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

Mastering the Special Education Schedule (One Tetris Piece at a Time)

• Episode 223

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Scheduling in special education isn’t for the faint of heart! Whether you’re leading a resource room program, a self-contained classroom, or managing inclusion services across multiple grades, you’ve probably felt like you were playing an endless game of Tetris...trying your hardest to make all the pieces fit without leaving gaps or losing a part of your soul.

In this episode, I’m breaking down three distinct approaches:

Part 1: Scheduling for a Resource Room

We’ll dig into a practical, step-by-step method for building a workable resource room schedule. You’ll learn how to:

  • Use Google Sheets in 5-minute increments for precision and flexibility
  • Add all staff names across the top so you can visually track who’s doing what, when
  • Assign a unique color code for each para, subject, recess/lunch duty, and transition for instant clarity
  • Map out student service minutes straight from their IEPs using color-coded sticky notes, so you can see exactly where those minutes fit best before locking anything in
  • Adjust your plan for inevitable overlaps, push-ins, or schedule conflicts

Part 2: Scheduling in a Self-Contained Program

When your students are with you all day, the challenge shifts from fitting them into other schedules to structuring a daily flow that supports learning and regulation. We’ll cover how to:

  • “Anchor” your day by first plugging in non-negotiables like arrival, lunch, recess, specials, and dismissal
  • Place your most demanding academic lessons during peak alertness times, and save hands-on or lower-energy activities for after lunch or late afternoon
  • Run smooth small group rotations with paras leading activities or supervising independent work
  • Schedule sensory and movement breaks proactively, not just reactively
  • Build in life skills, social skills, and transition time as intentional parts of the schedule
  • Use color-coding to quickly read the master schedule at a glance
  • Teach the schedule to your students so it becomes a predictable part of their day

Part 3: Scheduling for a Full Inclusion Program

If your special education program is fully inclusion-based, scheduling is more about strategically embedding support into the general education environment. You’ll discover how to:

  • Start by collecting all general education class schedules across the grades you serve
  • Layer in your students’ IEP minutes so you can match support to the most critical times of instruction (rather than spreading minutes too thin)
  • Coordinate with general education teachers to determine when you’ll push in, co-teach, or provide targeted small group support in the classroom
  • Factor in paraprofessional coverage so your staff are placed where they’re most needed without overlapping unnecessarily
  • Plan for high-need transition times like arrival, dismissal, and lunch to ensure students are supported during those unstructured moments
  • Keep a flexible mindset—your inclusion schedule will likely shift frequently at the start of the year as you learn student needs and teacher expectations

By the end of this episode, you’ll have a clear framework for making the most of your time—without feeling like the pieces are constantly falling too fast. The key isn’t creating a “perfect” sch

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Speaker 1:

Well, hey there, and welcome back to Special Education for Beginners.

Speaker 1:

This month we are focusing on all things back to school. Last week we kicked things off by talking about three key priorities to focus on. First, during this busy season Knowing your students' IEPs, organizing your space for accessibility and setting up your core systems. We talked about how getting those foundational pieces in place can make everything else much more manageable. So if you haven't had a chance to listen to episode 222, make sure you go back and do that at some point. Today we are tackling one of the trickiest challenges special educators face this time of year scheduling. Whether you are in a resource room, you are teaching a self-contained class or you are juggling inclusion minutes across multiple grade levels, scheduling can feel like a giant game of Tetris. You don't always get the right pieces and the game never really ends. I stopped into a couple of teachers classrooms this week in my district and on their smart boards they had the bright, colorful Tetris board style schedules, mapping out blocks of time, trying to fit in every service, support and subject into the day. And, just like in the game, some pieces slide in perfectly and others make you want to flip the whole board upside down and cuss in frustration. This episode is going to give you a realistic starting point and, hopefully, a little peace of mind as you plan your days around IEP services, gen ed schedules, therapist times, paraprofessional availability and, of course, your own sanity.

Speaker 1:

Let's get to it. 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 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 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.

Speaker 1:

Before we start, I want you to know that there is no perfect schedule. There is only the best fit schedule for your students, your staff and your building. There will most likely be times in your day when you are overlapped or doubled up. There may be times when a para is covering two students in different classrooms and has to pull a student into a different room. There could be times when a therapy session pulls a student right out of the middle of your lesson or your schedule has you running from one end of the building to the other to make sure everyone's needs are met. And spoiler alert, if you are a newbie, even your best fit plan is probably going to change five times in the first month. New students will enroll or be placed, some will move away, paraprofessionals will quit and therapists will switch availability. So give yourself permission to create a draft, not a masterpiece. This is a living document. You will adjust, you'll refine and it will get easier.

Speaker 1:

So in today's episode I'm going to break this conversation into three parts. One scheduling for a resource room, which includes how to balance inclusion minutes for those who have inclusion and pullout, as well as serving students who might have more significant needs. The second is scheduling in a self-contained program, where you are planning for the same group of students all day while still coordinating with therapists and specials. And three is scheduling for a full inclusion program, when your students are in general education for the entirety of the day and your role is to provide push-in and consultative support. By the end of this episode, I hope you'll have practical strategies that you can adapt, no matter which type of program you are in. So the first is scheduling for a resource room. Now, this is the type of schedule that I created my entire career, and so it's the one that I am most familiar with.

Speaker 1:

If you're in a resource room, your schedule is probably the most like a puzzle, where the pieces keep changing shape. You're serving students from multiple grade levels with different IEP minutes, different service delivery models and different times that they are actually available to be in your room, and on top of that, you're working around general education schedules for core subjects, special schedules, lunches and recesses, and if your program is anything like mine was, you may also have some of your students on your caseload who need inclusion minutes in addition to their pullout minutes, and some who are with you a significant part of the day, but because they do go to general education settings part of the day, they are not technically considered self-contained. So before you start building your schedule, you need to gather the right tools and information. At a minimum, have these in front of you your master building schedule with all grade level, course subject times, specials, lunch and recess. You need to have a discussion with your administration about when you are expected to pull students. Some schools don't have an opinion on this, but I would imagine that most of them do. Do they want you to pull out of whole group or small group? Is there an intervention block they want you to pull from? Make sure you know this before you start your schedule so you don't have to reinvent the wheel if you do it wrong. You also need a list of every student's IEP service minutes so that you know exactly how many minutes they receive and in what setting. I like to write these on colored sticky notes and then, as I add them to the schedule, I put them aside. This ensures I don't miss anyone's minutes. You also need to have therapist schedules like OT, pt or speech, so you know when those services will be pulling students. My therapists would always wait for my schedule before creating theirs, but it may be different for you, so make sure you have those conversations beforehand as well. You also want to have any paraprofessional schedules or availability windows. I would often have paras who needed to either come in late or leave early for whatever reason, so make sure you know this information ahead of time. And then any non-negotiable meetings or collaboration times that your administrator expects you to attend.

Speaker 1:

If you're running a resource room, one of the most efficient ways to build your schedule is by using Google Sheets. I love this method because it's flexible, it's easy to share, you can color coordinate it easily, you can change things easily and it's just quick to adjust when those inevitable changes pop up in the first few weeks and beyond. So here is the step-by-step process I recommend. First, I start with student IEP service minutes using that sticky note method. Before you even open Google Sheets, grab a stack of colored sticky notes, assign each subject its own color and then write the required IEP minutes for each subject or service on a separate sticky note. For example, if, for a student needing 120 minutes of reading and 60 minutes of math per week, I would have one sticky labeled Johnny reading 120 minutes and another labeled Johnny math 60 minutes. This gives you a movable visual way to manipulate times. Before committing them to a spreadsheet, you can literally shuffle them around your desk until you find a combination that works.

Speaker 1:

Step two is to set up your time slots in five minute increments in Google Sheets. Start with your first column on the left with the start time of your day and list times in five minute increments all the way down. Why do I do five-minute increments? Well, because special education schedules are rarely on the dot. You might have a student who leaves at 10.35, another who starts at 10.40, and a parent who transitions to lunch duty at 10.45. That extra detail keeps your schedule precise and it avoids overlap or missed coverage. Step three is to list all staff across the top row. Include yourself, any other special education teachers you are working with and each paraprofessional. This gives you a quick bird's eye view of who's where at any point in the day.

Speaker 1:

Step four is to assign colors for quick visual reference. Each paraprofessional and yourself gets their own color. This will help you instantly see if anyone is double booked or underutilized, and then each subject or service gets a separate color. For me, it was always reading was blue, math was yellow, writing was green, social skills was pink. And then don't forget to include unique colors for non-academic duties that require support, such as recess supervision, lunch coverage, bus duty or arrival dismissal transitions.

Speaker 1:

The next step is to plug in your known fixed points. First, drop in special schedules, lunch times, recess blocks and any non-negotiable general education classes that students will attend. Then fill in the IEP service times, guided by your sticky notes, making sure you're meeting each student's minutes without overloading staff. This is also a good time to fill in your para's lunches, as well as your lunch and your plan time, and then share and refine, because it's in Google Sheets. You can share it with your paraprofessionals, related service providers and administrators. Let others take a look at it to see if there's anything that you missed. That way, everyone can spot any potential conflicts and make changes before the year starts.

Speaker 1:

A couple of extra tips that have saved my sanity over the years is I group by grade level or skill level whenever possible. If you can serve two or three students together for reading who have similar goals. It saves you from running 10 separate reading groups every day. And then don't forget travel time. If students have to walk across the building to your room, you can't plan for them to be with you from 10 to 10 30 if they don't arrive until 10 0, 5 or 10 10. Build in those transition buffers. We often forget that moving between activities or locations takes time, and that's especially true for students who need extra support for transitions. So once you've got your IEP minutes in place, you can start filling in your planning time, your prep for data collection and any push-in support that you provide. Remember, this is just the first draft. As students settle into routines, you might see that certain groups need to be adjusted or certain times just aren't working, and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

Now let's shift gears and talk about scheduling in a self-contained program. This is a completely different ballgame. Compared to a resource room, your students are with you all day long. That means minutes aren't your biggest concern. What really matters is creating a daily flow that works for both you and your students. Again, I would start by plugging in the non-negotiables Things like arrival, lunch, recess, specials, related service sessions and dismissal. These become the anchor points for your schedule. And once they are in place, you can build everything else around them.

Speaker 1:

Next, think about when students tend to be the most alert and focused. That's when you want to schedule your core subjects your reading, your math and your writing. You want to save more flexible or hands-on or lower demand activities for those times when your students aren't as alert, like right after lunch or at the end of the day. In a self-contained room, you will often have several small groups running at the same time, so while you are teaching one group, your paras might be working with another or overseeing independent work or task boxes. It's important to set up a clear rotation system so that students know exactly where to go and what to do, so that there's limited downtime and limited confusion.

Speaker 1:

You also want to consider sensory and movement breaks throughout the day. These aren't just nice to have, they are pretty essential in a self-contained classroom. So schedule them proactively, not just when students are dysregulated. Even just a quick three-minute stretch or a walk to get a drink or a fun little activity can help students refocus. These breaks should be written into the schedule just like any other subject, and then make sure to block out time for life skills and social skills every week, if not daily. These are just as important as academic skills, things like cooking, community-based instruction, cleaning routines or social skills groups. And, just like with a resource room, you need to plan for transitions. If the schedule is packed with back-to-back activities, you constantly feel rushed. So give yourself a few minutes in your schedule between blocks to keep the day moving without stress. Again, I'm a huge fan of color coding schedules so you can have one color for academic blocks, another color for specials, another for breaks and so on. These are just quick visuals that help me and my paras know what's coming next at a glance and then finally post the schedule and teach it just like any other routine.

Speaker 1:

Some students follow the large classroom schedule while others have their own individual version. The key is consistency. The schedule becomes a security blanket for a lot of our students and then, when you think you have your schedule complete, step back and ask yourself does this day make sense for my students? You don't want to just be filling time, you want to be intentionally structuring it to maximize learning, independence and success. The third part is scheduling for a full inclusion program.

Speaker 1:

If you are a full inclusion teacher, your challenge is weaving your services seamlessly into the general education schedule while still meeting every student's IEP minutes. This starts with getting your hands on those gen ed teacher schedules as soon as possible for the grades that you support. You're going to want to note core instruction times reading, math and writing. You're going to want to look at specials, which might be art, music or PE. Look for any intervention blocks and any grade level events, assemblies or testing windows. From there you can identify the priority service times based on your students' needs. So some strategies to make an inclusion schedule work is to push in whenever possible for core subjects to support students while also helping the gen ed teacher differentiate. You want to cluster service time so that you can see multiple students during one block if their goals and their needs align. This keeps you from bouncing between classrooms all day. It's important to plan co-teaching moments with your gen ed staff, especially for whole group lessons where your presence can make a big impact on access and engagement, and then use flex minutes, those small pockets of time between classes or after specials, for quick goal check-ins, progress monitoring or reteaching concepts.

Speaker 1:

One of the biggest challenges in inclusion is that you are often at the mercy of someone else's schedule. That's why relationships with general education. Teachers are key. The more you collaborate with them, the easier it is to make adjustments when things shift and they will shift. Remember your goal is to maximize access without pulling students away from meaningful learning experiences, and sometimes this means you have to be creative, like embedding a math goal into a science lab or supporting reading comprehension during social studies. When your inclusion schedule is working, students feel supported in their gen ed environment. Teachers feel like they have a true partner and you can confidently meet IEP minutes without feeling like you're running a daily marathon.

Speaker 1:

And then I have one last pro tip that needs to be considered for any type of program that you work in. I learned somewhere along the way to make my plan time one of my non-negotiables. It is important to protect your plan time like it's sacred. It's tempting to give it away, to cover someone else's group, to jump into an unexpected meeting or to squeeze in just one more IEP session. But your prep time is not extra time. It is when you update data, plan lessons, prepare materials, write IEPs and handle all that behind-the-scenes work that makes the rest of your day run smoothly.

Speaker 1:

If you give it away too freely in August, it will set the precedent for the entire year, I promise. So guard it with clear boundaries and use it intentionally. I promise you'll thank me for this tip someday. So whether you are juggling 12 inclusion students across five grades or building a full day schedule in a self-contained class, please know that I feel for you. It's not an easy task, but it is a necessary one. So create a Tetris game. I mean a schedule that works for your students, your staff and you. In next week's episode, we'll talk about how to build strong systems for data collection and progress monitoring, so you're not scrambling when progress report time rolls around. See you next week.