Special Education Law: Cautionary Reminders about Misinformation and Exaggerations on Social Media

Описание: Trust and Invest in You because, over the years, I've witnessed parent after parent raise their level of understanding of this process to be their child's best advocate. I believe in you and this process. Remember.... I was a parent first before I ever shifted my legal focus and practice to special education law. I, too, had to learn the rules and understand the process and, slowly, figure out that nobody was coming to save me and that the other people on my daughter's IEP team (though I liked and respected them) were generally just as clueless as I was on what my daughter required for a FAPE. Because they were school employees with degrees and 100% of the legal duty under this law, they just couldn't show that they didn't know.
You must leave room for fresh ideas, errors and trials in this process of dealing with complex and differentiated learners. I have yet to meet a client I represent come with a proverbial owner's manual and we simply have to figure it out and come to the table with ideas and some flexibility....willing to try what could work and be ready to abandon what doesn't.
I do believe that social media makes our world smaller to a degree and gives us access to resources and information that we may need come in contact with otherwise. But, with every good there is also a bad.... there's a lot of half-truths and incorrect information across social media advocacy pages and contributions from both parents, advocates and teachers on these pages.
You'll read hyper-inflated success stories that, in reality, are the equivalent to fishing stories old men tell about the one that got away. You'll read negative and horrible comments and stories about the impossibility of advocating and how crooked the system is and how the chips are stacked against parents.... these parents are like a highly contagious virus and you need to stay far away from them because negativity is an energy in our lives and you don't want to catch it because it's difficult to get rid of once you embrace it.
You need to be mindful that one parent's experience is their experience and there are 1000 different reasons why and so much of it has ZERO to do with the law but errors and mistakes in the process itself on both sides of the IEP team. This is a human relations journey more than it's about the "law" and this is why I encourage you to learn the process, know the rules so that you can understand how to navigate and learn the practical application on your child's IEP team. THIS is why Advocates University is valuable and it's what sets the course apart from everything else out there. It's a journey I had to take myself....questioning myself and trying to figure out if I was mistaken or the school staff in their understanding of the process and requirements. I would never have made it to a point of knowing to question had I not taken those steps to inform myself and learn the rules of the process. i challenge you to do the same and invest in YOU.