***This is the second in a series of blog posts about the process Jenny and I are using as we prepare to set up a new district high school center for EBD transition services in our school district in August 2016.
Everybody in this line of work knows what it’s like to get a move-in behavior IEP from out of district. Half the time, you can’t tell a damn thing about what’s wrong with the kid, how to monitor it, or whether they’ve made any progress. It is, at best, frustrating. К вашему сведению. If you need some help writing behavior IEPs, go back to the website and look at the free guide on there about writing behavior IEPs. I promise it’ll help.
Now, back to whining!
Even in our own district, even when the IEPs in question are pretty good…there’s no shortcut to getting to know a kid before you start designing a program for him. We’ve been getting out and doing as many classroom observations as we can in the past three weeks, but the biggest way we’re learning about the kids and their needs is through the Dreaded Intake Interview.
Jenny and I go and meet with the student’s current case manager, администраторы, teachers, social workers, counselors, and any other human being who is willing to come suffer through the 60+ minute process of telling us all about each kid. Not gonna lie; we did three in one day once and I nearly died. For real.
Nevertheless, I can’t stress the importance of this process. We ask about everything from the family structure to meds to arrests to favorite time of day to take English. The most helpful (and most often overlooked) parts of our interview are when we ask the current case manager to describe a student’s entire day (from arriving at school until they leave) and what (in a nutshell) the case manager feels is the student’s most problematic behavior. Those two things do more to help us generate meaningful goals and structure an appropriate (and mostly-loophole-free) schedule.
I’m going to have George upload a copy of The Dreaded Intake Interview form to the website. If you’re getting a new student, you can use it to get more information from the previous school than the IEP alone can provide. I recommend getting on Skype with the current case manager (if the student is coming from far away) or meeting in person (if the student is coming in from your area), and having YOU do the typing. That will let the other person talk, and you’ll get better results than if you just send it to them to fill out.
К вашему сведению, you’ll see the term “DBT” throughout the document. That’s what we call people with my job where I work, Diagnostic Behavior Teachers.
