Save the date: Transition Resource Fair

S A V E T H E S E D A T E S !

Department of Community and Human Services
Developmental Disabilities Division

4th ANNUAL
TRANSITION RESOURCE FAIRS

Two dates and two locations--choose to attend one or both

Tukwila Community Center Bellevue College

WednesdayMarch 9, 2011 and Saturday March 19, 2011
9 a.m. - 4 p.m. on both days

Essential information will be available on site for educators, students, and their families to better prepare them for successful transitioning from school to employment and other community resources.

Available at the Fair:

Opportunities to meet with representatives from over 35 organizations including King County Supported Employment Agencies and the School to Work Project, Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, Divisions of Developmental Disabilities and Vocational Rehabilitation and learn about Parks and Recreation Programs, Housing, Transportation, and other community resources.

Workshops:

A choice of multiple workshops scheduled throughout the day featuring Student, Family and School to Work tracks.

Audience:

Educators and Transition Teachers, Students age 14 to 21, and Families

Look for more details in January on the King County Website

http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/DDD/training.aspx
For additional information please contact:

Lyn Andrews, O’Neill and Associates at
206-890-1384 or by email at Lyn@oneillandassociates.com

Sponsored by the King County Developmental Disabilities Division

Technical Assistance Team

Many of you have asked about the Technical Assistance Team, just one of the ways in which we provide support for our educators throughout our system so that we are always progressing in our practice. Here is some information from the team:

General Information:
Technical Assistance Team (TAT)


· TAT provides ongoing technical assistance: evidence-based strategies for instruction, functional approaches to challenging behaviors, ongoing and long-term support and resources to school teams who provide services to students with disabilities.

· This technical assistance also includes student observation, teacher-to-teacher support, strategy sharing, modeling, and data collection. TAT support is non-evaluative, making it a highly effective coaching model.

· TAT members include special education classroom teachers, coaches, and consulting teachers. The TAT-member group meets frequently to share strategies, ideas, and information with each other, to better support the teachers and students they serve through TAT.

· Students are referred to TAT using a digital referral form. Students should be referred to TAT by the teacher(s) that work(s) with them. This could be special education teachers, general education teachers, and/or support staff (music, PE, art, etc). TAT support is available to all Elementary students who have an IEP (Kindergarten – Fifth Grade).

· Once a student has been referred to TAT, a TAT member is identified to work with the teacher.
o The TAT member contacts the teacher to schedule an observation.
o Following the initial observation, the teacher and TAT member meet and identify 3 Teacher-Identified Priorities to focus on to support the child.
o Using these priorities, the TAT member will provide strategies/resources to the teacher and schedule follow-up observations to collect data.
o This data will be monitored over time. The TAT member and teacher will use the data to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies/resources currently implemented, and to inform future instruction.

Many thanks to our wonderful staff members who support one another and our students!

Thank You For Your Partnership!

I want to thank our Special Education PTSA leaders and members for coming together on Tuesday night for a great General meeting. We had a chance to meet the new regional Pre-K through 12th grade Executive Directors of Schools and see in living color the newly aligned structure with each Executive Director paired with a regional Special Education Supervisor. Dr. Susan Enfield, Chief Academic Officer, shared her vision for a system that is truly structured to provide the best possible supports for students and families, and families had a chance to meet in small groups with their regional teams.

Special thanks also to the Teachers, Therapists, and Consulting Teachers who also joined us. Our students are well cared for!

Dr. Elise Frattura, who joined us last year at the PTSA Conference from UW-Milwaukee, was the key presenter at our August School Leaders Institute, and was amazed by the progress she's seen in Seattle's capacity to provide powerful services for students with disabilities. Here is here reflection:

In October of 2007 I was part of a team of evaluators who completed an on-site review of Seattle Public Schools in regards to students with disabilities. At that time I was surprised by the seemingly high level of comfort in perpetuating a program model, (or reactionary model) as a way to meet the individual needs of learners with disabilities. A short three years later the ground work has been laid for sustainable change in support of a proactive service delivery model for all learners.
The momentum was tangible at the leadership institute this summer for school principals. That is, so many school districts make the mistake of leading such a transformation through special education. Seattle is different. The fact that site leadership and central office curriculum and instruction own the importance of proactive services for all learners says that Seattle is situated and making significant gains in support of high quality instructional and behavioral supports for each and every child! I truly wish you the best and am excited for what the future holds for Seattle Public School children.

Thank you families and teachers for your leadership and partnership, and thank you for sharing your students with us!

Cleveland High School and Maple Elementary

Daily Math at Maple Elementary:

• "Today's Survey" using tally marks helps first graders at Maple Elementary think about how we gather and represent data.
• Math words in a fifth grade classroom: divisible, factor, product, and prime number (they're learning "Facts About Factors")
  
  

Writers' Workshop at Maple Elementary: Students learn to generate ideas for Personal Narratives with this guidance~think of the first or last time you did or tried something.


At both Cleveland High School and Maple Elementary, students were learning to write with structure, engaging instruction in the Writers Workshop model. ALL students were actively generating ideas, writing, and reading their work aloud in many different classrooms.

Writers' Workshop is especially effective for students who need additional supports, and provides opportunities for small group, large group, and one-on-one instruction.

Students at Cleveland High School were preparing for a cloning Project in Physical Science by taking the Myers-Briggs test, practising gathering and representing data.

Thanks Cleveland and Maple!

September Update: Rigor, Relevance, Relationships, Results

My father was raised by a cattle rancher. Although they lived in the city during the winter months, in the summertime his family lived and worked on the Alberta prairie.

He told me that once when he was just six or seven years old his father asked him to take two large work horses to the trough for some water. These were huge work animals, Clydesdales, and my dad remembered looking at their hoofs, seeing that each one was as big around as his face. He was terrified by their size and power, and not at all sure that he could get them safely to water and back. But he also knew that his father knew his strengths and limitations, that he was a skillful rancher, and that he wouldn’t have given my dad the job if he didn’t think he could do it. He took those horses to the trough and back, still scared, but ultimately confident and proud.

I think of this often as I see our students and teachers at work. We ask our students to do incredibly challenging things each day—and if they are to be successful, they need to know that we know their strengths and needs, that they can trust us as teachers, and that when we ask difficult things of them we will create the conditions for their success.

As we continue to develop our services for students with special needs in Seattle, we adults need to each day remember that our core work is to build and reinforce a system that challenges and supports our learners. We need to daily recommit ourselves to the non-negotiable of inclusive practice; each and every student is a full member of our community. We the adults need to adjust our practice in order to make this a reality.

Last week I visited schools in the West/Southwest Region with Supervisor Amy Briggs. This year as a department we are targeting key areas where we know we need to focus:

1. Do ALL students have access to the general education curriculum (including materials, standards, instructional practices, and well-trained teachers), and

2. What are the clear supports in place to help students navigate social and behavior challenges?

At both Roxhill Elementary and Gatewood Elementary we saw tangible evidence of both indicators of best practices.

• Students at Roxhill could tell me, at a moment’s notice, about “CARES," their school-wide community expectations:
  

  C ome ready to learn.

  A ct with compassion.

  R espect adults, each other, and property.

  E xcel at everything you do.

  S tay safe
  

• At Gatewood we saw students with behavioral challenges fully included in a class that was doing Reader’s Workshop, reading “just right books” and conferring with teachers and with one another.

At both schools students were able to experience success because expectations for behavior were explicit and academic structures were carefully designed to provide structure, individualized learning, and true rigor. Thank you Roxhill and Gatewood staff!

Welcome to the 2010-2011 School Year!

When I was a middle school principal in Seattle I estimated that each year I had students coming into 6th grade from at least twenty-seven different elementary programs. We middle school folks are all about relationship, and although I tried to visit as many 5th graders as I could in the spring, there was no way I could meet them all at their schools, or get to know their unique strengths and needs. I remember wishing that I could have a consistent group of schools I could visit, a consistent set of fifth grade teachers I could talk to and collaborate with, and the chance to meet as many families as possible prior to the start of the year. In short, I wished I had more predictable feeder patterns so that I could make the middle school experience as powerful as possible by creating a solid transition.

With our new student assignment plan, we have a chance to do this! Our system-wide goal is to align all systems, leaders, coaches, and supports so that you know exactly where to go when you have questions, concerns, and important information that will help us serve your student. Our new Executive Directors of schools will be overseeing Pre-K through 12th grade regional clusters, providing smoother, stronger transitions from level to level, providing consistent instructional vision, and true accountability for all.

We have aligned our Special Education Supervisors and Consulting Teachers with the new Executive Directors so that again, we can create smooth, strong transitions for students with special needs, and be true collaborative partners with principals and school staff, providing effective, responsive services in every school. Please see here for our new leadership structure—you can see your Regional Executive Director, Supervisor, and Consulting Teacher listed. You can find contact information for the Supervisors and Consulting teachers here.

Thank you for sharing your students with us—we look forward to serving you this year.

Marni Campbell
Executive Director, Special Education Services

June Update

Teachers from Chief Sealth High School and consulting teacher Mel M. confer about students making the transition to High School:

Thank you for your ongoing partnership with Seattle Schools, and for sharing your wonderful students with us. It has truly been a fantastic year of growth and learning. Just a few updates as we head into the final week of the school year:

• On June first we hosted a riser file exchange event at the John Stanford Center for both elementary and secondary riser students (students moving from Preschool to Kindergarten, from Elementary to Middle School, and from Middle School to High School). Teachers came from nearly every school, and not only passed along student files but had conferences with receiving teachers to ensure a smooth transition for our students. Representatives from the Transportation Department were also present so that transportation will be in place at the start of the 10-11 school year. Thank you Seattle staff for your great work!

• We are finishing year one of a five-year move toward supporting a more inclusive approach to providing services to students in alignment with Seattle's strategic plan Excellence For All. We are finalizing outcome data for our students who received services through the integrated comprehensive service model and will have a full report prepared by late June. The data we gathered include Parent/Family Surveys, feedback from Parent/Family meetings, Staff surveys (fall and end of year), Site Visits, MAP data, review of Third Quarter IEP Progress Reports, and 2010-2011 riser enrollment data. It is particularly crucial that we look at third quarter progress reports to see if our students are moving toward and/or meeting their IEP goals. Analysis of third quarter progress reports showed that ALL students were making some to significant progress on their IEP goals. Goal areas include adaptive, social, behavior, motor, speech and communication, and academic. See below for "mean" average scores for IEP goals of students being served with integrated comprehensive services. A "2" indicates some progress made. A "3" indicates significant progress made.
  

It is essential that we continue to develop our skills and knowledge if we are going to be able to effectively teach our students. We have focused this year on providing a broad array of professional development opportunities for our students so that we can meet the needs of our students. Here are a few examples:

• Autism expert Cassie Martin has been training our staff this year in effective strategies for supporting students in inclusive settings.
• We have hosted two Inclusion and Collaboration Institutes, and have two more in June and August. Trainers include specialists from the University of Washington and experts from within our system.
  
• We have worked with experts from the UW to provide technical assistance in supporting students with Autism on-site through our Technical Assistance Team (TAT).
• Consulting teachers and Supervisors continue to provide targeted, personalized professional development at our schools.
  
• Special Education coaches Kristin A. and Lindsey D. and Supervisor Amy B. have been co-teaching for Literacy, Writers Workshop, and Math trainings this year, so that all teachers are learning how to differentiate instruction and provide supports for all students.
• This summer Special Education consulting teacher Mel M. will be working with a team from Curriculum and Instruction to modify and align High School Biology curriculum. Consulting Teachers will also be building differentiated ; curriculum for the newly aligned 4th and 8th grade Social Studies curricula.

We will have staff available through the summer if you have any questions or needs.

Thank you for sharing your students with us!