This week we had a student IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting with a family. It was a meeting that really could not have gone better. It involved both parents and an advocate, myself and three teachers. From start to finish the meeting was focused on one thing: how do we work together to provide the best possible environment for their child/our student to thrive?
When everyone has the same objective, it almost always makes a meeting go well. But sometimes it’s clear that it isn’t just the objectives that are similar but also the approach, and then it’s easy for strategies to be put into place and for everyone to come out of the meeting feeling like we truly are partners working together.
Way back in 2009-10, when I was living in China and working as a principal in a foreign national school, I shared a series in my school newsletters that I called ‘Parents as Partners’. While some of the links I shared no longer work, the messages still hold true.
I started the post saying this:
“I firmly believe that “It takes a community to raise a child” and so without cooperation and communication between a school and their parent community, ‘we’ cannot fully support our children and their learning. That said, I often wonder about how we can more meaningfully engage parents in a way that they want to be engaged.”
You can head to that post to see some of the ideas I shared… and you are welcome to use anything there for yourself, editing as you see fit.
