OTS 43: Seven Reminders For That Tough IEP Meeting

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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 43 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.

In this episode, I share 7 tips to help you get ready for a tough, maybe high-profile, IEP. With the help of a few personal experiences, I talk about how to ensure that you are prepared logistically and emotionally for what can be an intense 3-6 hours with the IEP team. Did you listen and feel like I forgot something on my list? let me know with an email!

This podcast does not qualify as a Professional Development Podcast. You can learn more about how to earn professional development credits through the OTSH Podcast for your OT/COTA renewal certification here!

Links to Show References:

• OT School House's A-Z School-Based OT Course​
  

  • Check out the course that I have put together just for you, the OT School House community. This course is a direct response to the questions and feedback I have heard from those who listen to the show. Learn more about the course here!

• 10 Strategies to Help You Survive Your Next Difficult IEP Meeting
  

  • Check out this blog post for more ways to prepare for that tough IEP you have coming up. ​

• Dear IEP Team: Don't Call Me Mom​​​
  

  • A blog post from a parent about her feelings when attending an IEP and being referred to as "Mom"​

Freebies!

Be sure to subscribe to the OT School House email list & get access to our free downloads of Gray-Space paper and the Occupational Profile for school-based OTs.

Have any questions or comments about the podcast? Email Jayson at Jayson@otschoolhouse.com

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Episode Transcript

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Amazing Narrator   

Hello and welcome to the OT schoolhouse podcast. Your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.  

Jayson Davies   

Hey everyone, and welcome to the OT school house podcast. My name is Jayson Davies, and I am happy to be back with episode 43 which is the first episode of the OT school house podcast. In 2020 went on a quick hiatus for a few months. Just had to get some things done. But I'm back. I'm excited to be here with you all. And yeah, whether you're driving, whether you're at the gym. Maybe you're working on any evaluation right now and just have the podcast playing in the background. I'm sorry if I'm distracting you, but I am excited to be back, and I'm excited for you to be here with me today. In this episode today, we're going to be talking about some tips that I have, both leading into one of those tough IEPs. Some might call them high profile IEPs, as well as how to handle yourself within the IEPs. These are things that I've learned over my seven years, almost eight years now, as a school based OT and I just have some tips that I have gathered from some of my mentors. Some are OTs, others are not OTs, but have taught me a lot of skills about how to prepare for an IEP, as well as handle myself in an IEP. So I want to share those with you, but, but first, I have to say a huge thank you to every single one of you who follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and you subscribe to my email list. All of you have seen the last few days that I released a course, and this podcast was supposed to be the big announcement kind of follow up with the email, big launch day type of thing, but you guys already bought it all up. And so I want to say thank you so much for selling out my first A to Z school based ot course. Honestly, I had no idea how much you all had, how much desire I could say you guys had for this type of course. I expected to sell maybe a few of these courses, and you guys ended up selling it out. For those of you who haven't heard, my A to Z school based ot course, is an eight week live and recorded program that we're going to do on a webinar format. We're going to use Zoom, and we're going to go over everything from RTI and how to refer students and how to set up a referral program. And then we're going to dive into evaluations and how to develop an IEP, working with the present levels, the goals, the services, and then we're going to get into treatment planning and how to figure out a way to help our kids meet those goals using the services that we had. And ultimately, we're going to get into talking a little bit about graduating OT or, sorry, not graduating OTs, graduating students from that ot caseload. Maybe some of those students have just been on our caseload for too long, and they're not necessarily making progress anymore, and we need to try and see if they're appropriate to graduate, and how to go about doing that. So again, this course is sold out. This was supposed to be the podcast where I got to come on here and say, Hey, this course is available. Come and grab it. It's gonna go until Friday the registration. But it's kind of bittersweet for me that I get to say it is sold out. However, I had a lot of people that were sad that they missed it, and so I have set up a wait list for those of you who may want to get in on the next round, which will likely be during summer, and then, of course, in the fall, as people are starting to come back into their school positions. So if you're interested in potentially being a part of one of those sessions, I'm going to give you a link right here. It is, ot schoolhouse.com, forward slash A to Z, the letter A, the number two, and then the letter Z, and that will send you to a website where you can sign up for the wait list and be the very first people to know about when the next sessions open up, in case you are interested. So again, that link is ot schoolhouse.com forward slash A to Z. If you can't remember that one, just remember that this is episode 43 and go to the show notes at ot schoolhouse.com forward slash episode 43 and there will be links to all that there for you. So again, thank you everyone so much for your support and for your just excitement over this course. I'm excited the people who are in are excited the people who didn't quite make it, I think they're a little sad, but they're also excited about being able to be in future iterations of this, A to Z course. So yeah, let's just keep the excitement going and head into our topic today. All right. Well, thank you so much for hearing out my excitement about my new course. But let's jump into today's topic. I'm going to try and keep the energy up, because this isn't necessarily the type of topic. Necessarily that just exuberant energy. You know, it's one of those things that we don't always like to let's just say it's not the best part of our job, right? Those tough IEPs, right? The seven things to do and remember when heading into a tough IEP is what I'm going to talk about here. And these are things that I've learned over the course of my years as a school based ot from mentors that I've had, from mentors that are both OTs and non OTs. You know, special education directors, psychologists, Adapted PE, teachers, speech pathologists, all these people that we work with, admin, all these people have taught me something. And you know, we don't always have to rely on going to the OT to find out about our job a little bit, right? There's other people in the schools that have an impact on us. I want to start off by sharing something specific to the district that I used to work for, and that was that we worked in a smaller district, a more rural district, and it was infrequent for us to have an advocate at an IEP. Part of that is because, you know, it was a more rural area, I think. But the other part of it was that we had the mentality that as long as you have us as a team, you shouldn't need an advocate. We should be your student's advocate. We should be your advocate as a parent. We should be able to support you and what you need and your students needs in order to get that education that you need. If the parent feels that a student needs an assessment, then we're going to listen to that parent and come up with the best plan in order to support that, you know. And same thing when it comes to whether the student needed or the parent wanted, a one on one aid or an OT evaluation or a speech evaluation, right? We're going to listen to that parent and try to figure out what the underlining factors are, what's the true concern, and we're going to be that student's advocate. This policy truly started at the top and went all the way down from our special education director. She had been in the situation where she was a parent, where she sat in IEPs, and she knew what it felt like to be that parent on the other side of the table, and from that all the way from the top coming down, she was able to share with us how it felt and how we can better support families within the IEP and so we went into IEPs with a nothing to hide mentality, and I learned a lot, you know, so much that I often still get praised today from parents and teachers and other professionals and even advocates about my professionalism in those tough IEPs. In fact, at one school I work at, you know, the principal fosters a similar type of community, and thus we recently have had an advocate commend us on how well our IEP team did and how well the meeting went, and it feels good you know, when you're able to get someone who is basically paid to be there to kind of be your adversary and bring up topics that maybe you don't want to discuss, and at the end of the meeting, they're like, Wow, if this would have been the IEP team last year, we wouldn't have this, all the drama and all The craziness that we have had to go through now, and we appreciate that, and we feel like this is going to be a good year. It feels good when an advocate and a parent are able to say that at the end of an IEP. So that's what we're going to talk about today, how to make parents, how to make advocates, how to make people that are in that IEP, in that IEP meeting, feel comfortable, supported, and like the IEP team, has a plan and knows where they're headed. So let's get into that first topic. All right, so Topic number one is to introduce yourself and attend to the meeting. Be confident in your introduction when you introduce yourself, don't be looking down at your notes. Don't be looking at your computer. Don't be looking around the room. Look up, look to the parent. Make eye contact with them. Introduce yourself as their students. OT or occupational therapist, right? It's pretty simple, but too often I see people in IEPs introducing themselves while they're still looking down at the paper that they're writing notes on, or something like that. And I see advocates do this. I see program specialists do this. I see administrators do this. I don't understand why you would do this. It's not a power play. It's not going to help you in the IEP. Look up, be courteous, be kind, be respectful, and give the parents the respect that they deserve by looking up at them and introducing yourself. Now, I know some of you might be asking, because you sit in a lot of meetings with advocates or whatnot, what if an advocate is there, right? Then, how do you introduce yourself? Is it any different? And my answer to and my answer to that is, no, the advocate is there as an invited guest of the parent. You are there for the parent, right? So again, introduce yourself to the parent. Of course, do not disrespect the advocate by looking away from him or her when they introduce themselves. And of course, glance at them as you introduce yourself, because you're probably glancing around the entire table a little bit, right? Do that? Don't be a jerk, right? But at the same time. So you are there to talk to the parent, so introduce yourself to the parent. Similarly, if no one else on the IEP takes the time to do this, also encourage the parents to introduce themselves. Sometimes parents are very shy. They don't exactly know what to expect in an IEP, and they might just kind of say, Hi, I'm so and so's mom, right? But you should encourage them to say, to introduce themselves as a person, and ask them how they would like to be referred to as, right? And a lot of times, whoever's taking the notes can easily do this by simply asking how they would like to be referenced to in the notes page, right? So oftentimes we put all the participants names in the notes or somewhere in the IEP. So that's a point where you could ask how the parent would like to be referred as unfortunately, the time to be confident and attentive does not end after the introductions. Of course, you need to remember to be professional throughout the entire meeting. You know, this is not the time to input treatment notes. This is not the time to bill for the services that you provided earlier today, or to send emails. You know you need to be taking notes, maintaining attention to the meeting. You don't want to be that person that gets caught off guard when someone asks a question about sensory or someone ask a question about fine motor task. You want to be able to attend to that and answer their questions strongly and without having to ask for a repeat of the question. Right? And this doesn't just go for you, I would suggest that you have a talk with your entire IEP team if this is the case, because you don't want to be that IEP team that looks like they are hiding behind their screens. Unfortunately, oftentimes in our IEPs, the entire team, or, you know, the people that work for the school, will sit on one side of a desk, and then the parents and maybe the advocate, if they're there, are kind of on the other side, and it creates this you versus them mentality. And then to top it off, you know, everyone, quote, unquote, on our side of the table, the people that are working for the school district are all on their iPad or their computer or their Surface Pro or whatever, right? And we're all hiding behind our computer and only looking up when it's our turn to talk. That shouldn't be the case. You know, you want to be attentive. You want to be looking up. Yes, it's okay to take some notes. It's okay to have your computer out to be taking notes on that. IEP, I often am working on my treatment plan during the IEP, right? But that's one thing, versus sending emails and completely tuning out what is going on. You don't want to be that person on the IEP and you don't want to be that IEP team either. So be sure to introduce yourself confidently and continue to be a part of the meeting and be in the meeting you know, actually present in the moment. All right. So that brings us to tip number two, which I have down as seeing things from the parents perspective. And you know, this is a big one, and this is what made our IEP team so successful at my previous district, and I think now at my current schools, it's also why we're able to get through meetings pretty well, and that's because we try to see things from the way that the parent views education and the way that the parent views their child's success, but it's hard to do that if we don't know what our parents long and short term goals are for their student and also what they view as their child's strengths and also their child's weaknesses. You know, we need to ask these questions, and a lot of times we do ask these questions as part of our evaluation process, but then we should also be asking them again during the IEP, because sometimes other things come up. Maybe we just talked about speech a little bit, or we just talked about other areas, and that might jog the parents memories. So I highly recommend that you start by asking questions at an IEP. Sometimes we just want to give information, and we forget to ask for information so that we can see from the parents perspectives, their view on their child and what they would like to see their child achieve. A simple tool that I often use during an IEP is to actually ask questions of the other professionals that the parent may not know to ask, right? So it's a little bit hard to do when you're actually speaking, and I hope that other people in the room would do this if they had a question, but when maybe the psychologist or the speech therapist is is talking about their report or breaking down their report, right? It's easy for you, as the person not speaking, to take note of the parents facial cues, you know, when others are presenting and see, did the parent look like they fully understood that? Or maybe they didn't, and if they didn't understand it, what question can you ask? Can you ask a clarifying question of the speech therapist or the school psychologist about what that score on the a bass really means, or what it means that a student doesn't have the TH sound or something like that that lets the parent know that you're on their side, right, that you want to know just as much as they want to know, and that you're confident in asking the questions that they may not be so confident in asking, because they don't want to be seen as potentially a difficult parent, right? Or they don't want to be seen as that helicopter parent. But. But if we can ask the questions that the parent might be thinking, not only does it help build rapport, but ultimately it helps the student, because that means that everyone's now on the same page. Just a quick reminder before we move on to topic or suggestion number three, and that is that, you know, the parents are not occupational therapists, they're not speech therapists, they're not teachers, they're not admin, or at least not most of them, right, and they don't have the same education as us. They don't necessarily meet they don't necessarily know what standardized scores mean. They don't know that an 85 is considered average. They don't know that an 84 is below average. And so without letting them know this information or showing them graphs, it's really hard for them to truly understand the information we're giving them. They simply don't know, and they don't know what they don't know, and so they don't know to ask the questions, right? And so by, again, seeing things from the parents perspective, and asking those questions, that may be a little on the iffy side, and again, if I don't know something, then I can almost guarantee they probably don't know it, because I sit in those IEPs all the time, right? I hear it every other day, but they don't. And so we need to be on their side and ask the clarifying questions of the other professionals. And again, I would expect others to do the same to me. That would ultimately help the student and help the team make an informed decision on the best goals, the best services for this student, all right? And that brings me to tip number three, which is kind of goes back to number one, and that is, speak to the parents, not just the advocate. Again, just like when we make our introductions, we want to make sure that we are talking to the parents, and that goes throughout the entire meeting when you're going over your progress on goals, when you're going over your present levels of performance, your report, your services, your new goals, all that good stuff you should be speaking to the parents. Advocates are hired to be consultants for the student and the parents. They are not there to replace the parents. Right? An advocate does not come in place of the parent. They are there to support the parent in making decisions. So when you provide your test results and all that good stuff that I was talking about, make sure you're addressing the parent. Of course, if the advocate again, just like earlier, if the Advocate has a question, if the Advocate has asked for some clarification, don't be a jerk. Respond very politely and respectfully, but know that at the same time you are there to speak to the parent, by speaking to the parent again, you are giving them the control, the respect, to make an informed decision on their students best options, right? And if you were going about your report and you're only talking to the advocate, you're now taking away that respect, you're now taking away that power from the parent and putting it to the advocate, giving the power all to the advocate. And that's not right. I mean, I'm sure there probably are some parents and advocates that would probably actually prefer it that way, that you speak to the advocate, but in my experience, talking to the parent is the best way to continue to build that rapport, give them the trust that they need, and, I mean, ultimately, make them feel like they are included in the IEP. I think it's now a nationwide thing that at the end of IEP, you know, when they're signing, whether or not they agree or not, there's a little box that says, Do you feel like you were facilitated in your student's progress and in your student's IEP. And I don't know if I was a parent and someone was just talking to the advocate the entire time I was there, I may not feel like I was actually included in an IEP. I'd feel like my advocate was, but I wouldn't necessarily feel like I was. And let's be honest here, the parent is a specialist on their student. First and foremost, right? I know the teachers spend a lot of time with the parents, or, sorry, hope not, but I know the teachers spend a lot of time with the students, but first and foremost, that parent is the specialist on their students. So again, don't completely ignore the advocate. I am saying, do not ignore the advocate at all, but address the parent as much as possible. All right, we're at the 18 minute mark or so, and number four, we're halfway through just about this is to keep the child in mind. I don't think I really need to even tell you all this, but sometimes you need to remind others to do the same, to keep the child in mind the best interest for that student is what this IEP is all about, right? Sometimes these difficult IEPs can get a little dicey, a little emotional, a little personal, and we just have to remember to keep that child first. Don't take statements about services personally, right? If you are recommending your service, whether it be once a week or once a month, know that any statements or any questions about your service are not about you. They are about your service. The question is, why does the child require specialized ot services? Not why are you. Two as the OT recommending once a month consult for my student. Why are you recommending only 15 minutes? No, that's not the case. The question is, why is 15 minutes of service recommended for my student? And again, if you're not taking that personally and you've done all your research and all your homework, you should be able to explain exactly why we only need 15 minutes a month to support that student, or why we need two times a week to support that student. On the other side, you know, sometimes it's the administrator that might be saying, Are you sure you need that much time? And yeah, so you need to be able to explain yourself. And also understand that things typically are not personal, even though they might seem personal, right? With that said, when you're an occupational therapist, you're working in education long enough, even if you're a teacher, admin, whatever, sometimes things do get personal, and it's happened for me. I know it's happened for others, and so my quick story, I don't want to dive too deep into this. It happened a long time ago at a previous district, but I basically had a parent during an IEP accuse me of not caring about their child. This is a child that I had worked with for probably about three years or so. At the time myself an occupational therapy assistant. The occupational therapy assistant had worked with a child even longer than that, probably close to five, maybe six or seven years since they were in kindergarten. But this I was kind of new to the team, and this parent decided that she didn't feel that I cared about that child even though we had up services and we had changed goals around, and we had done so much to support this student. I mean, I think at the time we were working on assistive technology, we were doing a lot to try to make this student be able to stay in that general education curriculum or general education class as long as possible, but in the heat of the moment, this parent accused me of not caring for for her child in the middle of the IEP and as you can imagine, that was tough on me. This is with that IEP team that I talked about earlier, that I didn't feel like we needed an advocate, because we always cared about the child and we always cared about the parent and were willing to do what needed to be done for every for every kid. And then that happened, and to be quite honest, I didn't really know how to respond. I can tell you, I probably respond a little bit differently now, if I had the chance. But when she said that, I basically stood up and walked out of the door. I can't remember if I even said anything, but I know I walked out of the room, and I was probably out of the room for a good five minutes or so. I talked to, I can't remember who it was, sorry, but someone in the office outside the conference room. I talked to. Calm down a little bit, and then I calmly re, re inserted myself into the situation, back into the IEP room, quietly, sat down, participated in the meeting, as though nothing had happened. And then at the end, I made sure to stay so that I could apologize both to my school psychologist who was kind of a mentor at the time, as well as the parent, of course, and so that happened, uh, things, you know, went pretty well after that. Of course, there's always a little animosity, I guess you could call it between us for the rest of the time that I worked there because of that situation. But we were, we were able to continue working. And, you know, it worked out. I don't know if we always loved each other, of course, the parent and I, but we were able to have a working relationship, and in future IEPs, we worked together. It really helped that the school psychologist that was kind of a mentor to me, and that parent had a great relationship, and so she was able to kind of help us both stay on track, and it was really good to have that person in the picture, but nonetheless, you know, it wasn't a great situation, and I hope that none of you ever have to deal with that. Sometimes I just have to remember a quote from one of my favorite movies, and that is Oceans 11 to check my emotions at the door, because in these heated IEPs, sometimes things get a little personal, and you just gotta be prepared for it in case it happens. And think about, what would you do in a situation where someone attacked you personally? I mean, I don't know what else could happen, but being accused of not caring about the specific child, that's pretty significant in my book. So again, I hope none of you have to deal with something like this, but just know that it could happen and to be careful. So to wrap that section up, just remember to keep the child in mind, to keep the IEP team focused on the child and you. Be good to go. Alright? And so that brings us to tip number five, which I'm just going to kind of touch upon, because I know I've touched upon it in past episodes, as well as I will be touching a lot more in depth in my course, the school based OT, A to Z, school based ot course, again, check that out. But number five is to make sure that your plops, your present levels, your goals and your services all match, right? Remember, your present levels lead to your goals, and your goals lead to your services, so they all need to match. And you know, another thing is, don't blame OTs for old goals, right? So you inherit a student, but don't say it was a bad goal that the student didn't meet and blame that the previous ot didn't know what they were doing. They made a goal that's not measurable, right? That just sounds like you're trying to give all the blame to that person, and that the reason they didn't meet the goal is because of the bad goal, right? No, don't do that. Take responsibility and tell it like it is. Say, Hey, the way that the goal is measured, the student did not meet the goal. They were able to do this, this and this, but they were not able to do this, and therefore they didn't meet the goal. And here's my proposed next goal. There's no reason to make it sound like someone didn't do their job. Remember, at the end of the day, you are a district as a team, right? And so if you're throwing an OT under the bus from the previous school or even the previous school district, it just doesn't sound good, and it doesn't help in the report building, also know that it's okay for goals not to be met. I know a lot of times there's pressure to say that a goal was met, but that's not always the case. You know, we're trying to push these students, and we should be writing goals that are difficult for the student to meet, whether it is a quote, unquote, pure ot goal, or if it's an academic goal, that's a whole nother discussion, but give your honest opinion, your honest measurement of that student's progress on their goals. It's okay if a goal was not met, but just continue forward, report it and then create new goals that go forward, right? So just a quick example before we move on to number six, about keeping everything kind of in order. So if you put on your present levels that a student struggles with cutting due to poor bilateral coordination skills, right then, going forward, you would work on your goal, which I don't know, maybe your goal would then be for the student to cut out a complex design, if they've already cut out simple designs. And then your service should reflect that goal as well as any other goals that you have. And so if you think you only need to see the student twice a month to work on that cutting goal. That's all right, but maybe you add another goal, a handwriting goal or something, then do you need to see that student another two times a month to make it once a week to meet both of those goals? That's how you should be establishing that. And then as we move on to number six, it's very closely related to number five, and that is about providing draft reports and IEP documents. This is becoming more and more popular, at least in California, around my area. You know, parents, whether or not they have an advocate, are asking for the IEP documents ahead of time. They're asking for the reports ahead of time, sometimes as early as a week. Sometimes they're okay if they have it a day before, and so I've been giving this some thought, and when it comes to my reports, by all means, yes, it's it's a good idea to send home the reports in advance. I do this. I try to get it out as early as possible, but typically I do follow that sometime within a week, oftentimes, our teacher will try to set a date for us, and we'll all send it to the teacher, and then the teacher will send it home. Not gonna lie, sometimes I miss that date and I end up sending it home in an email a few days later, or in the kids backpack A few days later. But still, before the report, the only thing I would suggest to you, if you are going to do this is make sure that you put, like a watermark, a draft, on the paper, on your report, or at the top of your report, say, draft copy and make sure it's on every single page. I rarely change my report from the time that I send it home to the time of the IEP date, but occasionally I do, and when it or whether or not it does, I come to the IEP with fresh copies of that report to give to the parent and the rest of the IEP team. So again, when it comes to reports, I'm all good with sending this home to the parents ahead of time, but I do recommend putting draft on your report. Also, I am not your boss. I'm not your special education department, obviously. So definitely check in with them before you start doing these types of policies. Similarly with the plops, the present levels and the goals, same thing goes, we often will put our present levels and our goals down on a draft IEP and send it home to the parent beforehand. That way the parent comes in already, kind of knowing what they look like. We also do this with our progress on. Previous goals, so that the parent can see what progress has been made and have appropriate questions at the IEP meeting. When it comes to services, though, that's where my belief changes, and I don't think that we should send home a copy of our recommended services, and that's only because things change a lot. And so at an IEP, a lot of new information comes out related to present levels and goals, and maybe how progress on goals occurred, different areas that parents might have concerns about, different areas that teachers general education teachers may have concerns about, right? And so we may add goals or we may remove goals, and services should be reflected in those addition to goals or removal of goals, right? And so you got to be careful, because if you say a student on your draft IEP requires once a week services, and he requires those once a week services because you're working on goals A, B and C, and you need once a week services to meet goals a, b and c1, year from now. Well, what happens then, when the parent or advocate or teacher says, Well, I think we need to add a goal for number four or number five even, right? Well, then what happens to your services? Do they change as well? Because now you have more goals to work on. So as you can see, what I'm trying to allude to is that services can change a lot based upon what happens earlier in the IEP. And so it's when it comes to services that I don't necessarily recommend always sending the services home in a draft that being said in my current district, that is our policy. And I absolutely go ahead and I follow that policy, but I would just say that in my opinion, I would prefer not to do that with all that said. Ultimately, no matter what you your IEP team, your school, your district, decide to do regarding sending drafts home, you have to be flexible in IEP and you have to have the child's best interest in mind. These are things that we've already talked about. And if you have a fixed mindset, when you go into an IEP, a that's when you're going to probably start to butt heads. And two, it's kind of illegal, and that's why it's a draft. Remember, drafts can change. You are not allowed to create an IEP without the parent, right? So it is a draft. You need to be flexible and keep the child's best interest in mind. All right, those were the six, quote, unquote, I guess, kind of heavy suggestions and tips. I wanted to go over number seven is a little more light hearted, and that is to remember, no matter what the meeting will end, you will make it home in time to watch The Bachelor, to see Victoria get kicked off the bachelor, hopefully tonight and or whatever your guilty pleasure show is, I guess you could say, but tomorrow will come. The IEP will eventually be signed, right? There's only so much you and your IEP team can do eventually. There are things that are above your head, above the OT position, right, that you just don't have control over. And so you have to be willing to let those go at the end of the day and say, and feel comfortable in saying that you did the best part that you could do to make that a good IEP and to make this child success possible, right? So that's everything for today. That is episode number 43 again. Show Notes can be found at ot schoolhouse.com, forward slash episode 43 uh, almost got stuck there real quick, but we got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining me today. Welcome to 2020 even though it is already, uh, almost March, I appreciate you all always for being a part of this podcast, for listening and letting me join in on your drive to work, drive home from work, or wherever you may be listening. Truly do appreciate it. For those of you still listening, I wanted to add a little something. I really hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. This is the first episode in a while that I actually completely re recorded, because I recorded it at first, and it just, it's a hard topic to keep upbeat. I guess. You know these, these are difficult subject matters and difficult IEPs that we unfortunately have to be in. And no one prefers to be in this right? We all want to be in the classroom or in our OT room, working with our kids. None of us got into this job to go to these strange IEPs, right? But we did it. I think it's a lot better now, and I hope you enjoyed it as well. Let me know if you're still listening to this in a direct message on Facebook or Instagram or something, and give me a fist bump or something. So with that, I will see you next time on the podcast. To take care and yeah, have a great rest of your week. Bye. Bye, everybody.  

Amazing Narrator   

Thank you for listening to the OT school house podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to otschoolhouse.com Until next time class is dismissed.  

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