Facilitating Alignment (IEP)

You are the Team Chair for Special Education at Westley, a relatively new school in a growing district near a large metropolitan area. You have been a teacher, a school counselor and are now working with teachers who have tier 3 students. The recent shift to a virtual environment necessitated by the pandemic has had a significant impact on most students, but more especially on several of your special education students. A parent of one of your students wants hour-for-hour compensation for the time when her son was not receiving in-person services.

Key characters include: Ms. Armstrong, the Special Education Teacher of Henry Lin, Zhu Lin, a concerned mother of Henry Linda, and Henry Lin, a special education student at Westley.

Trade-Offs to Consider:

• Quantity of contact with students vs. quality
• Identifying and meeting both tangible and Social-Emotional needs
• Training Focus on Relationships vs. Maintaining Structure and
  Processes
• Academic Advancement vs. Engagement/relevance in extraordinary
  circumstances
• Tempering Group vs. Individual Communications

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