Hands and Voices: The Pop-Up IEP

Hands and voices is a really neat website for deaf educators, and especially parents of deaf children, because it attempts to give fair and unbiased information about hearing loss. There are two other websites that are well known for their credible information, but they are definately biased towards a particular way of teaching deaf children. AG Bell is the website that you can go to for the Auditory Oral method of teaching, and the American Annals of the Deaf is the website that you can go to for a signing approach to teaching.

I know that no one else in this class is a deaf education major, but it is a very real possibility that some of you may have hard of hearing or deaf children in your general education classrooms because The trend towards inclusion of these kids is steadily increasing. In fact, about 90% of deaf children are now being educated in the genera education classrooms.

There is a particular page that I would like to highight on the Hands and Voices website. It is called "The Pop-Up IEP." Often when parents try to advocate for their chid in IEP meetings, they are met with obstinance from schools. Schools may say something like, "Sorry...we don't have the money," "We're not convinced that your child needs that," or "You must be in denial, your expectations are too high for your child." This web page includes a table with many of these common answers inside of it. The parent can then click on these phrases, and they are taken to another page where they can see what the school is required by law to do for them, in each of these different cases.

Many teachers, and especially principals and administrators, don't want the parents at their school to have access to websites like this. Sometimes, it is hard for schools to provide special education students with everything that they need, especially when the school has limited funds and a lot of other children to educate. Therefore, if they can get by, taking the easier or cheaper route with a child, then they are going to try to do that. However, it is imperative that parents are well educated advocates for their children. They know what is best for their child, and they need to be able to demand that the school provides everything that the law says that it should. Although it may make the teacher's job more difficult, it is important to undersand that what that IEP will be doing for the child in the long run will outweigh any difficulties that the teacher might experience.