Thriving as a Special Educator Tip #8: Save Time Without Cutting Corners

• Stop writing daily lesson plans for intervention groups. Okay, I get that I am a heretic but OMG what’s the point? Just please don’t.
• Use progressive programs in intervention groups. I am 90% sure progressive curriculum is a term I made up or heard somewhere once so here is what I mean. If you are going to teach phonics, you do an assessment on a student and then pick the book in the program that best matches where the student is right now. Then you start to work through the book, which progresses from the skill the student is first working on to more and more challenging skills. To me, that is what a progressive program is–  one that slowly but surely builds students’ skills by getting a little bit more challenging each day. I have either found or created progressive programs in pretty much all intervention areas and they are amazing because you don’t have to worry about what to teach because you know that they are getting graduated skill building! Here are a few examples of progressive programs that I like (besides umm my own which are, self-plug here, in the store!): Read Naturally, Six Minute Solutions, Framing Your Thoughts, all phonics programs.
• Create consistent routines for intervention groups. This goes with my time saving tip before. What I eventually learned to do was to make a group lesson plan that was consistent and got me out of writing daily lesson plans. Here are some examples of what they looked like.Kinder level reading group: Phonemic awareness play, letter sound play, sight words, decodable book. First grade level reading group: Sight words practice, decodable book, comprehension focused book (aka picture book– also phonics was a school wide thing so didn’t have to do it in group). Fourth grade level reading group: Reading fluency practice, guided reading with a comprehension workbook to keep me from making up questions. Breakfast math group: Two computation problems followed by one word problem (these were 15 minute groups). Every group had a consistent structure so the students and I always knew the order– and I had programs to plug into each slot. That structure meant that the students knew what to do even if I was out and saved me time!

• Make a sensible IEP calendar. Hear me out on this one because I am about to blow your mind. You can hold annual and triennial IEPs EARLY. I know, mind blowing right? Before the year starts, sit down and look at all of the annual IEPs and tris you need to hold in a year. Then think about your school’s initial IEP calendar. When do those often come down? What are the crazy times of the year? Are there any upcoming maternity leaves you need to think about? Then make a sane calendar. At my school November was always crazy for initials so I knew I didn’t want other IEPs in November. And we often had these weird bunched tris in March. I would make an IEP calendar for the entire year before the school year started that moved up IEPs as needed to keep me at my ideal schedule of one IEP a week. I had enough IEPs that I was going to have one a week all year– but if I did it right, I would have very few weeks with multiple. That allowed me to budget a consistent amount of time for IEPs and not have crazy weeks of five IEPs and wanting to crawl in a ditch and die. I had that my first year or two with a big caseload and it sucks. Advance planning and moving up IEPs was a lifesaver for me!
• Use an assessment kit. Buy mine if you are nice or, probably even better, make your own but make an assessment kit so that you can conduct assessments as efficiently as possible. They are time sucks so be strategic. You don’t want to spend time looking for the right assessment. Find ones that you know really well in each key skill area and build off of those.  Stop wasting time trying to figure out what and how to test a kid!
• Test multiple kids. So if you are doing a WJ or other standardized test, ignore this. But if you aren’t, seriously– SAVE TIME. Look, if you are having four fourth grade IEPs  in a month call all of them in at once. Give them all their spelling tests together. There is a huge amount of assessments that can be done with multiple students in a room. Even an individual reading assessment can be done with other students in the room! If you have ever given a DRA past the earlier levels you know that you listen to a page and then send them off into a corner to read and then, if you are me, bring them back for comprehension questions (my students were awful writers so I mostly did those orally). Like you can do four kids at once EASY with those. 
• Create templates. I know the first word in IEP is individual but umm… have you read  a WJ report recently? If you are doing tris or initials, you need templates that turn the WJ into human readable language (note that I do not count the report the app gives you as this– like seriously I have a doctorate and can’t figure that thing out). You can also use templates for present levels. You customize what you say about a student– their reading level, the types of words they can spell, and so on– but you can use the same exact structure across students. I can write an annual IEP in 30 minutes. It’s experience but mostly it’s templates– I know what comes first, second, and third for me in  a present level and can whizz through them while providing the type of individualized and detailed information families want! Progress reports should be even more templated– and I tested my students for progress reports in groups. Also general education teachers also had to do DRAs for report cards so I did them for them (bribery is very effective to get people to like you) and counted them for my progress reports too!
• Double dip. Have IEPs due around report cards? Don’t do the progress reports.  Move up the IEP. Find ways to double dip. Where can you create meetings that serve multiple purposes? No one, including parents, want to sit in endless and repetitive meetings so double dip!
• Run efficient (and productive and collaborative meetings). This is the holy grail. Talk through all issues with a parent before the meeting. Never drop news on a parent at a meeting– especially not if you need to teach in an hour. Develop a meeting template that works for you and your team that 1) includes parents– who almost never talk at meetings so really premeet with them!; 2) follows a consistent structure (helps translators and also administrators and general education teachers– people like to know what to expect); 3) Talk about time at the beginning of the meeting and have a plan on what to do if time is up. I sucked at many of the parts of time management but the one area I consistently got compliments on were my meetings. I was ready to go at the beginning so no time was wasted, I talked to parents first so I knew their worries and had already thought about how to address them, and I kept the meeting positive but lean and focused on the student. You can too!

• Find out if you really need to co-plan. Again, I am a heretic here but a lot of teachers would really rather you don’t screw around with their lesson plans. Find out what level of contribution they actually want and work with that. If it is an issue that negatively impacts your students, deal with it– but if it is just that they like to work alone cool. Stop hitting your head against the wall and focus on the other things you need to do. You need to help your students succeed. Talking through lesson structure is not the only way to get there. 
• Create a structure. Is push in for your or a para going to be co-teaching or stations or one teach one assist? There are a lot of options and if you know what works for that teacher, you can be smart on assigning staff. Like if it’s one teach one assist, great– maybe that is good for a meh para. If it is stations, maybe a strong para. If it is team teaching the teacher wants, maybe it’s you. So create a structure and have the real conversations you need to make informed staffing decisions and save time. Because your time is precious. 

Google. Everything you need is somewhere out there so Google first, text friends second, and recreate stuff third. Treat your time as respectfully as you do the time of students and colleagues. 

• National Center for Education Statistics. (2018, May). Status Dropout Rates. U.S. Department of Education. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_coj.asp
• Newman, L., Wagner, M., Huang, T., Shaver, D., Knokey, A.-M., Yu, J., Contrera E., Ferguson, K., Greene, S., 
• Nagale, K., & Cameto, R. (2011). Secondary school programs and performance of students with disabilities: A special topic report of findings from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2) (NCSER 2012-3000). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Special Education Research.
• Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (2020). 42nd annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2020. U.S. Department of Education. https://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/osep/2019/parts-b-c/41st-arc-for-idea.pdf 
• Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard educational review, 84(1), 85-100.
• Skiba, R. J., Arredondo, M. I., & Rausch, M.K., (2014). New and developing research on disparities in discipline. The Equity Project at Indiana University. http://rtpcollaborative.indiana.edu/briefing-papers/
• Sebastian, R. (2023). “If You Want to Go Far”: A Case Study of Culturally Sustaining Co-teaching. The Urban Review, 55(1), 27-49.