Discussion Thread What I Wish I Understood More!

Discussion Thread What I Wish I Understood More!

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As present or future educators, we are or will frequently participate in many types of school meetings. Many of these meetings are related to student assessment. These meetings in which a team discusses and makes important decisions to support the educational performance of their students can include teacher/parent conferences, teacher planning meetings, school leadership meetings, MTSS/RTI meetings, 504 meetings, special education eligibility meetings, IEP meetings, etc. Many times, these meetings evaluate current student performance and strategies for improving assessment scores. Such meetings can be challenging when unfamiliar terms, documents, procedures, and staff roles are not sufficiently familiar to a participant(s).

For this Discussion, create in your mind one of the types of meetings listed above. Generate a clear mental picture of the meeting’s setting, purpose, and attendees (e.g., teacher, parent, administrator, school psychologist, therapist, service provider, etc.). Assume yourself to be one of the attendees; determine what your role in this meeting would be. You will complete this exercise twice in this Discussion for two different types of meetings.

Begin your analysis in your initial post by completing the below sentence.

Before attending a/an ­­[state a specific type of school meeting] meeting, I wish I understood more about [state specifically and succinctly what you wish you understood more about].

Six examples of the above sentence are provided below to help guide you.

Examples:

1. Before attending the parent/teacher conference, I wish I understood more about how to interpret the results of the grade-level wide state test (give name).
2. Before attending the team planning meeting, I wish I understood more of the assessment programs utilized by my school such as DIBELS, AIMS WEB, SOL, CRCT, STAR, FCAT, etc. (name specific benchmark, formative, summative assessments).
3. Before attending the MTSS/RTI meeting, I wish I understood more about the assessments (give examples) used by my school to monitor students’ academic progress.
4. Before attending a 504 meeting, I wish I understood more about the difference between it and a special education meeting.
5. Before attending a special education eligibility meeting, I wish I understood more, terms such as standard or scaled scores, clinically significant, adverse impact on academic achievement, federal regulations and where to locate them, names of standardized tests, etc. (name several terms).
6. Before attending an IEP meeting, I wish I understood more, terms such as performance levels, goals and how to write them, differences in accommodations and modifications, calculation of minutes of service, etc. (name several terms).

Follow your completed sentence with a clear explanation of the setting and purpose of the meeting, titles of people attending, types of essential documents/results to discuss, and your particular title and role in the meeting. Do not use real people’s names, situations, or locations. Then, provide a thorough discussion of what information you wish you knew more about (or better understood) and how understanding such information would benefit you as a member of the meeting.

Repeat the above process by imagining a meeting different from your first one and by completing another iteration of the same sentence and explanatory paragraph to follow.