Concept Mapping
The students in my classroom are in my classroom until they graduate at the age of 26. Recently, I am having a really hard time getting parents to understand that there are services for their child once they graduate. Most of my students graduate, and then sit home watching Jerry Springer all day. When that is the case my students lose all of the skills we have worked on for the past 8 years. With this concept map I want to give my parents options for when their child does graduate. My goal is for each of my parents to have the proper resources and information that will allow their child to get out of the house on a weekly basis, continue to gain skills that will allow them to become more independent and to give the parents some relief from time to time. When the child is turning 26 we have a summative IEP with the child, parents and myself. I think this concept map would be a great thing to go through with the parents at this meeting. Unfortunately I get a lot of excuses from my parents so my job is try to eliminate as many excuses as possible. My job is all about collaboration. These summative IEP’s are a time when the parents and myself have really honest conversations about what the future holds for their parents. The parents of my students are usually very against their child going to live in an AFC (Adult Foster Care) home because of the needs of their child. I try to talk to them about how typically a 30 year old doesn’t live at home with their parents anymore. I think the principle that aligns with this assignment was temporal contiguity because these options that I presented weren’t knew options for my parents but the ability to put all that information and graphics together and simultaneously present it was something they hadn’t seen before. I really enjoyed this week because I think it something that I can use with students who are graduating. Collaboration with parents in my classroom is so much more important than a normal general education classroom.