side and the question is, do you prefer coffee or tea? I’m going to pause for a second so that I can show you what it looks like. Hold on.

Here is the link to the Community of Practice and let me show you what it looks like. Here we go. So the Community of Practice page looks like this. Again, to access the Community of Practice Padlet, the password is mochalatte, all one word, all lowercase. To answer the question, you see getting to know you column, and it’s the first image on the top that says, “Do you prefer coffee or tea?” and you can type. Oh, somebody’s already typing that they prefer coffee… Oh, there are a bunch of people. Hot coffee and iced tea are faves. Ooh, okay. Nice. Awesome. Let me see who’s replied in the chat. Clarissa, welcome. Renee, Cindy, Martha, Kelly. Welcome, Debbie. Welcome, welcome.

So let’s continue. You can continue adding to the Padlet. We also have resources there if there are… Oops, I pressed the wrong thing. If there are questions that you have throughout the Community of Practice today, you can type them in the What I Wonder section. So let’s continue. So I would like to introduce myself. My name is Nikevia Thomas. I didn’t say that earlier but my name is Nikevia Thomas and I’m a senior specialist at MAEC. I work on the CAFE Team and I do a lot of work on the Maryland side and also on the interstate side bringing Maryland and Pennsylvania together and I introduce Jessica, will tell you a little bit about herself.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

It would help if I unmuted. Good morning, everyone. I’m Jessica Webster. I am a senior family engagement specialist on our CAFE Team. I’m so excited to be here with you today. I actually served as an inclusion specialist in school district supporting families and students with special needs. And so, this topic today is near and dear to my heart so thank you for joining us for this conversation.

Nikevia Thomas:

Thank you. So we at MAEC are a champion of innovation, collaboration, and equity and here’s our agenda for today. We’ll have welcome and introductions. We’ll have a panel discussion. We’ll have small group discussions and then we’ll have some questions and then closing. So-

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

All right.

Nikevia Thomas:

Oh, go for it, Jessica.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Oh, sorry. Just a few reminders on Zoom etiquette. Please use the chat box to engage with other participants during our conversation today. You can click on the chat icon at the bottom of your screen or the toolbar. Please do not use the raised hand function and then we will have a Q&A period towards the end. But if you have questions that you would like to record during our conversation today, please put your questions in the What I Wonder Section of the Padlet or in the chat and we’ll keep track of those and make sure that we have an opportunity to answer those towards the end.

The next thing I want to remind you on the next slide is that we do have the ability to enable or disable live captions. So if you would like the assistance of the live caption, please hit the live transcript button at the bottom of your screen. If you have the closed caption on and you would like to turn it off, do the same thing and select hide subtitles or if you need to view them, obviously, you’re hitting the live transcript or closed caption button. Next slide please.

Nikevia Thomas:

Right. Thank you, Jessica. So I’d like to share some background about MAEC to get us started. So MAEC was founded in 1992 as an education nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to high quality education for culturally diverse, linguistically and economically diverse learners. MAEC envisions a day when all students have equitable opportunities to learn and achieve at high levels and our mission is to promote excellence and equity in education to achieve social justice.

So CAFE is the Collaborative Action for Family Engagement Center and it is a big project for MAEC. We are the statewide Family Engagement Center for Maryland and Pennsylvania. We help build sustainable infrastructure to support healthy family, community, and student engagement. CAFE serves all educators from state agencies to school districts to school staff and early childcare providers and families to promote high impact, culturally responsive family engagement.

The purpose of the Corner Cafe Community of Practice is really to create cross state collaboration and opportunity for networking to share resources and strategies with each other. This is a Community of Practice that has been developed for practitioners by practitioners. Our steering committee or advising team is comprised of practitioners at all levels and our emphasis is on systemic, integrated, and comprehensive family engagement using priorities that are important to Maryland and Pennsylvania. So now, let us get started. I’ll pass it over to Jessica.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Excellent. Thank you. We’re so excited for today. Our conversation today is about engaging families of students with special needs and we have an all-star panel today to give us some information and insight on ways to support those families. So next slide please.

So let’s kick off by meeting our panelists. Rene is the executive director at the Parents’ Place of Maryland and she has been since 2017. Prior to that, she worked as the regional technical assistance co-chair for the OSEP funded parent centers in the mid-south region. She has worn many hats in the field of special education, parent educator, early childhood behavior specialist, evaluator, and charter school administrator. Rene currently serves on several national and statewide disability committees and advisory groups. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s in organizational change management. Rene is a proud parent of two grown daughters, both with disabilities and an even prouder Mimi of two grandsons.

Chris joins us today from a small town in eastern Pennsylvania where he resides with his wife and four children, two of which you can see in his photo. He has spent over 20 years working at a regional service agency in Northeast Pennsylvania as a special education teacher, educational administrator, and executive director, and he also serves as an adjunct professor at the Delaware Valley University. In addition, he’s a master trainer in therapeutic aggression control techniques and he is committed to influencing people to be positive in all situations. His focus is on addressing challenges and issues by creating opportunities through creative solutions.

We’re also happy to be joined by Cindy who is the director of individual assistance for The PEAL Center in Pennsylvania. Cindy lives in Allegheny County with her husband, Jim and their two sons, Andrew and Alex. In addition to her work at The PEAL Center, Cindy is the current vice chairperson for the local task force for the rights of education in Allegheny County which is under Intermediate Unit 3. Cindy also serves the disability community as a member of the PA Rehabilitation Council and chairperson of its transition IDA committee. She’s a commissioner on the PA Employment First Oversight Commission. Cindy also serves as a peer monitor assisting the PA Department of Education and monitoring the Special Education Departments of school districts in Pennsylvania and she has a BSBA in economics from Robert Morris College, now Robert Morris University.

So welcome to our panelists and let’s jump in with our first question of the day. So I think our first question and I’ll start with you Rene, is how does family engagement impact children with disabilities in schools?

Rene Averitt-Sansone:

Good morning. What a way to start off Monday morning, right? That’s a humdinger of a question. I think that the way that it really impacts families with children with disabilities for family engagement and what makes it hard is the fact that there is this whole additional layer of just the special education world, right? Depending if it’s an itty bitty birth to three, that’s their first introduction to what we like to call the alphabet soup, all of the acronyms that go with it and there are so many layers to all of those pieces that a lot of times professionals that aren’t necessarily as familiar with the special education world will sometimes don’t understand all of the pieces that families are trying to juggle and all of the pieces that families are trying to navigate. Just also feeling… There can be really feelings of isolation like, “We’re the only ones. We’re alone,” and all of those pieces. So I think that those are really some of the big chunks that can really impact some of those pieces.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. Thank you for that. Cindy, would you like to add anything to Renee’s thoughts?

Cindy Dutch:

Yeah. I think that thinking about my personal lived experience, my son started school, I looked at this as a career that I was going to have to take on for 15 or more years. So being engaged meant that I knew what was going on and other folks knew that I was involved, I was engaged, and I wanted what was appropriate for him and that’s what we were going to work towards. Families will engage at their own levels and I think that has to be understood and some families aren’t going to be as engaged as others. But whatever that level of engagement, they’re there for their child.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. I think that’s a real, really great point, Cindy. One of the things that we always look at or one of our core beliefs is that every family wants what’s best for their children. And so, that may be more visible for some families than it is for others due to a myriad experiences that they might have. I think special education is complex because you’re always… You have all those things that all of us go through as parents and then there’s extra layers on there and for some of our families, there’s a lot of uncertainty and, confusion even sometimes I think, in navigating the system because there’s specific rules and procedures that have to be followed which can be somewhat intimidating for our families. So thank you for that. Chris, from the professional side, what would you add to that question? How does that role of family engagement impact children with disabilities in school?

Chris Wolfel:

Yeah. Good morning, everybody. So I think the biggest impact, number one is relationships and I think when school providers or service providers can build relationships with families, there’s truly a partnership there that they’re working together and building up that trust. It is critical because your children are with us all day and there’s some trust that goes with that because sometimes, some of our children do have some challenging behavior and I think there’s some fear on the side of families when they let them go and then they’re with somebody else.

But I think also, family engagement, at least when it’s done correctly, it connects families together so it creates that space for families to feel a sense of belonging and not feel isolated. It empowers families to be part of that educational process so they truly feel they are a member in the decision making and the planning and the preparation that happens in school. The biggest… One of the other areas that’s really big for me is every opportunity to meet with a family is an opportunity to increase or improve our services that we’re providing to our children and I’ve learned more from our families about how to make some revisions and changes to the services which not only supports their child but supports all the children that we’re servicing.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. Thank you for that. So I hear a couple things of building trust, maybe a sense of isolation and making sure that we’re bringing families together to make connections so that those things don’t happen for families, they feel like they’re not alone in all this. Also, that broader sense of empowerment so that families understand the process and are able to help make decisions for their children because they do know them best. I think that’s true.

Renee, I noticed you put in the chat, there has to be a belief system in place that the family is the expert on their child which I think Chris echoed that as well. Absolutely. Because they are and it’s really important that we make sure that we include them and… Not just include them but really make sure that they’re driving the conversation on hopes and dreams and where we want families to go. So we know that entering special education services and programming can be intimidating to parents. What would you recommend and Cindy, this time I’ll start with you, what would you recommend that schools do to support new families into the process of special education?

Cindy Dutch:

Well, initially, just to be welcoming, this is something that most of us don’t study for. So when our kids are being referred for special education, they might still be reeling from some diagnosis or other family events. So being really that partner and making us feel like equal partners but at the same time recognizing that as we are equal partners, we don’t know yet everything we need to know to be fully informed decision makers on that team.

My son’s 28 and I still say there’s things that I learn about special education all the time. So it’s sometimes a long hard road understanding… Not only knowing what the law says or where to find what the law says but then knowing, “Well, how’s that going to support my child? How’s that going to affect my child?” We’ve had to some discussions lately, there was a big PDE conference last week and we were talking about procedural safeguards and that oftentimes they’re given to us as they have to be but how many times are teams explaining to the parent what’s in those procedural safeguards and how many families have the time or sometimes the ability to read through those procedural safeguards?

So getting a good understanding of what rights we have is important and knowing that we have the right to disagree with the school. So I think that part is welcoming and having a go-to person at the school who is familiar with her child and not just one of those folks that show up at the meetings, I think that’s important.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. Thank you. I think having that person who can be an advocate and bridge the gap between the family coming in because they know the child and the school system and helping with that sense of possible confusion or intimidation or uncertainty about how it works is really important and I don’t mean advocate in terms of a position but I mean in terms of there is someone there who does know the family and does know the child and can help with that transition into the school system supports. Chris, what would you add to that as a practitioner?

Chris Wolfel:

Yeah. Sure, and Cindy makes a good point, right? Welcoming is the first thing, make sure that you’re welcoming. Again, to me it’s starting to build that relationship and connecting and more and more opportunities, especially early on, as many opportunities that you can put in place to connect and interact, get to know one another, and what’s important to you as a classroom teacher or a service provider, what’s important from the family about what they’re looking for from their child, and Cindy made a good point.

It’s more than just handing a piece of paper with procedural safeguards, it’s more about giving the families knowledge and information and giving them those opportunities to explain certain things like, “What is the IEP process? What are timelines? What are all those acronyms mean? What are other supports that families can access in the community?” and one thing that was really important for us in our region from our families was who are the people that are working with their children?

So many times, our children have a special education teacher, various therapists, people maybe from outside community providers. Well, who are all these people? What are their roles and their responsibilities and who do I go to with my questions? And then, also, what is the chain of command in a school district? Who do I go to for these questions? Do I go right to the superintendent of schools or do I go to the teacher first? Do I go to the principal? Do I go to the Special Ed Director? So really taking the time to help families understand all the different roles that people have in your school and then who to go to when they have those questions to get the answers.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. I would echo that. Rene, what else would you add?

Rene Averitt-Sansone:

Just a couple of quick pieces that I would just add to that is that I think there also needs to be a structure in place that allows professionals the time to do this. I think that’s really super important. I also echo what Cindy is saying about the fact that there are layers, so families are going to be able to process this information at different paces, different times, different… So it’s very important for professionals not to get frustrated when, “Oh, but I’ve already explained it.” Well, yeah, you might have to explain it more than once because guess what? You as the professionals aren’t walking a mile in our shoes as moms, dads, grandma’s, aunts, uncles, right? I think that’s really super hard sometimes for professionals because they mean well. Trust me, I know they mean well. I think it’s also that piece of, I think, Jessica, you mentioned that piece of not advocate in the sense of someone coming in and speaking for the parent but that support because advocate can be just a really dicey word, right?

It tends to elevate situations that could be barriers to developing the relationships because you’re in these systems for a really long time. So I think it’s also super important to think about, “What’s that support role?” and that’s where it’s really super important, particularly when we’re talking with children with disabilities, that professionals really connect families to their parent training information centers in each of their respective states. There’s one of us in every state. And so, it’s super important because our role as parent training information centers is not a role of advocacy. It’s a role of informing, empowering, and supporting families to become their child’s best advocate and really take that time to explain all of this stuff to them that sometimes professionals just don’t have the time or aren’t given the time. Now, in a perfect world, it would be great if they were. So I would just add those quick pieces on.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. Thank you for that. That is really important and I think you’re right. I think what we’re finding when we talk about family and community engagement is it really does take a whole community. And so, when we have these resources as schools being aware of the resources and being able to share them with our families, if we can’t do… We can’t potentially do everything, we can at least connect our families to individuals who can do that. Thank you for that.

So let’s talk a little bit about those harder situations when we have families who have concerns about their child’s ability and progress but maybe aren’t in the special education system yet. How would you recommend, and Chris, we’ll start with you on this one, how would you guide parents who… Or what should schools think about in terms of guiding parents who might have concerns about their child’s abilities and progress and might be interested in initiating the process of evaluation?

Chris Wolfel:

Sure. Well, I mean, the first thing to do is you got to listen. You got to keep your mouth shut and open your ears and take the time to actually listen to families and let them speak without interruption so you can gather as much information as you can and that opens the door. The minute that you start to question or interrupt, then it just pushes the family farther away and then they say, “Well, maybe this wasn’t the right thing to do,” and they walk away from you. So you truly have to listen and gather as much information as possible.

And then, there’s various process, whether you’re looking at a response intervention process and you’re trying to help them through going through tiers of supports in the MTSS process and it all varies by school district. Some school districts will have different processes and systems in place and I think that’s what we have to do as service providers is explain to families what the process is, how does it progress like, “If this is successful, then we’re going to do this. If this is not successful, then this is the next step,” and with that final step might be issuing a permission to evaluate and then going through some formal testing to identify whether the child has a disability and requires that specially designed instruction but I think it’s important to let families know the entire process and the path that you’re going to take.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. Thank you. I think that expectation clarity is very important and what those guiding timelines would be, right? We’re not going to let your child continue to struggle here. If we’re seeing data, we’ll know in so many weeks and we’ll reconvene and talk about it so families know that things are moving along and that helps. Rene, what would you add to that?

Rene Averitt-Sansone:

Yeah. No, that was fantastic. I think the only two pieces I would add to that is one, just be honest. There are so many times that families bring these concerns. Again, well-meaning professionals absolutely positively have the best heart at this work but there’s almost this sense of, “Well, let’s just give it some time,” right? “Oh, they’re a boy,” and the reality is as a mom… Trust me, you ask any parent who has a child with a disability, our gut is usually right and two, no parent ever said, “Gee, thanks for waiting to tell me or to validate my concerns.” So that’s why I can’t ditto and echo enough of what Chris said. I appreciate that honesty.

And then, the other thing is, again, the multi-tiered system of supports, absolutely those things. But one of the other things is how can you put some really tangible resources in families’ hands that are easy to read? So depending on the age of the child, what are some good just developmental kind of things or things that you could be helping your kid at home with? Because again, not only to Cindy’s point from earlier, not only did… It was talk about fire by baptism, right?

When you get a child with a disability and you get a diagnosis, it’s poom! You’re just thrown in the deep end. But also, the other piece is while we are the experts on our child, we are also not the first grade teacher and we’re not the reading person, we’re not the language arts, we’re not the history, blah, blah. So what are also some of those things that we could say, “Hey, here’s also some things you can do at home that you might find helpful.”

Not that we want you to be the teacher or do any of those things, here are some different things that, “Hey, when you’re reading a bedtime story, these might be some things you might want to think about for examples.” So because a family tip… Because we all want what’s best for our kids and we all want to do right by our kids, sometimes having something like that makes it feel like we’ve got something we can put our hands around or wrap our arms around to feel like, “Okay. All right. We’re doing something.” Regardless if the extra interventions end up going, “Yep, those worked,” or, “Yes. No, we need to do the formal process of special education for determining eligibility and special education.”

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Absolutely. I think one of the pieces that we always look at in family engagement, whether it’s for students who have a disability or who have English as their next language is always that idea of how… Or just children in general, right? Like, “How are we engaging our families to help reinforce skills to expand and enrich the learning that we do in school in different ways?” And so, that shouldn’t be left out because we’re focused on a document that we’re doing in school and all families have the ability to do some things at home that they can use to help their children with what they have at home so I think that’s wonderful. Cindy, do you have thoughts to add on that as well from your experiences?

Cindy Dutch:

I do. So it is a confusing process and like we’ve said a couple of times, we do know our kids best. So at the PTI, we do get calls from families sometimes who are looking to have an evaluation done for their child and that they say that the school has said that they don’t think that the child needs it or, “Let’s try something else.” But at the same time, that concern that the child needs something that they’re not currently getting is still there. So I think just giving parents number one, the knowledge and then number two, what they need to pursue when they disagree with the school and it’s okay to disagree.

We get training from our office of dispute resolution that often tells us conflict is opportunity. So getting to know that family better, getting to know the child better, and using this as an opportunity to either have more conversation or if needed, to use early dispute resolution in order to resolve the issue. Again, those are all opportunities for… Or conflict is opportunity and those systems aren’t adversarial, they’re not put in place to be adversarial. Like I said, we have to have this relationship. I know Peter Wright often says that special education is marriage with no chance of divorce. So we have to maintain that relationship and that’s what early dispute resolution is for, maintaining relationship.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

I love that thought though that conflict is an opportunity and it is an opportunity to have those conversations and I think Chris said earlier, making sure that we’re constantly thinking about increasing our programming or improving it and those are opportunities for that. That is absolutely powerful thoughts there. Thank you for that.

One of the things that has come up from all three of you is really that sense of bringing families together so that they’re not feeling like this is an isolating process. So Cindy, what experiences have you had with family to family or peer supports, programs that have been successful, and how would you suggest schools develop these programs so that their families have a chance to network and learn from each other and support each other?

Cindy Dutch:

This is one of my favorite topics. So I always say and I think Chris said it too, some of the best information you get is from other families. It doesn’t always have to do with what the law says or following policy but what works and that information comes from parents with lived experience so that’s the importance of it.

But I know early on in my school district, we tried to engage the school in having us network. It’s not a bad thing for parents to have knowledge. It makes for a better team and the school wasn’t interested so parents ended up meeting on their own. But it would’ve been so much more useful for both the families and the schools if the schools would’ve participated with the families. Hopefully, we’re in another age because like I said, my son is much older, he’s 28 but we’re at a different time now.

There’s not a reason to be afraid of families is that, like we said, we’re all working towards the same thing. We want what’s best for our child and we’re going to work for best understanding that the school’s going to work for appropriateness but how can we get there? Like Chris has said a few times now, it’s all about that relationship about working together. Families aren’t the bad guys. We’re always perceived that way but… Groups where families can share things and come together and say, “Oh yeah, I was going through that too,” or, “My child went through that too.” It’s just a good thing.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. I would agree with that. Renee, from your experiences, have you been part of or seen success with family to family or peer supports and with schools supporting those efforts?

Rene Averitt-Sansone:

Not holistically. I wish I could say that, not holistically. Are there pockets? Yes, I’m sure just not that I’ve necessarily heard about those particularly. Typically, to Cindy’s point, those parent-to-parent type supports usually operate outside of the schools with those pieces but I do think is that an opportunity? Absolutely, I think it’s an opportunity.

I think the piece that schools need to be really intentional about is the fact is but asking the family, “What is it that you want?” because a lot of times, again, really well-meaning folks but they think like, “Oh, I think parents would like X, Y, and Z,” create it, and then they wonder why parents don’t come or families don’t come. So I think what you need to back up is that and again, back to that authentic, meaningful, engagement is asking families, “What do you want? What do you need? What would be helpful? What would be useful?” and don’t get your feelings hurt if families say, “You know what? We’re good. We just like to meet at the park on Saturday morning with a cup of coffee because guess what? The kids can play. We can talk and it’s almost like maybe we had adult time with those pieces.” So I would couch it as it’s an opportunity which is always a good thing.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Absolutely. Chris, I saved you for last on this because I know you do have a family group. Would you be so kind just to share out your experiences with the group that you have created at your IU?

Chris Wolfel:

Sure. When I hear Cindy say that schools don’t want to get involved or create that space, it’s like a punch in the gut. It’s just so frustrating because we learn so much from our families when we have these events. But yeah, it’s really is creating as many opportunities as possible to connect families with one another because they are resources for one another.

I can listen to a family and I can have empathy but I’ve never walked the walk. Other families have walked that walk. So there’s automatically a little bit more trust in those situations which is fine with me. It’s just creating that space to do that. But our IU parent team that started a few years ago, I mean, we’re up to over 600 families that are part of that IU-20 team.

We meet monthly for breakfast and it’s… Not all 600 meet for breakfast but you’ll have like today maybe 25 families show up for breakfast. At that breakfast, it’s just a time to get together and talk. Sometimes we talk about kids, sometimes we’re talking about what did we do last night, where are we going on vacation but I always bring someone with me to my breakfast. So someone that might be an expert like Thursday, we have breakfast and I’m bringing in someone on our feeding team to talk about the feeding services to help to educate families on what is that service. A lot of our families probably never heard of it before.

We provide monthly evening trainings. Again, the families request a topic or they want to hear more about something and we bring people from our IU or other community providers and we do trainings. And then, the really cool thing is that’s grown into now families engaging in community events together. So whether it’s going to a hockey game locally here with our Lehigh Valley Phantoms or participating together in Special Olympics, fundraising events, working together to create a really awesome prom that we hold every year at our IU.

Families are together and they’re talking and even their children are together and they’re developing friendships in those relationships. Now, we’re starting to connect the IU-20 parent team with other family teams in the regions. So for example, we have a team in Bethel Mary School District which is one of our largest school districts called Proud Parents of Bethel and their focus is 100% advocacy and advocacy for all public education. Well, now, we’ve connected our families with them and now our families are learning about how to advocate better in Harrisburg and how to speak to a legislator to help drive more special ed services in the area which is great.

And then, the other thing in Pennsylvania is really encouraging participation in your local task force because that’s another opportunity for families to come together, share resources. In our local task force, we have an IU representative at all those meetings but we also try to get school district representatives there. So again, we’re starting to try to make connections with families and people that maybe they don’t know in their school district that they’re a resource so it’s just open your doors. I just… Man, Cindy, what school’s not doing that? I need to go yell at them like tell him to come talk to me. It’s nothing to be scared about. Oh my gosh. It’s so many great opportunities. When you shut your door, you’re shutting your door to so many other things. It’s really sad. So whenever you get that, tell them to call me, I’ll tell them to open their doors.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

But on that note, I guess a follow up question for me would be, why? What do we think the root cause is that’s causing that disconnect where schools feel like they… I might theoretically think it’s a great idea but what is intimidating from my viewpoint that’s keeping me from having this group?

Cindy Dutch:

Well, I think when you hear Chris talk and you see like I have seen the families engage and their level of engagement has just increased. There was a whole pack of them at the PD conference. So when you see that, it was an individual. It was an individual who… I don’t know if they were intimidated by families or by knowledgeable families. Again, Chris had no reason for that. To help families and to help them understand this whole process, that’s… Hopefully, that’s why they started doing what they were doing. So like I said, it was an individual but I can’t say that person was the only one. They’re not. Other families struggle in their districts too with just trying to get information. I think Rene and I would say we wouldn’t have the PTI if such things weren’t happening so we know they are but just if they could have Chris’s attitude then it would… Again, it’s all about relationships and those opportunities for everyone to work towards this one thing we know that everyone wants to have their child come out of school and be successful.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. Absolutely. I think sometimes the process itself, we talk about how it’s intimidating for parents. From a practitioner’s standpoint, I think the process of the forms and dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s and making sure your timelines are okay, I think that’s an intimidating process for schools too, to have to… I think sometimes then focus becomes on those things rather than on the relationships which if we have really strong relationships, then we may not need to worry so much. I mean, you need to worry about the compliance piece but you don’t have to worry as much about the gotcha stuff because people are engaging and working all for the same cause and you may not get to the need as often as you think you will with the tensions and the issues that may arise if everybody’s working for the betterment of the child.

So I wonder sometimes if part of it is that, the process itself becomes so serious and intimidating because of all the paperwork and those sorts of things that schools worry then and become a little more insular. They don’t want to be in a position. But I agree, I think the more that we bring people together, the better off we are for sure and Chris’s example is a great example of the power of making that work so thank you so much for that. I think we have time for-

Chris Wolfel:

Jessica-

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah.

Chris Wolfel:

Real quick, I’ll comment. It is a lot of fear and we don’t do a good job in higher education when we’re trying to help new teachers come into the field because we use that bad word due process too much and if you don’t do this right, if you don’t do that right, you’re going to land up in due process, it’s going to cost a lot of money. I mean, I’m teaching a course for Del Valley and my second cohort starts next week and it’s on Special Ed Law and I don’t even touch due process until the last week of the course. I start with family engagement because I try to explain, if you do all this other stuff right, you won’t get to that point. Don’t fear the due process.

But it takes a culture to make that change, it took us a while at our IU. We still have people that are afraid to… If a family wants to come out and visit the classroom, they don’t want to open their doors. Well, what are you worried about? Well, what if they see I do something wrong or what if the child has a behavior and they don’t like the way that I manage the behavior? Well, no. That’s an opportunity. That’s an opportunity to explain to the family, “Here’s how we work to manage that behavior. Here’s some strategies that you could potentially use at home.”

Now, if we’re using those strategies together, we’re actually more effective. The bottom line is at the end of the day, we’re human. Teachers make mistakes and if you make a mistake, just admit to it. I’ve never had a family… I’ve made tons of mistakes as a special ed teacher, I’ve made tons of mistakes as a school administrator, and I could tell you when I have spoken to families and I said, “I’m sorry. We screwed this up and we need to fix this.” I’ve never had a family file due process but I’ve seen situations where other people have tried to hide things from families and not share those mistakes or errors. And then, the families find out from somebody else and then they’re more angry and upset and you’ve lost the trust. So you work with people like how you’d want people to work with you. It goes both ways.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

I agree with that 100% and I see comments in there, a lot of people, that resonates with a lot of people. Having humility, being authentic, an apology is an acknowledgement that we recognize that we might have done something wrong, right? We did something wrong. It may not have been purposeful but we have the opportunity to make that change. Absolutely. All right.

Last thing I think, and then we’re going to break into some smaller groups for discussion but the last thing I’d like to touch on is the myriad transitions that happen in the life of a special education child and a parent of a child with a disability. I’m thinking not just pre-K to K, those are the big ones, right? But year to year, there’s small transitions that occur when students move up grade levels or as they progress developmentally through the system. So thinking about those larger transitions or the smaller ones in between, including aging out supports as we transition our children out of school and into the life after school, after K through 12 schooling. Rene, I’m going to start with you. Can you give us a sense of what you think some best practices would be or things to think about as practitioners in order to engage families around those times of transition?

Rene Averitt-Sansone:

Yeah. Those are big. That’s a humdinger of a question actually, is you could never start too early from a family’s perspective. Again, remember, we’re talking layers and talking the fact that families are different places to hear this information. I think, again, Cindy, I think I got you beat by a couple of years, lady. My oldest is 32 and my youngest is 28 but my grandson who is 2 is actually in early intervention in another state so I’m starting back over again in some ways.

But the piece is it’s never too soon to start, right? Again, you’re right about these transitions, Jessica. So it’s not just early intervention to preschool, preschool to kindergarten. Oh my gosh. It’s elementary to middle school, aye, middle school to high school, and then high school, depending on if a child is a diploma youth or a certificate or a certificate of attendance or isn’t going to be receiving a diploma and then moving from the entitlement world to the adult world and eligibility is, it is never too early to have these conversations.

I feel like transitions were handled really well with both of my daughters is that we literally would start a year ahead of time. So if we knew we were transitioning to middle school and sixth grade, we were literally starting to have those conversations the end of fourth grade, fifth grade. The more we can start having those conversations and saying, “Okay. This is…” It’s going to go from having one teacher to two teachers to having six teachers to having a locker into having all of those pieces. So then, how can we begin to prepare the parent? Because really, we’re the problem, not the kid. How can we begin to teach the skills of self-determination, independence? How can we begin to teach moms and dads and grandmas and aunts and uncles about starting to let go and to step back? No matter how involved the child is with their disability because they all have the ability and understanding this peace around, we call it a dignity of risk here at the Parents’ Place of Maryland, is letting a young person “fail”.

Failure is another opportunity. Failure is not bad. Actually, failure is good. Failure actually can be some of the greatest teachers for our young folks. So I think the more, again, back to the same thing as Chris and Cindy have been talking about, and all three of us have been talking about, is open and honest communications, authentic communications, being real, being vulnerable, being understanding that this is hard in different places in different times and, “Hey, would you like to talk to another parent who just went through this? How can we look?” So offering things but also understanding that if families aren’t ready to take advantage of them, it doesn’t mean they don’t want them, maybe it’s just not the right time or that doesn’t fit them or those things. But yeah, starting sooner rather than later. Even if sometimes folks may say, “Well, we don’t have those conversations until X,” right? Yeah. No, we need to be having them sooner. So that would be probably the piece that I would be like, “Oh please, start early.”

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Well, and each of those transitions is really thinking about building up that trust with a new group of people in a new setting so we’ve been talking about that a lot. Cindy, thoughts on that, transitions, things that we need to think about to support families through those times?

Cindy Dutch:

Yeah. What Rene said about starting early, we would… Over the summer, when my son was transferring to a new building or meeting a new teacher, we try and get in there, walk around the building, and of course, that takes some cooperation with the school. So walking around the building, finding the lunchroom, finding the bathrooms, finding the nurse’s office, that was always important to us when we were getting into a new building.

But thinking about transition where I always like to say transition’s not just another chapter in the special education book, it’s a whole different book. I think when we see families really drop off as far as engagement when it comes to transition age students when really, this is a time that they need to be ramping up because of the importance of this time in the child’s life.

In Pennsylvania, we’ve tried to work on that a little bit by having this memorandum of understanding between the Department of Education and the Office of Vocational Rehab. Enough families probably aren’t aware of it, but there’s a whole toolkit that has three strands to it, one for families, one for the students, and one for educators to try to ease into the whole process and understand. I think that’s another thing that families have a difficult time with is, “Okay. We got the special ed thing. They’re in 10th grade. We’re good,” and then you’re hit with transition and it is difficult. Like Renee said, it’s difficult, that letting go, thinking of your child being more independent but yeah, like she said, you can’t start soon enough.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Thank you, Cindy. Chris, last thoughts about transition times and things to think about to support-

Chris Wolfel:

Yeah. Sure. I’m happy Rene and Cindy are talking not just about transition from school age to adult life because I think when you hear transition, that’s what everybody thinks but there are so many transitions from early intervention to school age. Within school age, you’re right, whether it’s going from one program to another program or one school to another school, there’s a lot of transitions to plan for and we want to make sure that it’s a smooth transition so everybody’s set up for success.

But it is moving to the adult world, more and more, I speak with families, yeah, that’s a scary, scary time and I think we need to try to, again, have some empathy and understand that. I know from my kids now, Noah, my son is 18, he’s transitioning from school age to adult life and I know how complicated and complex it is for him and scary it is for Beth and I but I can’t imagine, right? That’s got to be quadrupled a hundred times when you have a child with disability.

So you got to build in all those supports and I know that’s one thing that we’re really trying hard at our IUs because I think we failed a lot of our children for years ago because we would get them to that point of 21 and they would transition to adulthood. And then we were like, “Yes! We made it, right?” But then to reconnect with families later and say, “Oh, how’s your child doing? What’s going on?” “Well, they’re sitting at home. They’re happy.” “What do you mean they’re sitting at home and happy? That’s all they’re doing?” like we didn’t do a good job of setting up for success and the bottom line is there’s not enough adult services out there.

I mean, we need to enhance services in the adult world. There’s so many supports in school age but then those supports really drop off when kids or adults get into that next part of their life. So you got to plan for it. Things like teaching children how to use a bus schedule and how to get to work or how to get to where they’re engaging in the community and they’re doing things. So the other thing that I’ll say is what I’ve seen with families is when we’re starting to think about planning for the future, start one-on-one with the family. I think sometimes we bring families in to that IEP meeting and it’s an intimidating place because there’s so many people. Where families, they fade off because all those people are there.

So I’ve found that as a teacher, to do that one-on-one first with the family, have a cup of coffee, have them come in, have a cup of coffee and say, “What are you looking for the future of your child?” Let’s have a real intimate one-on-one conversation without all the other people around. I think you’re going to make more progress that way. And then, use the IEP team to say, “Now, how can we build these supports based on what we’re looking at here?” so those are just my kind of two cents on the matter. But boy, there’s so much to learn and so much more to learn to improve our process for getting our children ready, especially in preparation of transition from school age to adult life.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for that. Okay. So we’re going to move into small groups now because we’ve said a lot and I think there’s been some really rich discussion. So I’m going to ask a Nikevia, to explain how our small groups are going to work and we’re going to stay in them for about 15 minutes and then we’ll collect back for some parting thoughts.

Nikevia Thomas:

Yes. Thank you, Jessica. So how small groups will work is that we are launching a poll and your answers in the poll will determine which room you’re in and I’m going to post the questions as well. Hold on. Let me just unpin Jessica and then we can get started. Okay.

So here, do you all see the… Oh no, the poll’s not launched yet. One second. Okay. Please tell us the role that best describes your participation in today’s Community of Practice. Are you an administrator? Are you a community organizer or educator or family, parent, caregiver, or a parent educator or advocate? Great. I think we have maybe four more people to respond. No? Good.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

That might be you and I included in that-

Nikevia Thomas:

Oh, it might be me. Oh. We shouldn’t. I don’t think we’re… I can’t because we can’t vote.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

No, that’s what I was wondering.

Nikevia Thomas:

We can’t vote. Okay. So let me… I’m going to just end the poll, I think. Okay. Well, there’s one more person. We’ll just place that person. I don’t know who it is. So here are the results: we have four people who are administrators… Oh, you can’t see. Sorry. It helps if I share. Four people who are administrators, there’s one educator, one parent or family or caregiver, and then seven parent educators or parent advocates. Okay. So let’s see-

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

We can get two rooms?

Nikevia Thomas:

We can get two rooms. Hold on. Let me… Okay. Let me shoot. Uh oh. Sorry. On the technical side, there’s a lot going on here. Okay. So two rooms. So we’ll have Room 2, it’s for the administrators and room two is for the parent educators.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Administrators and educators should go to Room 1-

Nikevia Thomas:

Yes.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

Family educators and advocates should go to Room 2.

Nikevia Thomas:

All right, everybody. Welcome back. Oh, there’s somebody in the waiting room. Hold on. That helps. All right. So is there anyone who would like to share out how your discussion went?

Speaker 9:

Well, I got cut off something. I try to start speaking right at the end. I just want to finish my statement about how do we meet parents where they are which falls into our next steps and as with our challenges is that when we are doing programming, we try to offer virtual programming as well as in-person programming. A lot of times, we do surveys at the end of our activities to figure out what worked best for them. We do a lot of different time scheduling. So sometimes, we do programs from 3:00 to 4:00, 4:00 to 5:00 and this week, we are actually doing a program that’s from 6:00 to 7:00, so that we can get a caveat of making sure that every family that we do invite to programs does have an opportunity to participate and be seen and be heard at the same time. So that’s what I was saying before at the breakout room-

Nikevia Thomas:

Oh, well, I’m glad… Good thing that you raised your hand to share that out so it’s good to have a diversity of opportunities for family voices to be heard, something that we should definitely consider. Someone else, I think, wants to share but you’re on mute. Is it Ingrid?

Ingrid:

Yeah. That was me.

Nikevia Thomas:

Okay.

Ingrid:

Yeah. Also, in PG County, we have the family institute that is providing different type of sessions for parents to participate and they are virtual sessions on different topics.

Nikevia Thomas:

Nice. That’s nice. Does anybody else would like to share out?

Chris Wolfel:

Yeah. I’ll share real quick. I mean, one thing that we talked about was making sure that our teachers, whether you’re a regular education teacher, a special education teacher that you’re aware of and have the tools and skills to be able to create those partnerships with families and understand family engagement. It’s probably, instead of teaching one course at higher ed on family engagement, we should probably make sure that every course has a strand that connects and ties into family engagement. So it’s like when you’re doing what I’m doing with Del Valley, with teaching special education law, there’s a connection there to family engagement. If you’re teaching about low incidents or high incidents, you cycle in a component about family engagement so we just keep touching on it over and over. I think we’ll help our teachers come into the field and be ready and understand the importance and have some schools and skills and strategies.

Nikevia Thomas:

Nice. That’s a very systemic strategy. All right. One more before we move on. Okay. Well, thank you all. Uh oh. Now, I can’t share my screen. Hold on. So our next item is to really round out, we’re just wrapping up. I would like for you all to mark your calendars for our next Community of Practice in April which focuses on engaging refugee and first generation families. I will place the registration link in the chat if you are interested in… Oh, Jessica beat me to it. If you’re interested in joining, please register. If you know someone who would be interested in joining, please share the link as well.

We also… Oh, here it is. I had to try again. We also would like it if you would share your feedback with us for today’s session. We take your feedback and use it to improve on our sessions and we take the information so that we can know what worked, what didn’t work, and incorporate your input into our designs. So it’s a short survey, it should take no more than a couple minutes to complete and Jessica has provided the link in the chat. Here, you will see our contact information. There’s Jessica’s email address and my email address, our Twitter information, as well as our Facebook, and our website.

Jessica Grotevant-Webster:

You’ll continue to have access to the Padlet. If this is your first time joining us, the resources from past conversations are also housed on that Padlet and you’re free to use them and explore them as well as resources from our panelists today. With that, Nikevia and I would like to give a very warm and appreciative thank you to our panelists, Cindy, Rene, and Chris for sharing their insights with us today and helping us really think about reframing family engagement specific to supporting families with students with special needs.

Nikevia Thomas:

Yes. Thank you all so much.