Directions:

Initial Post: After reviewing the purpose of the IDEA, explain whether you think the IDEA is working in general within education. Explain whether you think parents have the necessary tools to improve their child’s outcomes and educational future. Include examples from your personal and professional experiences, if you have them. If not, include how you would ensure the parents in your program have the tools they need and use them. (Be sure to maintain confidentiality and use different names.)

Reply Posts: Take the opposite perspective and argue against two peers who thought the same as you. Share examples as necessary or provide what you will do to ensure parents have the tools they need.

Vanessa

Yes I do think that the parents should have many tools to improve on the child’s learn outcome and their future because they could help them so much in their early developments. Also it helps extend the teaching outside the classroom and also could create a positive experience for the child and also could help them to perform better when they are at school. Another thing is children learn from working with others by give positive examples skills that they can use in their learning. How I would help the parents in my future classroom is I would give them some good tools that could help their child with special needs and also I would show them what they can do to help with their learning. One thing that I could do is collect some good resources and print them out for the parents that they can use at home with the child to so the child can keep learning with being left behind. Also I would do different activities that the parents can do with them also help them with their homework and I would do a homework assignment questions about they can ask their child what they did at school and how was they day and then read a book before bed and write about it with them to see what they learn then have the child bring it back to school next day. Because I would know that they are using the tools that I give even with a child special needs I would give the parents some tools that could help their child with special needs. Also I will do a one on one meeting with the parents so I could get more information about their child needs and what we could help them at school and outside of school.

Jahmi

I think that IDEA is working well but could always improve their efforts. I think that there are good resources available to parents but I feel that parents are not always educated on the benefits. I also think that these benefits are always not made easy to obtain. I have had first hand experience with programs where the children and families qualify for services but are not able to get them due to transportation issues or failure to complete certain paperwork. I had a child who was non verbal on the spectrum and mom often voiced concerns about getting resources to help make his learning and home environment more suitable for him. The process took so long that the child aged out of our program before we could provide any answers for her. I think that when children qualify for these services parents and families should be fully informed on the benefits. This way parents will not view these services as a bad thing. This will also speed the processing up and families and children will receive all of the tools and resources they should .