So school has been in session for ten days. I get a request from an EC teacher to tell her what a student's strength and weaknesses are. Between his absences, shortened days, etc., I've spent less than 11 hours with the kid. While he's surrounded by 30+ other students. How am I supposed to know what his strengths and weaknesses are at this point? Wouldn't he be better served by having a teacher from the Spring give her input? I told the woman that I had no idea. I barely know all of my students' names. I'll look at his grades and give her an estimate but that I'm nervous about contributing to a legal document with such a small knowledge base. I'll go to the meeting and I'll send what I *think* but everything I say will be precluded by a caveat.
We seem to have IEP and 504 meetings every year during the first two weeks of school. It's always really difficult to provide information for those meetings, but on my paperwork I always write, "This is based on my observations from # class periods."
Wow. Having IEP meetings at the beginning of the year just seems odd. My district has them every winter, usually in december/january
If I were you, I'd ask a previous teacher that really knows the student well. At my school, if we have an IEP that's going to be due within the first month of school starting, we move it up to the spring before that to avoid situations like these. Last year I had two students move to my school within 2 weeks of having IEPs due- it was very difficult to write an entire IEP for a student I really didn't know.
