What I learned this week:
I really loved the guess speaker that spoke on early child intervention for delays and behaviors. I cant remember what its called, but she did a remarkable job answering everyone's questions and supporting her information with experiences. I felt like I could take my own child to her and after class I totally when up to her to figure out how to get into their program so that I can best help my sons and the behaviors he has exhibited since everything that has happened to him up to this point emotionally. I also liked that we had a day to talk about our hwd and figure out the best way to prepare for those

HWD

I did my interview on my sister this last week and I thought I was going to do it on a sped teacher from my home town, but im really grateful I choose my sister. She's the reason I'm looking into how a child should transition properly and her answers proved that when it came to transitioning at least to her she just dropped off but something I didn't know was how much she relied on my  mom to guide an direct her through life, she was always the rebellious independent type that some of her answers actually surprised me. it made me think that if the children don't understand the transition process we need to make sure the parents do because once school is over the parents are all they have.

What I learned:
This week we got to listen to presentations. Tuesday night my group came together to finish putting our group project together and it came together nicely, it was wonderful to see the strengths of each of us shine as we worked hard to oversee and correct and make sure that our so called family had the right resources and information they would need to function as well as they could. Wednesday we presented and again each of us did our part as planned and it went together swimmingly, I feel like because of this project our group came a little closer than we were before. I wasn't in class Friday due to a broken car.

Quote:

HWD:

https://www.ncld.org/archives/blog/idea-2004-improving-transition-planning-and-results 

this website explains the amendment made to IDEA in 2004 that now should help children with disabilities specifically LDs transition to post secondary. before the amendment there were very few results of children in the SPED program making any progress after grade school or even receiving diplomas, there was no requirement to reassess them at graduation or when the age limit came to terminate IDEA, however the president saw necessary means to change this and now calls it a "summary of Performance"

What I learned
This week I felt that I myself was pretty distant mentally, I did have conversations with my mom and sister that put a whole other light on the subject of family relationships and perspectives. My group did a wonderful job with our part A of our project and I was really impressed with the way it came together. Something I can work on is making sure I'm in class and work mentally so that I don't forget to do things or look at the class schedule.

Quote:

HWD
This week was difficult to know how to move forward with my project because my sister isn't ready to go and meet with social security to apply for SSI. Sooooo this week I personally set up a meeting with Answers, a group that helps individuals that have Medicaid understand and find resources they need. It was a very wonderful experience, I was able to get therapy and a case worker who will meet with me further for other resources I may need help with.

ANSWERS LLC 208-552-0855, 855 n capital ave #2, Idaho falls, Idaho 83402

What I Learned :

This week was so neat having the guest speaker! My sister has FAS and I have FASE so to listen to her talk about it from her view and with all the experience she had was breathtaking to me! I loved listening about her sons and how they adapt to the their surroundings or how they don't. She spoke of how consumed her life is by this disability that she and her husband hardly have time to them selves, and how difficult it can be to find a sitter for two older boys who wouldn't typically need one and so I offered to sit with them so she and her husband could actually have time together, as I did do I realized how important it is to be surrounded by both people who understand the disability and those who don't. this week was a bit different to class dynamics so I cant really report much about how well my group understood the material.

Quote:

HWD:

This week I was suppose to get my sister an appointment with SSI but she is difficult to coordinate with so instead I looked up this website that spoke of transitioning from IDEA "Transition planning is a process mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004) for all students who have an Individualized Education Program (IEP) in K-12 education. The purpose is to facilitate the student’s move from school to post-school activities.
The transition planning must:

• start before the student turns 16;
• be individualized;
• be based on the student’s strengths, preferences, and interests; and
• include opportunities to develop functional skills for work and community life.

This idea that planning happens TWO years before the students leaves the school district irritates me that some children just fall right through the cracks due to incapable planning or none at all!  What are we as a teacher if we cant do the very job we came to do, help children learn and move forward with their lives

The website I found this information on is https://ldaamerica.org/transition-planning-requirements-of-idea-2004/

What I learned: this week was amazing I absolutely love talking about the structure of the family as I said last week! this week had me curious about why my parents choose to ignore our disabilities on a personal and social level until we graduated. the nella birth story was eye opening in how just exactly the ways parents mind think about treating all of their children especially when they have children with disabilities. as for being prepared in the future I'm not sure if ill ever be a parent of a child with a disability but my dreams are starting to think so since this last week. however as a future educator our mindsets should me of the same mind sets as the nella birth story, treating all of the children with the same respect. 

Weekly Quote:

HWD Paragraph:

This week for my HWD I had the opportunity to call Journeys here in Rexburg. Journeys (265 E 4th n Rexburg, 208-356-4836) is a developmental disability agency. I figured I had to start somewhere in order to help my sister and figure out the process of transitioning. the lady there gave be the break down of how to get help from them and in order to do that my sister would need a current physic evaluation which I found out needs to be from an actual therapist once I have that then I can get proceed to get help from a service coordinator who would help my sister go through the process of eligibility for developmental services through Idaho. SOOOOO I called a service coordinator to figure a few more things out, and the coordinator I spoke with was Kathy with vanwagner counseling in rigby Idaho (208-520-8904) who told me I could keep in touch with her as I call SSI and set up a meeting for my sister to receive ssi, which would qualify her for Medicaid so that the expenses of a therapist don't have to come out of pocket however because my sister wasn't transitioned properly she fell through the cracks a bit and was force to get a job and work as much as possible so she can pay all her bills, because of this on the outside to a government system asking routine questions she will look normal, so we may have to appeal. But if it did it would be about 4-600 dollars for an evaluation. once the evaluation is done we can figure out how much help she really needs. 

ADA ASSIGNMENT
I know this is late I thought it was suppose to be a part of this weeks blog until I read tonight that it was separate.
SO for my assignment I was asked to interrupt conversations and change the topic every two minutes and act like that was normal for me.

Funny story is this was normal for me when I was in elementary, junior high and my first year of high school (9th grade). I still have to remind my brain to stay on topic quite often.

So how did it go?.. Well my colleagues definitely looked at me like, "are you ok?", "is she even listening to us?" after a few times the conversation died around me, and I got this feeling of awkwardness flow over me.

all the emotional feels of being the odd one out came rushing back. the only person that didn't act like anything was different was my sister, she talks about 100/mph and hardly noticed how fast we were going through topics.

thankfully this was a day of roleplay because the reality of this situation is hard, some people are stuck this way and for others it takes a lot of brain training is what I call it, and when my mom sat me down and pointed it out and how everyone saw me it broke me, because no one else loved me enough to say something about it to me. That's how it was today, not that these people know me well enough, but to see them question it in their eyes was hurtful all in itself.

What did I learn?
Some times people just simply don't know how to socially respond. AND we as the professional need to be able to teach that awareness in our classrooms through example mainly but sometimes being blunt about how to respect someone different than us may have to be done too.

Quote Relatable:

THINGS I LEARNED THIS WEEK
I loved learning about the family structure this week. Even with such a diverse family I don't know everything about family's and how they work, so to be able to listen to others and stories shared from sister Swenson was really nice. I learned that each family unit is different but each family has a certain structure.
I loved the Eco map that was explained Friday, that opened my eyes to the connections and the way certain people connect in my family, so im excited to finish that project while doing it for someone else.
I definitely feel much more prepared understanding that we cant possibly know the depths of our children's lives but we can skim the surface to see what strengthens and weakens them. Honestly in my group when we discuss I mostly discuss with melanie because she and I are the only ones that do the prep work and it was nice to discuss the Angelino case and she knew what I was talking about, she seems to be understanding the material very well, the others seem to be too busy to read before class as they always say something came up and they didn't read.  can continue to encourage them to do the readings so that hopefully and eventually they will.
HIGHER WIDER DEEPER
So My project is all about the transition of IDEA. Im preparing to interview my sister ( who my research is inspired by, she has fetal alcohol syndrome), and my former inlaws (their son is autistic), as well as someone from the special education department in hometown high school so that I can understand what they personally do. I will be having my mother send all the paper work she received upon my sisters graduation.
Upon research this week I found this from a court case,"The Appeal Team gave no reason for its action other than a conclusory assertion that "Broken Arrow Public School System has completed its legal obligation to provide this child with the required 822*822 minimum number of years of education (12)."" so what are we to do when education is limited to 12 years, how do we move forward.... to be continued 

Helms v, Independent School District #3, Google Scholar (United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit December 19, 1984), Google Scholar No. 83-2233.

QUOTE