Special Education for Beginners | Managing Paraprofessionals, Special Education Strategies, First Year Sped Teachers, Special Ed Overwhelm, Paperwork for Special Education Teachers

Ask Us Anything: Part 9: Scheduling Tips & Paras Not Following Their Schedule

• Jennifer Hofferber - Special Education Teacher and Coach • Episode 180

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Welcome back, special educators! Are you feeling the pressure of scheduling chaos as the school year kicks off? Or perhaps you're facing challenges with paraprofessionals not following their schedules? We've got you covered in this Ask Us Anything episode! 

In this episode, my co-host, Paul Hubbard, and I dive into two common back-to-school struggles:

  1. Mastering the Art of Scheduling in Special Education: We discuss practical tips and strategies to create a workable schedule for your students, ensuring you're meeting all their Individualized Education Program (IEP) minutes while collaborating effectively with general education teachers and administrators. We'll also explore the importance of being proactive, using digital tools, and involving your entire team in the process.
  2. Handling Paraprofessionals Who Don’t Follow Their Schedules: Learn how to communicate effectively with your paraprofessionals, set clear expectations from the start, and address any issues that arise. We'll share insights on leadership, time management strategies, and the importance of involving your paras in the planning process to ensure a smooth and successful school year.

Whether you're a seasoned veteran or new to the field, this episode offers valuable advice to help you survive and thrive in the ever-challenging world of special education. Tune in to learn how to handle these back-to-school curveballs and set your year up for success!

Highlights:

  • [2:06] The importance of digging into IEPs and collaborating with administrators.
  • [4:33] Why you can't rely solely on IEP summaries and the significance of double-checking documentation.
  • [11:48] How AI can be a useful tool in drafting your schedule.
  • [16:47] Tips for involving your entire team in the scheduling process.
  • [17:42] Addressing paraprofessional challenges with effective communication and leadership.
  • [24:31] The role of documentation and when to involve your administration in para issues.

Resources Mentioned:

Join the Conversation: Do you have a question you'd like us to answer in our next Ask Us Anything episode? Drop us a message on social media or send us an email. We’d love to hear from you!

Send in your questions for the next Ask Us Anything

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Speaker 1:

Hey, special educator, are you overwhelmed by the absurd amount of paperwork on your to-do list? Do you wish you had the skills to build a rock-solid team with your staff? Do you find yourself scouring the internet for how to meet the needs of each student on your caseload? Well, hey there. I'm Jennifer Hopperberg, an award-winning veteran special education teacher and current instructional coach, who has walked in your shoes through each of these challenges and, yes, I have the metaphorical blisters to prove it. I have cried your tears and felt your pain, and now I'm here to support you in the way I wish someone would have been there to support me.

Speaker 1:

Listen in each week as my guests and I dish out practical wisdom to help you handle all the classroom curveballs that are thrown at you and learn how to laugh in spite of the chaos, to celebrate those small yet significant victories that only a special educator can understand. So, to celebrate those small yet significant victories that only a special educator can understand. So are you ready? Wipe your tears and put on your superhero cape, because together we are going to learn how to survive and thrive in the ever crazy, completely overwhelming laugh, so you don't cry. Profession of being a special education teacher. Hey there and welcome back for another segment of Ask Us Anything with my co-host, paul Hubbard. How are you tonight, paul?

Speaker 2:

I am doing pretty well. I joined the 30-year-olds yesterday.

Speaker 1:

Say that again the three-year-olds 30-year-olds.

Speaker 2:

I'm now 30.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, You're a baby.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I know, that's what everyone tells me yeah, your birthday was yesterday yep well, happy birthday.

Speaker 1:

I did not know that oh, thank you well, we have some really good questions today, and I feel like they are perfect for heading back to school, because I've I've already heard these from several different people, and the first one is about scheduling. I think that this is the time of year when, when, people are trying to play.

Speaker 1:

Tetris with their schedules and trying to figure it all out. So first question is from Katie, and she said what tips and strategies do you have for scheduling and a special education program? And I know that my program was different than yours, so we can probably speak to the two different styles. But I think the first thing that you have to do is just dig into your IEPs. You've got to know what services your kids have, especially if they are resourced and they're coming out for different subjects and different times. You really need to know what those services are.

Speaker 2:

Yes, definitely.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that I will say on that note specifically is that you can't just like look at the summaries, because there are so many errors that I have found.

Speaker 2:

I mean, you have the ability to have you know your kids for multiple years, but I didn't have that luxury, so you got to double check, got to double check the what's listed, because more times than not it's wrong and unfortunately, uh, so we can make sure that you, you know, don't just look at the, the summaries, go back and dig in, look at the last meeting, find out what services they they have. Um, cause, you know, know whether it's a software error or maybe they updated things or, more common than not, what was generated in the summary was some a version that was half done and they went back and fixed it later. And you know, you just don't know. You got to look at the notes, you got to look at the uh, whatever it is, um, you know, dig in, don't just go and surface level stuff, because I made that mistake one year and it was just like I had to readjust so many times. It was like, oh, my goodness, this is not not even remotely close.

Speaker 1:

And I think that this goes with human error. We were human and we make mistakes and, like you said, it could just be that it got changed and somebody didn't document it correctly. So, yeah, I agree, going back to those prior written notices and those evaluation reports and really seeing exactly what the team decided, that's a good point. You're building administrators to get the building schedules and the classroom teacher schedule so that you know when those recesses are, when the lunches are, when you shouldn't be pulling for social emotional time, whatever it is. You need to have that conversation with your admin to see when you're going to be able to pull out, whether it's during whole group or small group or intervention time. You just need to know what is available to you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's definitely. There's a challenge you have to do as a special ed teacher recognize how difficult the task is because you are, kind of like, arguably the most important but often, often the last one to do it you get forgotten a lot yeah, you have legal legal. You're the only legally required minutes, but you're often the last one to put all the pieces together and sometimes the pieces just don't fit and you got to figure out a way to make them fit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I don't ever know that it's like intentional on an administrator's part to leave you out, but you do have to advocate for yourself and make sure that they know that you have to get these minutes in, and so don't let them forget you. You need to be the squeaky wheel and and being on their radar so that they don't forget that. You need to schedule as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the admin often do forget. You know, I don't know how many emails that have been sent out there Like this is for all teachers, and almost every time I'm like is it for all teachers? Is it actually for all teachers? Because I'm a teacher and I'm not sure this applies to me, or is this what you want me to do? And so I think it's very important to also be proactive. See if you can get in on the admin planning of scheduling, because, honestly, if you can figure out a way to get your stuff in first and work the other stuff around it, it's going to make everything easier.

Speaker 2:

And you do have an obligation as a special ed teacher your minutes matter. Your minutes, you know, are legally implemented and should be, you know priority.

Speaker 2:

So if we can, you know, and it's it takes. I mean, it's not your job to do the admin's job, but if you are proactive, it might end up making your job easier in the long run. If you're proactive, you go to them and say, hey, can I be a part of planning the mean, or can I create a list of things that are absolute necessities, that are part of my schedule that need to happen? Uh, or can I maybe even talk to that? I did this one year and it was really beneficial for that one year. Um is I actually went to uh and said let's talk about where we're putting kids for gen ed to group them up better, and that made a big difference because I was able to pull groups in a similar fashion from this, from the same class, and that just made it a lot easier.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and if, like if you had six sections, maybe choose three teachers who are going to be your go-to teachers and not try to spread those kids out among all six. And that even goes to personalities. You know, you want your kids to be with a teacher who is going to be caring and loving and accepting of them and you want to not make sure that they're in those classes where they're not going to be and loving and accepting of them and you want to not make sure that they're in those classes where they're not going to be. And so if you could do some of that kind of negotiating at the beginning of the year or even at the end of the year, do some planning ahead, that would, that would be very beneficial.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that I always make sure I use is some type of visual planning tool, and I have progressed over my 30 years from going to a whiteboard or a piece of paper and then a whiteboard, and now we do it all digitally. But we, we use Google Sheets and we create at the top we have all the different columns for the different teachers who are working with us and the all the paraprofessionals, so we could have, you know, 15 columns of teachers and then we block off. We put the times of the day, from the beginning of the day to the end of the day. We put them in five minute increments and then we just start filling in those chunks of time. And you know, it's easy At first, when you first get started, it's really easy to start plugging those in, and then you got to get kind of creative.

Speaker 1:

At the end, when you're running out of spaces, you're running out of people, you're running out of time, you have to get creative. But definitely you've got to do it visually. You've got to be able to see what those times are and not just try to, you know, just ride it out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely, I definitely recommend that is that. First of all, let me, pre you know, preface this with the fact that, when it comes to AI, it is very important to do two things. One, ai never gives you a final result. And two, ai you got to be careful with private information, don't you know? I wouldn't use it for any any student information ever. With that being said, ai can help you get a outline that can help you wrap your brain around it. Something that I did is I said you know, okay, these are the times that I have, these are the things that I need to accomplish, and I have it. I put all my intentions out there and it creates something. Now it's normally incorrect, or it forget something or it didn't understand something, but I found that that gives me a little bit of a head start on my planning process when I do sit down and create that visual schedule. Just something that's sometimes what it does is that when you stare at a schedule long enough, it just all blurs together, your eyes crawl.

Speaker 1:

It's bad. So when you have, if you have, ai, it's bad.

Speaker 2:

So when you have, if you have, AI, then one of the things that AI is really good at is it's it's very good at being exact as in based on the parameters you've given it, and if you write the parameters correctly it can give you. It can think about all the things at once, when maybe you can't, and then it can be like, all right, well, this can't go here because of you know, this is what you said and you can't do it during that time, and it is like it isn't be all end all. You can't just plug it in to be like all right, task done. But what you can do is use it as a tool, which is really its intention to help you get past the, you know, stuck parts or help you brainstorm.

Speaker 1:

I've never thought about using AI for that. That's intriguing. I might have to try that out with one of my schools that I go to. I think, definitely giving it those parameters, being very specific in what you want it to produce. You don't want to give it a free-for-all because you're not going to get what you want. But yeah, I'm curious about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it works really well.

Speaker 2:

It always gives me something that's close to what my final product ends up being, and then I fine tune it, which is really it gives me the chance, instead of me making it and trying to give feedback and adjustments myself, which at that point is just all blurred together and I miss things. I get to be the critiquer of AI and be like, oh no, that won't work because of this, but I can make those adjustments and it can be very segmented, and then you can, with a lot of AI systems, you could actually have them generate a table that you can just copy and paste into a spreadsheet. And then you are. You know, you know you're halfway there and you're living on a prayer, and then you are.

Speaker 1:

You know you're halfway there and you're living on a prayer. Another thing I think is a good tip is to be flexible. You know you're going to get that schedule and you're going to think it's perfect. And I got to laugh at one of my teams I think it was Monday and they said I got it all ready for them because it's a brand new team. There's not a single teacher in that building that was there last year, so it's a brand new team.

Speaker 1:

There's not a single teacher in that building that was there last year, so it's a brand new team. And they got so excited and they said can we laminate our schedules? And I just started laughing. I was like no, you cannot laminate these because they're going to change tomorrow, so you have to be flexible. It's never set in stone, ever.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's where digital schedules really come in handy, because you can have, especially on the cloud you can. If you're sharing the schedules out with people, it can be changed and it can be changed for everyone. You don't have to print off new copies or send a new email with and then you have like several versions of the same one. The cloud really does allow you to kind of make those adjustments and updates as they come along, which is very beneficial those adjustments and updates as they come along, which is very beneficial. Another thing that I would recommend is you can add your schedule page but also have a student page for all of the kids in the special ed program, what teacher they're assigned to, what services they get, so that, and have that share that to the entire spent team.

Speaker 2:

If you do that, um, it can help.

Speaker 2:

First of all, when you get new students in, you can kind of at a glance, you know secretaries and schedulers and admin. You can see like, okay, what room has the room for this student and, and that can be very helpful. But when it comes to scheduling, is that that's something that you can give to admin and have them take to their scheduling meetings and it can give them a exact, you know view of what is required from those teachers, which might help instead of you having to be there in the planning meetings, which might be difficult because you know you want yourself to give up your summer. Difficult because you know you want yourself, you don't want to give up your summer, um. So if you do that, then you have something that they can reference quickly and make those adjustments. And, and most importantly though, I think that it's important for you to um to remember that you're doing your advocation for a schedule is to the benefit of the kids. That is. That is the most important. You're not doing this for an obsolete reason.

Speaker 2:

This is you know, find out, like how you can best help the kids, because if you know you know these kids better than the admin are ever going to know it yeah, no then you need to advocate for them to get their full services, and an admin might throw them in, says like, okay, though you can pull them during recess or something like that, and it's like, but you realize that you're going to start every pull, every session with a fight. You know, in some regard, because they'd rather do recess and honestly you don't blame them, but then they're you know, then they're not going to get as much as out of that session. And so you need to recognize that. You know that what you're doing is ultimately creating something for the kids, and they can. Kids can be gypped by a technically functional schedule if you're not careful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and gypped as in. I mean the IEP says that they attend extracurricular activities, so I would think recess would be part of that and trying to pull them out of recess. You know, admins sometimes don't even think about the legalities of all of that, and so definitely.

Speaker 1:

I agree, be an advocate for your students. And then the last thing I have to say on this is just to involve your team. We've talked about the gen ed teachers and the admin. But involve your team. Talk to your paraprofessionals about what their preferences are, where they feel most confident working, you know, in a specific subject. If they hate math, you're not going to want to put them in a math inclusion class. So just talk to them and make sure you can give them as many wins as possible. And make sure you are talking to your therapists and your related service providers, because they have to provide their services too and you don't want to get your schedule completely done and then they pop in and say, hey, I need to pull them out for 20 minutes at this time and it just totally blows up your schedule. So make sure that you're talking to them ahead of time.

Speaker 1:

All right. Question number two what do I do if I have a para who will not follow their schedule? This is from Mariah, and Mariah, I've been there. That is a tough one. You can make those schedules, you can make everything perfect, and then somebody just doesn't follow it and I've had the situation where they're not following it because they don't understand or they aren't real aware of time, like they don't know when it's 15 after I have to get up and go right. Then I can't just keep working for another 10 minutes and then get there late, because then the next kid is missing out on their minutes. So I don't know if it's necessarily that they're not following their schedule intentionally or if they're just not following their schedule because they don't understand. So I think my tip would be just to have a private conversation with them and talk to them and kind of see where the disconnect is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a tricky thing because, like it really comes down to leadership when you boil it down to his base is, you could do have the perfect plan, you could have the most exact, legal, beneficial plan in place, but if you're the only one that can carry it out and no one else knows what to do, well, then it doesn't do any good.

Speaker 2:

So it's really about communication and communicating, and there's a lot of strategies that you can implement. Most of the time, I think you'll find there there's some exceptions to this, but most of the time I think you'll find there's some sort of miscommunication or there's something that you need to accommodate on the para's behalf, a skill that they don't have very well developed, that you can help with, and there's a lot of things that can be done that way. No, I had one of the cases I had with this. I found it to be extremely beneficial to share some tips that I use for time management. You know, for example, having the, I would have those timers for, like, if there was a specific time that I'd have, I have a timer that would. They would flip when they got there and they'd leave when it's over, and and that was, you know just a nice visual representation for the student and for the para.

Speaker 2:

Oftentimes, if the para is lacking in time management, sometimes the student, especially if they're on the autism spectrum, they're very on it, and so you can create a good team in that way and have the student be the one that reminds them that they need to go. So communicate to the, to the student, but I think overall, uh, communication is, is the best form, and then to communicate instead of just being like disappointed in them and saying nothing, to have that conversation. It's hard.

Speaker 2:

It's hard to have that conversation, but if you do, then it gives them the feedback they need to to know what they need to do to improve. And if they don't approve, then that's going to, you know, be something that you keep track of and that you're going to know who you can rely on, and they're going to know, one way or the other, if you can rely on them or not, because you will have communicated it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that communication goes back to setting those clear expectations from the beginning.

Speaker 1:

You know, have your set of non-negotiables and communicate those very explicitly at the beginning of a school year and then, when it's needed and I do have that how to create an expectation list for paraprofessionals in my TPT store I'll add the link in here.

Speaker 1:

But it goes through specifically how to how to set this up, what kinds of things that you can put on their expectation list, how to communicate it with them effectively and just try to get your school year started off on a on a good note. You know you don't want to like like note. You know you don't want to like you said, paul, you don't want to not say anything and just kind of let it stew and build and build, and then you're going to be frustrated and you're going to that's kind of there's going to be a breakdown in that team aspect, and so you don't want to get to that point. You want to set those expectations early and you know, I think that sometimes we forget to explain the why to our paras and let them know that if you're late to this student, that their IEP is not in compliance, and just when you put it in those kinds of words and they know the why. I think they're going to be a lot more willing to pay better attention to their time, to their schedule.

Speaker 2:

Yeah willing to to pay a better attention to their time, to their, to their schedule. Yeah, and if you, if you don't make them do busy work and they actually feel like they're, they have a purpose, um, then they're going to want to contribute to that. Uh, I know that not. You know, I've always really tried to utilize my, my TAs as much as possible, because I feel like in a lot of rooms that I've seen, I've, I've I befriend the tas in the building.

Speaker 2:

That's just kind of you know, something that I've done, and they'll come to me and they'll be like I just I just sit there the whole time and I'm bored, and you know, and and I get that. And if they have a purpose, you know, and I get that. And if they have a purpose, you know, I always, like I always tried to find something that would give them purpose and reason for being there, because I remember, like just in my practicum hours or when I was student teaching, and I would push into a classroom and I would just sit there and I always want to do something and be involved and the teacher wouldn't want it.

Speaker 2:

For you know, because I'm some punk college student that's coming into this for a few months, I get it in some regard, but on my side of things it's like I had actually a really good comparison in the same student teaching. I would go and push into a sixth grade social studies class and she didn't have me do anything at all.

Speaker 2:

She would just like be like well, after I'm done with my lecture, you can walk around and ask if anyone has questions while they're doing this long packet worksheet Not my preferred style of anything at all. But then I had this ELA class where she was like okay, so we've got this, this project coming up, we're reading this novel and I want to give the kids six different ways that they can like, instead of writing a report, they can find this specific aspect. They create a map based on the story they do. Yeah, they just had this whole bunch of stuff and it's like like, would you like to come up with that and that's something that you could work?

Speaker 2:

and I was like, yeah, and I so did and I, you know, I I made it way, paul, so much paul. And she was like, wow, this was amazing. Can I use this like forever? Can I have permission to read?

Speaker 2:

because I made a multimedia video with a bunch of I. I created a character for each of the assignments that they could choose, so I was like the cartographer and I had a Mustang. I went all out for this thing, but it's because I know that teachers don't have the time to do some of the stuff. So why not create excitement in the paras that might have a little bit more of that time to be able to come up with those creative projects and do those creative things, and then they're going to be excited to do it and help you meet those goals and those standards that you need to meet as a special ed teacher.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great point. I definitely agree that you've got to talk to those gen ed teachers and make sure that they know that it is an expectation that those parents are busy in those classrooms. I think that's a good point. If they're just in there sitting, there's no benefit to the child at all and to the class, even if the student you're in there for is doing great and they don't need your support. Go get involved with something else. Don't just sit there and and be bored. Totally agree.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then if you keep having troubles, you know doc, like you, like Paul said earlier, document, document and then involve your admin if necessary. Maybe there's some extra training that they need to to have or some more support, you don't. You don't know. So just talk to your admin about suggestions of what you can do to get them following that schedule. You might just need to print that schedule off, have it on their lanyard or something. Maybe they're just not aware as much as they should be. So there's a lot of different tools that you can use to try to get those paras where they're supposed to be at all times All right, Paul.

Speaker 2:

Another one down.

Speaker 1:

I think those were some good questions and. I'm excited for the school years, for the school year to get started for everyone and to get in the swing. I know that some teachers haven't even started yet. They don't start until after Labor Day, so I think this is a good time to have both of these conversations.

Speaker 2:

Oh, definitely, Yeahing is a key component and it really sets the tone for the year, I feel like. So it's important.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, you have a great month and I will see you again in October.

Speaker 2:

All right, sounds like a plan.