Do you know what your child’s needs are? Can you clearly take the information from your reports and translate them into action at the school? Before you can ask for services/supports for your child at the school level, you need to have a clear understanding of what these needs are! Every child who is struggling academically at school benefits from a “parent written” Needs statement that will be used to support the placement and learning needs of your child so they can be successful in the classroom. Through our workshop we will simplify the writing of this statement for you. We’ll show you how to write it, the Ministry/School language to use, how to apply it to your child’s IEP, IPRC placement, and how to use it to steer every school meeting.

Feeling unprepared, outnumbered, lost in unanswered, unknown questions? Never be unprepared for or feel outnumbered at a school meeting again! We teach you how to plan your school meetings in advance. We cover how to set an agenda, how to ask the right questions to get the answers you need. We include how to invite key players to attend your meetings, how to build your own support team, and how to get derailed discussions back on track. Planning and preparing for school meetings is key to enabling parents to become successful negotiators for services/programs for their child.

Do you know what your child’s identification and placement means? Are you signing away your child’s rights each year? Are you aware of the legalities around this document? IPRC is the most critical step in having your struggling student “identified” as needing extra support and services in the classroom to be successful. If your child is not “identified” with the right placement, the services and programs s/he needs will not be delivered. Make sure you get it right the first time by learning the process and what it all means to your child’s long-term educational career and success in the classroom. Our workshop shows parents how to get ready for IPRC meetings and to get it right the first time!

If you have an IEP and your child’s learning is not moving forward, you may not have a S.M.A.R.T IEP. If your child is about to receive their first IEP, do you know if it is a S.M.A.R.T one or not? Our workshop will teach you why IEPs need to be Specific, Measurable, use Action words, are Realistic and relevant and are Time limited in order to be most effective in moving your child’s learning forward, each term!

If you have an IEP and your child’s learning is not moving forward, you may not have the right “placement” for your child, and this can prevent your child from being a successful learner in the classroom. Because IEPs are directly connected to your child’s IPRC placement decision, if the placement is wrong, this can directly impact the services and programs your child is able to receive at the school level based on their IEP. We will show parents how to evaluate whether their child’s placement matches their needs or not and the step by step process they need to go through to fix it so their child can move past these barriers and be a successful learner.

Let us help you to demystify ADD/ADHD for yourself and your child. We will separate fact from fiction through the use of current research, diagnostic results, and our affiliation with CADDAC, Dr. Jain and CADDRA in Toronto. These are the ADD/ADHD advocacy and research groups who have joined together in spearheading the awareness of ADD/ADHD with the Ministry of Education for all our children. We will talk about the Executive “Dys”-function of the ADD/ADHD brain and what it looks like in the classroom. We will touch on the do’s and don’ts in the classroom and at home. Mostly, we will bring clairty to parents about a greatly misunderstood neurological disorder that impacts the daily lives of many bright and able children throughout Ontario and Canada.

Nearly every person has a learning deficit, something they are not really great at, even down right lousy at. This does not make you less intelligent or able than anyone else, outside of school that is! In the real world, we all cope with our learning deficits by using our strengths. In school children have yet to recognize their strengths or begun to develop the compensatory strategies we have taken a lifetime to learn in order to cope with our deficits and still be successful. Imagine then for a moment that you are a child with a learning deficit that is keeping you from being a successful learner in the classroom, and you have no compensatory strategies in place, and you are not coping very well. In fact, you are starting to act out because it is better than everyone noticing you are the “dummy”! How good do you feel? More importantly, how much learning is not happening for you – every day? The range of deficits and how they impact learning is an evening of understanding how learning happens and the hurdles and barriers our children face every day when it doesn’t. With understanding comes the forward motion you will need to advocate at the school level to tear down the barriers so your child can be effective and successful in the classroom.

It is difficult enough dealing with a child that has learning difficulties in the classroom, but add to this the “invisible” factor that prevents your child’s learning needs from being brought to the forefront of the teachers attention, and you have the potential for a struggling student to go unnoticed, year after year. Having a yearly grade to grade transition plan in place before the move can ensure that your child will have all their “supports” in place in advance of the grade change. Although schools are encouraged by the Ministry to prepare “transition plans”, most don’t for struggling/identified LD students. For students who are struggling with learning, this could mean a disastrous first term (or whole year) in the new grade as the student and teacher “adjust” to each other and the teacher plays catch-up with your child’s history/learning needs. We will show you how to write them, how to present them, when to present them and how to use them, in combination with your “Parent Written Needs Statement”, to steer them right into the new classroom teacher’s hands.