By DORCA CASSEUS
Homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge for every parent. However, homeschooling a child that has a disability can present its own unique obstacles. Here are some tips/insights for parents and caregivers of students with disabilities.
If your child has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) he/she is still entitled to all the services mandated on the IEP. This means your child can still receive speech, occupational, physical, and counseling services remotely. Of course, this is going to look a bit different. For example, students who had group sessions may now only have individual sessions. Rest assured the school and the therapists are working together to create remote therapy sessions for your child.
The provider that was working with your child before the school closures should have reached out to you to get consent for remote services. As the parent you can either give consent or decline consent for tele-therapy. Many parents are finding it challenging to schedule and attend the various therapeutic sessions for their child as well as continue to engage in the academic work provided by the classroom teachers.
One recommendation is to be very intentional when scheduling these sessions. For example, for some of my students I created individualized visual schedules for them. In their schedule, I tried to schedule one tele-therapy session per day. This allowed us to spread out the sessions throughout the week, to avoid parents and students sitting in back to back sessions all on one day. Speak to your child’s teachers, therapy providers, and school administrators. They can work out a schedule that can work for you and your child. Feel free to also use these sample schedules I created as a guide.
Be aware that for many students, their services may not continue during the summer months. Start thinking now about what activities you can use to engage your child during the school break. I will be back to share some ideas.
A NOTE FROM THE FOUNDER, DANIELLE:
The word “disability” has many faces and is unique to each family. We know the challenges that come along with caring for a disabled child is sometimes stressful and emotionally taxing. We will do our best to provide as many resources we can and we encourage you to use as many as possible that are relevant to your family situation to help your family be the best it can be!
Moving forward, the Teaching Tools series will be specifically supporting families with children who have a disability by sharing teaching resources on a biweekly basis. We believe in you. We support you. We love you.
Share any resources, questions, or topics that would help your family in the comments below, on IG (@ma_bohne), or email me directly at danielle@mabohne.com and we’ll include them in upcoming articles.
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