Out of Office

I will be leaving on Sunday, Oct. 17 for Arbor Day Farm, Nebraska City, NE and returning Wednesday, Oct. 20.I have been asked to join an area collaborative team for the Connecting Children with Nature Action Forum. The decision and early bird deposit was handled last spring. I'm feeling a bit guilty going - knowing how much emphasis has been placed on how we spend our time, special education dollars, etc. etc. But I keep reminding myself that I am partially funded through general education dollars which allows me to do "normal" things.

I will check email and phone messages daily, but will not be readily available.

Child Find Procedures/Activities

The message below is from Gary Petersen - if you have anything to share with him, please send it directly to him at gpetersen@aea8.k12.ia.us


"Please send me any checklists/ cheat sheets/ memory ticklers you are aware of that you or your staff are currently using for child find procedures and activities. This checklists might include items such as forms (when, where, who, how), activities (e.g., meetings, contacts, etc.), internal procedures (e.g., maintenance of records, etc.) or anything else that people need to manage the process. I am hoping this will help with developing common practices and procedures. Thank you."
Gary

Posted by Denise at 11:49 AM

Essential Skills

An activity that each of our departments were asked to complete was the Essential Skills Document. The purpose of the activity was to help determine what staff members need to Know, Understand and Do to provide the essential services that are provided in each district within Prairie Lakes AEA. The questions asked were:
What are the broad categories of your Essential Services? What Skill Sets are needed?

Take a sneak peak and see if it makes sense to you! Open for feedback and discussion!

Facilitation Skills

Well I am blogging on Monday evening, as Monday - day got away from me with meetings... As I sat in meetings today, I decided that the meetings would have been much more effective if facilitation skills would have been used! Since we all had the opportunity to attend facilitation training over the past 3 years, please make sure and use some of those suggested strategies when facilitating the upcoming Friday meetings on the Early ACCESS procedural manual updates and the ISU/IFSP modules. To review: 1) Assign a facilitator (that's you) 2) Have a timekeeper - announce how much time you will spend on a certain topic and stick to it 3) Summarizer - assign someone's role to "summarize" the discussion before moving on to something new, decisions made, etc. 4) Be a good participant - you will appreciate it when you are the facilitator
Posted by Denise at 3:52 PM

Early Childhood Degree

One of the components of a "quality" program is a teacher that is certified in early childhood. The Department of Ed. has determined that all 3 and 4 year old children on IEPs are placed in classrooms with a certified EC teacher. Please be careful and find out if the teacher at Head Start, center-based preschools, Catholic preschools, etc. meet this requirement prior to the discussion with districts, parents, and IEP teams making decisions.

A teacher with an elementary degree can get a conditional early childhood license from the BOEE and begin classes.

October Count

Well, October is already here! Please do your best to complete all IFSP and IEPs by Oct. 29 - count date.

All initial IEP meetings and consent for placement must be dated on or before 10/29/10 to be included in the count for this year. Please have conversations with LEA teams about this time line.

All IEPs must be approved on/or before 11/5/10 to be included as part of count. This means the teachers will need to submit the IEPs and they will need to be reviewed for weighting to be approved. This includes any initial IEPs for support services as well.