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

Streamline Paperwork Using Templates with Caroline Koehler

• Episode 186

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In this episode, Caroline Koehler from Celavora Education and Sped Up Paperwork joins me to discuss the ever-pressing issue of paperwork in special education. Listen in as we share effective strategies and tools designed to help special educators manage your documentation more efficiently. This discussion is essential for anyone looking to reduce the administrative burden and focus more on teaching.

Key Talking Points:

  • Caroline’s Professional Background: From kindergarten to special education, Caroline brings a wealth of experience and insight into the unique challenges of the field.
  • Overview of Sped Up Paperwork: Caroline introduces her membership service which includes tools like student observations, functional behavior assessments, and behavior plans, aimed at simplifying the paperwork process for educators.
  • Streamlining Compliance and Efficiency: How Sped Up Paperwork ensures adherence to legal standards while making the documentation process quicker and more customizable.
  • Benefits for Educators: The discussion highlights how both new and veteran teachers can benefit from these tools, emphasizing efficiency and reduced stress.
  • Special Offer - Free Webinar: Caroline discusses an upcoming free webinar that will provide additional strategies for managing educational paperwork effectively.

Implementing the right tools like Sped Up Paperwork can significantly ease the paperwork load for special educators, allowing you more time to dedicate to your students. Join Caroline’s upcoming webinar to learn more about these strategies and follow Calabora Education on social media for continuous support and resources.

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Speaker 1:

Well, hey there, welcome back to Special Education for Beginners. You know, this week I have helped seven different special education teachers write IEPs and complete the corresponding paperwork that goes along with an IEP. And trying to keep up with all of that information and keep it organized and get everything completed in a timely manner, while also keeping my sanity in check. It's a lot, it is stressful, and so for special education teachers those of you who are in the trenches every day with kids you have it even worse because you are trying to keep up with your paperwork on top of teaching the kids. So kudos to you. I know how hard that is to keep up with it all and to keep yourself organized in the process. So today's guest is going to help us with all of that. Today we have Caroline from Calabora Education and Sped Up Paperwork, and she has some amazing strategies to keep you organized so that you can focus more on teaching and less on the paperwork. So let's get to it.

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. Listen in each week as my guests and I dish out practical wisdom to help you handle all the classroom curve balls.

Speaker 2:

Well, hello, Caroline. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Speaker 1:

Thanks, Jennifer, for having me. I'm super excited to be here. I'm excited to hear how you help teachers get themselves organized and about your innovative approach to tackling the paperwork overload. Before we get started, though, would you share a little bit about yourself and your journey within the field of?

Speaker 2:

special education, yeah for sure. So I started as a kindergarten teacher for seven years and after that I jumped into in-home developmental therapy for infants and toddlers, and while that was wonderful, after two years I was ready to go back to public schools and I took a job as a self-contained teacher for kiddos with autism, and I also supported anywhere between half a dozen to a dozen of inclusion students with autism too. And I did that for four years and one summer, right before school started, a best friend teacher of mine called and was like Caroline, you have to apply for this inclusion job at the middle school. It is five minutes from your house. And I was like I don't know if I was ready or done with the autism classroom, but I did apply for that ended up taking that job. So I taught at the middle school level for five years and I did one section of math for kiddos that were non-diplomatracks. So that was really good too.

Speaker 1:

And then I went back to elementary roots as a third grade inclusion teacher for two years. Well, that's a big jump from little to middle school and back. Well, as we both know, special education teachers have a really, really tough career. It's very rewarding and I wouldn't change my journey for anything, but it's not an easy job and special education teachers I feel like it just it's getting even harder.

Speaker 1:

We're under immense pressure to balance our responsibilities of doing the paperwork and teaching the kids and writing the lesson plans. There's just so much going on. And then we're working with so many different kids who have such a wide range of diverse needs, and then you pile on all of the paperwork and it seems like every time I turn around there is a new form to complete to stay in compliance with state and federal regulations, and so it's no wonder that so many teachers are feeling this pull that may be burnout or just constantly feeling like they can't catch up, much less get ahead, and that's why finding effective ways to streamline these tasks is so critical, and that's exactly what I wanted to chat with you about today. So I know that you have a membership and it's just. It's all aligned with helping teachers get organized and getting their paperwork done. So can you tell me a little bit about your sped up paperwork membership?

Speaker 2:

Yeah for sure. So yeah, the caseloads are getting big and ridiculous and behavior problems are just off the charts and it's just a challenge to get everything done and the last thing you want to do is sit and look at the computer for hours. So sped up paperwork is designed to simplify, streamline your paperwork so that you can actually get stuff done. There are six main components right now. There's student observations, functional behavior assessments, behavior plans, safety crisis plans, behavior contracts and transition assessments for my secondary peeps. Each section has a step-by-step template that walks you through how to fill out that form. Then the magic is there's custom code behind the scenes that creates an individualized, student-centered report with a click of a button.

Speaker 2:

So let me give you an example. When a teacher needs to do a student observation, she records on-task and off-task time, which is logged into the observation system of the program. You add notes, as you need to, and then you press submit. The code writes a summary that has the student's name throughout correct pronouns and all those observation details that you entered. You are done with the observation. Once you're done with the observation, that's nice.

Speaker 1:

I just had a teacher turn in her observation to me today and I have it streamlined a little bit where they collect different things but they still have to write that summary. So you're saying that that just auto-generates for them?

Speaker 2:

You got it. So what I did, exactly like what you're saying, is I had a template, and that's that's pretty much what, I guess, inspired me to jump into this. As you know, I make templates and I'm a I'm that person that, like, my specialty is behavior management and crisis management for kids. But I got even better at paperwork because I needed to get that done so I could focus on the big, really important things. Not that paperwork isn't important, but it's different than a tantruming child. So, yeah, I was probably doing what one of your teachers was doing today.

Speaker 2:

I was sitting in that third grade classroom and I had another student observation that I needed to do for another initial evaluation and, first of all, I love doing student observations. They are so much fun to me. I learned so much. I love seeing what the teacher is doing, how the kid reacts. It's just great.

Speaker 2:

But then I started stressing because I have to get my summary typed up as soon as possible, because if not, I'm not going to get it all right. I take really detailed notes, I have a really great frequency charts, but I have horrible handwriting. So when I get done with that, if I don't get to it right away, I'm trying to figure out what I wrote and it's just not top-notch quality that I'm used to. And I was sitting in that third grade room and I was like, oh my gosh, what if I could build a program that auto-completes this? After I'm done with this observation, I'm done. And I was like I don't even know if this is possible. So I spent months searching and researching, finally found a program, finally found a coder, just that a paperwork was born.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, wow, that is quite the inspirational story. I know we're just I don't know. You just explained the whole career. You know, sitting and doing those reports and having a way to tie it all together and to streamline it. That's the word I'm looking for streamline this whole process. I think that is an amazing tool for teachers. And so can you explain a little bit more about how the membership addresses the time and the workload issues, especially when burnout is sitting in and we're trying to, you know, just get through the day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think, like you know, especially like I mentioned the tantruming child you know, after you just had a tantrum or a runner or somebody vomits on you that day, I mean you know we've all been there. You know you've just had a tantrum or a runner or somebody vomits on you that day, I mean we've all been there. You're just like, and I have an FBA that I have to summarize, or I have a student observation, or I have this transition assessment that I have to get done to be compliant, and so I was like I can do this. I have these templates, I have great resources that teachers love, so let's see how we can plug in the information that everybody times. So I'll give you another. For example, you need to do an FBA, but if you've done a functional behavior analysis and summary, they're intense and there's so much that goes into them. I remember doing the first one that I had and nobody gave me a form. They were like you have to do this, and so I was like, oh my gosh, and it's IEP related. So you're nervous, everyone's going to read it. If it goes to a lawsuit, it's there looking at you. So, after a lot of research and best practices, I made step-by-step guides so now I've converted that into the electronic version.

Speaker 2:

So when you're ready for that FBA, you open up the program, you select FBA. First, you add in the student's name, you add in their pronouns, because that tells the system what it needs to autofill, and then you just start recording the information. So it guides you step by step. So don't miss anything important that you put in. You know a dozen others that you forgot this time. Once you're done, you hit submit and it gives you that ready to use report along with the frequency analysis, because I read that part as well. So the other thing that's awesome about it is make sure that there's no one else's name in there. You didn't accidentally put a different student's name in there or somebody else's details or scores or something. I'm like surely not the other person that cringes when a report comes across your desk. You're like, oh my gosh, that was two students ago. So this solves that stress as well.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I feel that pain. I was in a meeting yesterday and I'm the one that had written the IEP for this person and it had. I don't know if we just copied from, I don't know if the teacher last year copied it into this year's you know program, into the program, but I was like I didn't type that, I didn't copy that. I don't know how this happened, but I was like, you know, crossing it off real kind of subtly. It's just that would be amazing to make sure that those things don't happen?

Speaker 2:

Yeah for sure. It is not the best experience, and once it happens to you, you're like what can I do to make sure this never happens?

Speaker 1:

When you said the throw up, it made me think of my daughter. She's a special education teacher and she said that she was out getting ready to send this child home and they had just had. You know, we're special teachers here. We all have been through go to a meeting and so I didn't have time to, you know, kind of gather my thoughts and get in there. So I think, having that resource or tool that helps us save that time, so that we know that, okay, all this happened, I had all this stress, but now I've got to go into a meeting, that I can be confident that I have everything ready to go. So can you walk us through the specific resources or templates that members gain access to and how they can streamline this process?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So, like I mentioned, student organizations is probably the biggest one that people get really excited about with the membership, so that one's in there. If you've ever done a functional behavior analysis and a summary for it, again that one's in there and it is super, super important. Behavior plans and crisis plans, which a crisis plan is like an emergency crisis plan, so that could be for a student that's medically fragile. It could be someone who does harm to self or harm to others.

Speaker 2:

Behavior contracts, because those are just becoming extremely popular and important for establishing ground rules, and my behavior contracts are for the student, the parent and the teacher. So it makes sure that everything is outlined in there, pre-selected, or you can change of course, goals and things to plug into those. And then transition assessments, which I think I have 12 to 15 of those different ones that you can do with your secondary students looking at transitioning and again, and then it auto-summarizes that for you. So basically, what you do is you get a template for any of those categories, you plug in that information as a teacher and then you get that ready to use summary. You can copy and paste that into your IEP or you can just save the PDF off and upload it that way.

Speaker 2:

So my favorite section is the behavior plan section, because there are dozens of editable goals for behavior, specifically in all kinds of different categories and their behavior management strategies as well. So this is you know, I've spent over 20 years gathering these things and you can just click from them so that student's name is already auto-populated in the goal and in all the strategies. So you select it and then the code pulls all of that in and you go on to your next step. You click it, you edit, you move on Super detailed. It's so inclusive. Every time I see it it makes me smile, which never happened before when.

Speaker 2:

I was writing behavior plans. You'll have to try this then, because you'll look at all the goals. You're like, oh my gosh, that's great. And then all these management strategies pop up. And you're like, oh my gosh, and then in two. And then all these management strategies pop up and you're like, oh my gosh, and then in two minutes you can be done with that section, whereas before I could spend over 30 minutes or more on a section like that. So it's so amazing, and I've had people say that it also helps them make sure that it is such more individualized, because they have all these choices they didn't think of before.

Speaker 1:

And it gets your mind flowing and you can just pick, pick, pick and you're ready to go. Yeah, you see so many IEPs that say the same thing in every IEP and I think that this would be a better tool to customize that. And as amazing as these templates sound, I can hear I can hear the negative Nellies right now. What about compliance? How does this, how are these individualized to my student? And how does this membership help me stay compliant with state and federal regulations while reducing the burden of the paperwork? So how can you respond to that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so first of all, compliance issues in my world typically are due to missed deadlines. And missed deadlines are because you have so much other time, demands, accidents that you're cleaning up, like we just talked about. So you have a system that walks you through all the necessary components for those supporting documents with best practices in mind, Auto-summarizes things, puts it into that burden of time is just removed. So it makes sure that you have all those necessary things before you go into your meetings or your paperwork without having to dig. So you check boxes, you type in responses, you create that specific plan, you press submit. The individualized part comes because everything's so editable. So, like when I was talking about the behavior plan section you're looking at I think it's like almost 70 different goals in there, so you can select maybe three, two to three behavior goals. Whatever you're looking for. Of course you can edit any of those. And then you can do the same thing with the behavior management ones. They're divided into different categories.

Speaker 2:

So you've got a student that's working on hands to self, body to self. You're looking at that category only. Your next student might be working on work completion. So you're working on that section and of course every goal is editable. So you might want 75% of that goal, but then you're going to change the rest of it. It's like so, teacher of us, right, You're like well, I will use 75% of that three out of four times to complete. So that's where it becomes so amazing. And same thing with, like, the student observation. Every observation is different, but every observation needs the same components. You need to know how many students were in the classroom, how many teachers were in the classroom, what subject were we talking about? Was the student on task? How many times Were they off task? How many times? So all of those things get pushed into a report that is again auto-generated for you. So everyone's different, but it has the same summary template because they all need to have those same components.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you have teachers who are new and you have teachers who have been there a while. Do you feel like this? I mean, it sounds amazing for everyone, so do you feel like it is a tool that can that's going to benefit both brand new teachers and teachers who have been in there a while? And, like myself, I can. I can whip out an IEP pretty quickly, but I'm still thinking that this would be make it even easier.

Speaker 2:

Yeah for sure. So, because this is, these are tools, and're guides and templates. It takes that overwhelming amount of paperwork and it gives you that step-by-step process so that you don't feel lost. So if you're a seasoned teacher, you're going to get that efficiency level that you're like I know what I need to do and dun dun, dun, dun dun. We love crossing things off our list, which is kind of what this does for you New teachers. It lays that groundwork of how to do all those things that you weren't taught in college. Like you know me, they're like do FBA, caroline? And I'm like okay, and they're like good luck. So, whether you've been teaching for years or you're just starting, all these tools save you time because they eliminate those repetitive tasks that you just you've got to get off your plate. So obviously, like we said, the resources are all customizable. So let's new and seasoned teachers fine-tune all their processes, make adjustments, all based on what they need and their students need.

Speaker 1:

Well, I've seen different things out there, different resources, different tools, but what would you say, sets SPED-UP paperwork apart from other special education resources or memberships for teachers?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I'd say the big difference is that SPED-UP paperwork. It's just not a resource library. There are some resources in there that are, you know, pdfs like IEP help guide and goal banks. That are bonuses, but this is actually an active tool that simplifies and optimizes your paperwork. So, with each section, have that digital template with the code to produce your summaries. So some memberships might be focusing on like classroom strategies or your lesson plans or professional development, but I am helping you focus on that area where we often struggle the most getting everything done, so that membership has practical, easy to implement tools that will immediately make a difference for reducing your paperwork overload and freeing up more time for the actual teaching that you need to be doing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that sounds so amazing. So what strategies do you suggest for teachers who are? They're just really struggling right now and they're overwhelmed. They're overloaded and they might be hesitant to add just one more thing to their plate.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think, like the first thing that people ask me about with like a membership like this is they're like well, does it even work? And I'm like, well, of course it works. Come on, ask me about with a membership like this. And so they're like well, does it even work? And I'm like, well, of course it works, come on, it's wonderful. But I totally get that trying something new is overwhelming and can be daunting. So start small.

Speaker 2:

If you join the membership, pick one tool or one template. That is your biggest pain point. So if you're doing observations all the time, grab that one. Or maybe the behavior plans appeals to you most, data collection, whatever. Integrate that into your current workflow. Once you see how much time you're saving, you will start adding the other tools to your point as well and you're going to start going to them when you didn't think you would have. Like you know what? Actually, I could use the membership to auto-generate something for this, so it's super user-friendly.

Speaker 2:

The learning curve is minimal, but there are training videos for each component. Most people can jump right in and just start using a form. It's just that step-by-step easy. But my goal is to reduce your workload, not to add to it. So if now is not the right time for you yet to join Setup Paperwork. Then start making your own templates, have an outline for yourself and go from there. I am going to be doing a free webinar soon where I will teach you how to do just that. I also will have some other amazing free tips for being fast and efficient with paperwork.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that sounds great. So free webinar. When will it be held and how can they sign up? What can I expect from this event? What does that look like?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'm going to do three different dates for hosting the webinar. It'll be January 28th, january 30th and February 2nd. We'll have some strategies in there for streamlining paperwork, with a bunch of tips on how to organize all your sped tasks and some practical tips on how to implement the sped up paperwork too, so you can get a sneak preview of that and learn how to make the resources make your life super great, or at least better the paperwork role. So some of the free tips are truly game changers that you can implement right away. Even better, you might be even possibly able to get your IT staff to do it for you. So if you want to make sure that you get invited to the RET webinar, join my email list would be the best thing to do. I can also share a link that hopefully we can add to this podcast for people to sign up to. Yeah definitely.

Speaker 1:

I'll add that link. And then I'm interested. I feel like I would love to share this with my teachers, who I work with, but if they wanted to learn more from you in the meantime, where can we find you out in social media land?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I mean I live at calivoracom, so it's C-E-L-A-V-O-Rcom, which is where the membership is hosted. In social world, I'm pretty much everywhere Facebook, instagram, tiktok even that's fun and some Pinterest as well. So lots of places, but Calivore is the easiest one to find me and there's a link to my email there and I answer all the email requests I get.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. Well, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing this amazing tool, resource, wonder product I don't know what to call it. I just feel like I wish I could have had something like this when I was first starting out, because the overwhelm of just not knowing what you're doing and not even not knowing what to do. But not knowing, or not, and it's not even not knowing what to do, it's just not knowing what's expected of me. I don't even know what's expected of me to even try to start doing things like this. So I feel like definitely new teachers would benefit from this and, like you said, seasoned teachers. Let's make things easier for us. So I really appreciate you coming on and I'll link all of that into the show notes and we'll be in touch. Okay, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

I really had a great time.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Caroline.