206. What the IEP Is Not Telling You - A Special Ed Insider Breaks It Down (with Dr. Diana Fannon)
Non Linear Learning - Rethinking Education for Neurodivergent LearnersShow Notes
The IEP meeting is supposed to be about your child. Have you noticed that it often feels like it's about everyone else's comfort? Dr. Diana Fannon spent 24 years inside public school systems as a bilingual school psychologist and director of special education. She now works with families. And in this podcast, she shares with us a few red and green flags of special education.
🎙️ Tune in to this episode to learn: 👇 Why "inclusive" school districts still often segregate kids with disabilities - and the one red flag that tells you immediately
The difference between a goal written for your child vs. a goal written for the teacher's comfort
Where in the IEP you can actually write instructions for the teacher not just the student
Why Universal Design for Learning saves teacher time instead of adding to it
etc. The "system" unfortunately was not built to find your child's intelligence. That's our job. Follow for more! Find Dr. Fannon at disabilityedpros.com and on Instagram @disabilityedpros.
More from Non Linear Learning - Rethinking Education for Neurodivergent Learners
Your child isn't choosing to melt down. By the time behavior shows up, the brain has already decided, and the thinking brain is out of the room. Dr. Lisa Riegel explains why schools most often miss this, and what to do instead.
Why spelled communication is not a guessing game:
We don't make a neurotypical kid prove they can read before we hand them a book. We just teach them to read.
You've talked to 10 therapists. Tried 20 strategies. And your child still goes from calm to crisis in 30 seconds - for reasons no-one understands. Understanding a body requires that we understand the sensory information coming in. And Dr. Dana Johnson - OT, PhD, and founder of the Spellers Center - tells us that there are not 5 but 8 senses. Dana joins Non Linear Learning for the 3rd time to talk about interoception: the eighth sense, the one almost nobody gets taught, and the one that might explain what's been happening in front of you all along. Listen along to learn: Why your child's meltdown appears so sudden
We talk a lot about what our students can't do. But something that educators have found over the years is that there is a scatter to the skills we see in our students. The wildly uneven profile that we see could actually be a blessing. Mark Talaga, counselor, speaker, and founder of the Center for Identity Potential, joins the podcast to talk about asynchronous development in gifted and twice-exceptional learners. And here's what hit me: we're working the same problem from opposite ends. Where there is a sharp strength, there is often a significant deficit, but the opposite is true as well! This conversation got under my skin in the best way. Tune in to this episode to learn: What "asynchrony" actually means in gifted and disabled learners