[E156] Advocating for your Children in the School System with Anna Marie Penn

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Centered approach to engagement and well being for ourselves, our families and our communities. I'm J.D. wilson and I am your host. And today we dive into sort of a deeper dive of last week's episode. We talked last week with two school psychologists, with Dr. Theresa Davis and Dr. Rachel Peterman, who are both on staff and our team here at Empowered to Connect and brilliant, brilliant mods, along with the brilliant Becca McKay who all three of them shared from the kind of school employee perspective, just an overview of special education, of advocating for your kids, the 504 and IEP kind of world universe. And so today we're going to talk to Anna Marie Penn. Annamarie was a former reading specialist and mom of two kiddos, and she is going to share with us just her own parenting journey, her own teaching journey and how those two things intersected with the world of 5, 504s and IEPs. And if you're wondering what those are, we're going to explain all that to you in the episode that whether it's individual education plans, IEPs or 504s, which are special accommodations made for your kiddos that they might need in class for some reason, we'll talk through all of what those are and help you be prepared. As in, I would say a lot of places around the world. We are starting school right now. And so if you have ever, if you have ever wondered if, man, does my kid need some extra help? Do they need some special accommodations? Do I need to look into what options might be for more support for them academically? Today's your episode. So Anna Marie has a very unique perspective, having been in the education system and sitting in on IEP meetings with tons and tons and tons of students over the years and now, not just for her own kids but for lots of families, is helping to, to advocate for kids and learn how to navigate that world of what to ask for and how to ask for it when it comes to 504s and IEPs. And so all that said, it's a great, very practical, very helpful episode for somebody who has been on both sides of the rope, so to speak, kind of inside the picture on the reading specialist side and teacher side and then on the other side of the picture coming in as a parent advocate. And so just really helpful feedback from her today. And so without any further ado, here she is, Anna Marie Penn and myself talking about how to advocate for your kids in school. Okay. Well, as I mentioned in the opening, we're here with Anna Marie Penn. Annamarie, thanks for Coming. [00:02:43] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:02:44] Speaker A: Anna Marie is a great friend of. Etc and why don't we. So how about this? Obviously people, most people who are listening to this don't know you and your background and all of that professionally. And so why don't you just share first about kind of your professional background, time and education and then we'll talk about your family. [00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So my, my husband I actually met in grad school to become educators through the Memphis Teacher Residency Program here in Memphis. And so that was back in 2015. So originally I started with my certification being in secondary education. So I taught high school English for a few years and then in a really roundabout way found myself at a middle school and working as a reading specialist. There are people who are a lot more qualified at that than I am, but somehow my love of reading and teaching reading translated into being able to work in that role. And so that was before we became parents, where I was educationally. [00:03:48] Speaker A: Okay, awesome. And you know, for you, when you were in that world, I imagine, you know, part of being able to advocate now and like being able to kind of help other families who are looking to, you know, advocate for their kids. That didn't just come from being a teacher. Right. Like you had to learn about specific situations and see that. Do you remember a first like situation where you saw, you know, a child who had a 504 or IEP and like the benefits of it and being like, oh, wow, this, that's really helpful. [00:04:19] Speaker B: I think I kind of have a couple of ideas. There's. There was actually a girl that I taught in high school and she didn't have a 504 an IEP and so I think the beginning of sort of my passion for making sure kids get what they need in school started with seeing that. Yeah, I was teaching 10th grade English and it became really apparent in the first few weeks of school that my student didn't know how to read. Just simple basic decoding of words and didn't know how to read. And after a conversation with her mom where her mom just asked for me to do whatever I could, I started working one on one, doing tutoring sessions with this student, finding times during my day to be able to work. And by the end of the school year she was able to read nowhere near what she needed educationally to be in the 10th grade, but she was able to start that process. And I think that moment I realized this kid needed something so different than the rest of the class. She needed some one on one attention and she needed something that there wasn't A simple solution in the classroom where I could meet that need at the same time as meeting the needs of the rest of my students. [00:05:35] Speaker A: And then you gotta see the benefit of that child being able to have that, have access to that help and then the trajectory to put them on for the rest of school year. Right. So you think about everybody who needs that bit of extra help. I think there's this illusion of like, oh, does that mean we have to like, do you think life is gonna be wildly different for your child if there needs to be a 504, an IEP? And so we'll get into all those. All those things in just a minute. So then, then, you know, you're teaching your. You met your husband in that. In the program in mtr and. And then you guys, you know, become parents and so talk about that process. And then, you know, then we'll kind of jump into your, like, first hand advocating world, you know, after that. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So my husband and I knew, even going into marriage, our plan for Christmas growing our family was gonna be through adoption. And specifically we both just had a heart for adopting older kids. And we just saw such a need in the foster care system for older kids. And I grew up just really loving my siblings. And so I, anytime I heard a statistic about kids being separated, I. I just specifically really had a heart for keeping siblings together, if that was possible. And so we became foster parents at the same time we were in the process of adopting so that we could go to those kids who had already had tpr. [00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:12] Speaker B: And so we went into that process knowing we wanted a sibling. We. We were open to a sibling group and that we were open to adopting older kids. Yeah. But that also meant we went from being practically newlyweds to having two school [00:07:32] Speaker A: age children, which is simple for those of you who haven't done that before. So maybe you should, if you're thinking like, oh man, it sounds hard. Yeah. Right. That's easy. Right? [00:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Just jump straight into school. There's no. They already talk. So [00:07:47] Speaker A: which is a plus or a minus, depending on time, Right? [00:07:50] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that's actually not even how the case was for our kids, but yeah. So we back in 2019, adopted our two children when they were 5 and 7. [00:08:04] Speaker A: Okay. [00:08:05] Speaker B: They came home in the summer. Jonathan and I. My husband Jonathan and I were both teachers. And so we had about one month to figure out where they were going to school, how to change up our school schedules to be able to meet the parenting needs that we would have, who would take off when so yeah, it is. It's a really simple process. You just jump right in there and get going. [00:08:31] Speaker A: And since then it's just been easy, breezy, no problem, smooth sailing. Yeah. So soon after that, I mean, you, you've talked before about just having both of you been in that education background and both of you taught in some pretty high need areas. You, you got to see a pretty wide array of needs and then needs met and needs not met and what all of those things look like. And so at some point, you know, your kids who are going through tons of transition coming into your care, you know they're going to have some needs at school as well and you know how to navigate those from being in the education world. Right. And so why don't we kind of walk through and obviously if you're listening to this, you know, typically in every conversation we have, we try to always be very careful with sharing our kids stories and being very protective. And so the benefit here is that Anna Marie and Jonathan have been teachers and worked with literally thousands of kids in their careers. And so what is, we will share some scenarios that it's not necessarily their kids or any specific kids that you'll know of. So that being said, you start to work, walk into the world of advocating for your kids, and why don't we kind of start with the very base level, like what is a 504? What is an IEP? Why do we need to know those things? And why should some parents who are listening like kind of perk up and take notes at this point? [00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say I feel so grateful for my background in education, becoming parents to the kids that we did because I saw the IEP and 504 process as a teacher. I went into those meetings all of the time. I had a large population of students with IEPs. And so especially as an English teacher, the reading specialist, I was in on those meetings, but I was in on those meetings from a teacher perspective. I was in on those meetings trying to figure out how I was going to meet the kids, meet the needs of one kid out of the 30 kids in one single classroom out of the 185 kids that I taught total. So every single one of those meetings I'm hearing the, this kid needs this, this kids. Like out of 185 kids, I have 40 of them who all have different learning needs. How do I meet all of those at the same time? So I had that perspective as a teacher and. But then I also sat in those meetings and so often I saw parents with this glazed overlook. And I felt this immense responsibility as a teacher because parents would say, you are the expert. Right. And they. They would be leaning on me to say, you're the expert, you're the educator. You tell us what to do. Whatever you say, that's what we're going to do for our kid. And I remember feeling the weight of that as a teacher, but also thinking, you're the parent, you tell me about your kid. Yeah, but those. Those meetings can be so overwhelming. They're filled. They are filled with so much educational jargon. There's so many steps to the process, so many questions that if you're not from an educational background, you can just feel so overwhelmed that you do default to. They're. They're the ones in education. I need them to tell me what I need. Right. Which hopefully your kids are at a school where your educators are very knowledgeable and they want the best for your kid. But like I just said, I had 185 students. Right. And so my knowledge of any specific child is going to be less than how a parent knows each kid. So then going into adopting our two kids, one of our children came with an iep, and it came with an IEP that included that our child was non verbal, and they were actually on a waiting list for a functional skills classroom on their iep. And so we went into our parenting experience knowing that information, fully ready to jump into what that world would look like for us as parents and advocating for them, knowing that that is, you know, just a higher tier of advocation. [00:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah, advocacy. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Advocacy. Advocation's not a word. But a higher level of having to advocate for your kid in a classroom like that. Or just a really different set of needs. Yeah. However, it was really interesting because as soon as our kids moved in with us, we questioned everything. Being educators, we were like, this is what's written on paper. And we were prepared for that. But the kid who came to live with us was so different than what was written on the paper. And so as parents, we got to say, you know what? This piece of paper is helpful, but we get to get to know our kid and see what our kid is capable of. And so with our child, we realized not only were they verbal, they knew how to read. And no one knew it because there were some speech. There was a speech disorder involved. And so it's hard to hear. But in moments of calm and moments of creativity and play, we started realizing we can understand that our child is actually communicating with language. And then within a month, we realized that our child was reading a book to their stuffed animals and all of the words were correct. And so that was about two weeks before school started. And so we reached out to the school because we knew what is written on our child's IEP and who our child is and can be are not lining up right now. And so we went in knowing we were gonna have advocate really hard to figure out how to start our kid off in a new school and a new place with so much other transition, but also to advocate and say, hey, we know that this is what the official paperwork says. That is not who our kid actually is. Yeah. And so we had an IEP meeting the very first week of school. Yeah. Which is not. Which is not common. But we went in and thankfully we had an incredible team of people at our kids school that we were able to take in some video. And immediately everyone on the team was like, yes, we see automatically that even the diagnoses that were listed. [00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:10] Speaker B: Didn't seem to be lining up. And so they were able to go ahead and jump in to have reevaluations done and things like that so that we could get set on the right trajectory. [00:15:21] Speaker A: So you're experiencing this as a parent. You're like, holy crap. This is probably what a lot of other parents need to know is that this information like that you can do this, that you can go and request, you know, for re evaluations. You can go in and advocate for specific plans to be put in place or to be lifted. And so if somebody's listening to this and their ears are glazing over right now because they're like, oh my God, this is so overwhelming. I don't know how to think about this. What would be kind of your first, like, first steps of like. I think I might be an iep. I'm not sure. Like, how should parents start thinking about this process when they, when they first start? [00:15:57] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it's really important to know that there's a difference between an IEP and a 504, but they're based on totally different laws. And so even legally, what the school is required to do look very different between those two pieces of paperwork. And so a 504 is typically given for students who have some sort of a disability in the classroom. But that could be something. You could get a 504 for a broken leg and having crutches. [00:16:32] Speaker A: Okay. [00:16:32] Speaker B: A 504 could allow and make sure that your student has access to a staff elevator. And so a 504 is less. It's not A special education, it doesn't fall under special education law. It falls under, like a civil rights law to make sure your kid has the same access to education as everyone else in the classroom. And so a 504 could be for someone, say a child has ADHD. [00:17:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:02] Speaker B: And educationally, they can keep up with all of the content there with their class. However, they just need to sit somewhere different. They just need the location to be different or to have some sort of specialized seating. So just the environment needs to change. They don't need any change in the actual content that is being taught. They might just need a little bit more time or a change in environment for testing or like noise canceling headphones [00:17:30] Speaker A: for testing or something like that. Yes. [00:17:32] Speaker B: And so those are considered modifications. They're just modifying the environment so that your student has the same access. But that is in the general education classroom. Your kid's not ever being pulled out when they have a 504. It is just saying that your kid might need something a little bit different to learn in the classroom in that way. And often your school can be a great resource for deciding whether or not you need a 504. [00:18:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:00] Speaker B: Or an IEP. And sometimes a 504 can be more simple because you can. Because it's not the same law. There's not the same restrictions and not the same process. It's not as long as the process. And a lot of times having a medical diagnosis from your kid's doctor, so having a doctor or your kid's pediatrician diagnosed ADHD, you can then take that in and request the 504 from your school. And so whatever the learning disability might be for a 504, a lot of times you can just immediately request that from your school. And it's not as it is not as long as the process to get that set into place. Now, an IEP is special education. [00:18:49] Speaker A: And what does it stand for? [00:18:50] Speaker B: Individualized Educational Plan. And so there are legally like 13 categories of disabilities that a child could have to qualify for an IEP. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Okay. [00:19:04] Speaker B: A504 is much more broad, whereas an IEP is much more specific. And as the name indicates, it's very individualized. And that can be things from ADHD can qualify for either one. It just depends on what the difference is and what your child needs. Autism spectrum disorder, hearing impairments, language impairments, specific learning disabilities. Um, that would include like dyslexia and things like that. Those all qualify you for an iep. Yeah, if you want to. If you suspect something is going on with your child. And it seems like it is impacting their ability to learn in the classroom. Educationally, you're worried they're falling behind. It seems like they're not getting it. Their grades are slipping. They seem really discouraged in the classroom. All a parent has to do is request an evaluation for an IEP from your school in writing is the best. Legally, if you request for your child to be evaluated, the school has 60 days to respond and evaluate your child. [00:20:17] Speaker A: Okay. [00:20:18] Speaker B: And so if you think your child needs speech services or any. Anything that you think your kid needs, you can request that. Yeah. And the school. My. This is my understanding. Again, I'm not a special education teacher, but I have worked in that world enough that I believe it's 60 days that they have to. To respond and. And go through that evaluation process with you. Yeah. So an IEP takes a lot longer to get into place if you qualify for one. Again, just because you have one of those disabilities doesn't automatically mean you get an iep. Yeah. You have to be able to show an adverse educational impact on your child because of the disability. Yeah. For example, if your student has. Your child has adhd and it actually means that they're now two, two levels behind in math because they haven't been able to pay attention and they've gotten so far behind in math that now they actually need not just to have headphones on or not just to have a different seat in the classroom. They're actually not getting the content that they need in class anym. Because they've fallen behind. Yeah. That adverse impact could allow you to get an IEP for that child. [00:21:36] Speaker A: And then what is that? So you get IEP put in place. And what could that. I know it looks different for everybody. What, what are some options that. That could look like? [00:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah, an IEP can look like so many different things. I think that's actually something I would really encourage parents is like, don't be creative. There's sort of a. I think probably in any world there's sort of going to be a boxed version of an IEP of like, typically we say we allow for time and a half on tests. If your child needs a little bit more time to complete things, then they're going to automatically probably say, okay, you can have time and a half. And sometimes there's legal restrictions on what the school's allowed to offer, but there's sort of those, like, automatic ones that they're going to suggest. Yeah, but you can be really creative with those. For our family, with one of our children Homework is not always possible to get done and it isn't always helpful or effective to do the homework when it's so stressful. That child is not learning anything in that moment. And so we actually have written into one of our aps that as parents we have the right to right in. We're not doing homework tonight. We couldn't like, we couldn't get this done today. And so we actually have in an IEP that parents are allowed to refuse the homework for that night. [00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:08] Speaker B: I have seen with other students things where they're allowed to cross off three of their homework that they didn't feel like doing, but they need to complete the rest. And so the what you are able to request as far as modifications and accommodations, you really can be creative of knowing your child. And a lot of times teachers are going to be really receptive to that because you're the one coming in with the solution. You're not just saying, my kid needs help, what are you going to do about it? But you're going to say, hey, my kid actually responds really well if they're able to take a five minute break and go get some water or have a snack, can we just put that in there? And that is actually a lot less on the teacher than changing or modifying all of the test questions. Right. And so that can look like a lot of different things depending on what your kid needs. A lot of really common ones are, like I said is like preferential seating. Whether that means that your child sits up close to the teacher, they sit next to another student who is kind and helpful, or it could be something. I had a student once who they sat all the way in the back by themselves. They did not like being close to other people, they didn't like the noises. And so they sat all the way at the back of the classroom. But that worked for that kid. Whereas I have other students who sometimes sit at my desk, you know that like they sit directly next to me when it's time to work so that I can say, oh, let's get back on task. [00:24:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:36] Speaker B: And so preferential seating is a really common one. Time allowances are another one. And that can be in the classroom, but often those you're also allowed to get those for state testing with an iep. Okay. Which can be really huge and helpful for some people to. Because those tests are very doozy for kids. Yeah. And so it can be things like that, but it can also be modifications to the work. So if your child gets really kind of lost in the weeds of like A word problem in math. Yeah. You can actually, the teachers are allowed. You can request modifications to the test where they. It's rewritten in simpler language. Or maybe your child with ADHD actually really gets the concept. But having to do it eight times, they're just done. And you can actually have a modification where a couple of those redundant questions or just additional not redundant in math. It's great to practice, but like where if you've got eight of the same type of question, you can have some of those removed. [00:25:37] Speaker A: That's super interesting. And I think it. It's a reminder that, like that. [00:25:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:41] Speaker A: The point of being in the classroom, the point of being in school is to learn and to pop out the other side of school with the understandings necessary for your next phase of life. Right. And so why would you not make those adjustments if that's going to help further that end? Right. And so that's. That's really helpful if somebody is just getting started and this. This feels very overwhelming to them or they are. You know, they know they've got an uphill battle, whether it's a tougher administration or whatever. Are there like pieces of advice you would give in terms of like how to go have those first conversations if you need to be more organized and assertive on the front end, like knowing the world of education on the back end like you do? [00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I think I laughed by. I think it was our. Our first two IEP meetings that my husband and I went to. I cried in both of them. And that was as an educator going in understanding what our kids needed. I went in with notes. I went in knowing what my rights were and I still cried in them. Because it can just be a very weighty process. Yeah. To acknowledge that your kid is not typical and has different needs or that your child is struggling to have to hear someone's evaluation of your kid. I just want to validate that for parents. That's heavy and it's weighty. And it was so helpful, I think even as a teacher to have to experience that as a parent. It is really. It can be really emotional to hold that weight of. My kid was just diagnosed with this and I'm sitting in a room with 10 educators talking about all of the ways my child is not measuring up to their peers. So there is just a huge weight of that. And then if you feel like you're going in at an uphill battle. I think some of my best advice is, was actually given to me by a counselor is first and foremost like I'm the Mom. [00:27:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:43] Speaker B: You are the parent and you know your kid better than anyone else. Yeah. And that is both a huge responsibility, but also like an incredible gift to get to be the one that says, I know my kid better than anybody else. I'm the one, but I'm a mom. I get to say, no, that doesn't work for us. [00:28:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:05] Speaker B: No, my kid actually needs this instead. And so I found going in with that idea of it is my privilege to get to advocate for my kid. Nobody else is going to love my kids the way I do. [00:28:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:18] Speaker B: And so I get to go in. And if that means, I mean, we also have a saying that we live by in our family that my husband heard on some different podcast is that crazy never wins. And so the idea there being we want to go in even if we know it's going to be an uphill battle. Understanding that our educators, everyone in education is overworked, underpaid, with insane, insane amounts of responsibility on themselves. And so, yeah, my husband and I have that perspective as both teachers and as parents is there is sort of this balancing act of going in, but making positive interactions as often as possible with our teacher teachers, making deposits, getting to know them at the beginning of the year. So that when we do have to have those harder conversations or we are having to make a big ask on behalf of our kids, that we, we've done things for our teachers and for our special education teachers or our admin that says, hey, we're not just here to take, like, if we have time, we're going to volunteer it. If we have finances, we want to bless you with some coffee. And if I don't have either one of those, if I don't have the finances, if I don't have the time, I can write you a note that just says how grateful I am for what you're doing. And I think making those deposits makes those harder conversations. It makes it an easier ask when they know that you are doing everything you can for your kid. Yeah. And like I said, I think being really solutions oriented when you go in, I know you and your wife know this about me, is that I actually have binders for each one of my kids. And now the teams at our school sort of laugh and they'll say, well, where do you want to start? And one of the. One, one time they're like, I see that you have lots of parts highlighted and then an entire list of questions for us. And so I just think going in, as knowledgeable as you possibly can be. And I think I am A really great example of pretending to be an expert. And that just means I do a lot of Google searching and I read a lot of articles and I read books. Well, my husband reads the books and he gives me the Sparksman's version of them. But I read some of the chapters of the books. Yeah, but we read articles and we do research. If I am not sure what to do about my child struggling with math multiplication facts, I am going to Google what is a great accommodation for learning multiplication. Yeah, I am just gonna do the research on my end because I'm not. I know that the teachers are overworked and don't have time to like, be as creative as I can be. [00:31:06] Speaker A: And I think that's a great place to pause for a second to acknowledge. Like it is easy as an overwhelmed parent to perceive that as apathy or well, they just don't like my kid. Or they just don't it. And, and those numbers that you shared in the beginning are very helpful. Like you had 185 students that you were responsible for and 40 plus of them had IEPs or 504s of some kind in place. Right. So I think remembering that, like, [00:31:36] Speaker B: you [00:31:36] Speaker A: know, we hope, I think we believe that the teachers are, are in it and they care and they are trying their hardest every day. If it doesn't come off that way, sometimes it's because of the sheer magnitude of stuff on their plate. Right. [00:31:50] Speaker B: So absolutely not. [00:31:51] Speaker A: Not interpreting those things as, you know, spite or apathy from parents or from, from teachers. And so I think that can also help us with our day to remind ourselves that as we're going in. And that helps you to share your notes differently too. Like having things kind of laid out and ready and saying like, I'm willing to help in this way or this way, or if it's helpful, I can send these notes afterward or whatever from your side. Like when you're, you're flipping back into your teacher hat again. Like, if you're having these meetings, what did you find were some of the most helpful things that parents did in those meetings to help you succeed as a teacher? In the situations [00:32:27] Speaker B: I encountered a lot of parents that didn't know what was going on with the meeting, which is okay. It's not, you can't expect every. Not everybody has an education background, so parents are not going to come in. Even I wouldn't want anyone to feel shame if they don't have a binder for your kid going into an IEP meeting. That's just my personality and I'M really intense when it comes to my kids education and so I like to be really involved and I have that background, so why not? But I think parents who were willing to see that I was trying my best and who are willing to sit there and have a conversation about what their kids needs were. Realistically I think there can be a stigma with the very phrase special education. I think there just is. And we're still, I think people are really working and trying to change a lot of that. But even being in classrooms now, you hear it. You hear the kids speak negatively to each other about it. You just hear there's a stigma involved. And I think the parents who had a really realistic view of who their kid was, what their capacity was, and really truly understood both their kids strengths and weaknesses made it easier to have a conversation. Yeah, if you are want, if you are fighting who your kid is, you're never going to be able to advocate for them. Well, accepting who your kid is and the fact that your kid might do things really differently. Yeah, that's not having low expectations for them. I have incredibly high expectations for both of my kids, but they look really different. My two kids could not have more opposite personalities. And one of them is wants to memorize everything three years in advance and is already thinking about applying to colleges, you know, in elementary school. The other one like really loves recess and is incredibly smart but just is not as interested in applying for colleges in elementary school. So they're really different. But I have really high expectations. But I also understand one of my kids is going to memorize with flashcards and the other one needs songs. Yeah. And movement. And so when I can accept both of my kids for who they are very different and understanding that their disability is not a negative thing, it makes them who they are. And who they are is awesome. Like my kids are so cool and they're both so incredibly smart. I just have to be willing to say it's okay that my kid might need to sing a song and tap their fingers while they're doing their work, whereas another kid is gonna sit perfectly still and quiet in the classroom the way that some teachers prefer their kids to sit. That's not my kid. And so I think even understanding who your kid is and giving them space to have the needs that they have, it is okay for kids to learn differently. And I think that's part of the beauty that can be an IEP or that can be a 504 in that process of a specialized education. Is not my kids less than. And so they need an iep. My kid's just different because aren't we all really different and we all learn differently? Yeah. I had teachers who did things for me differently in my math classes, and it wasn't looked down upon because I didn't have this category to do it differently, but I actually really needed to learn differently and probably couldn't do most basic math. Now if a teacher would have expected me to do things the way everybody else did them. [00:36:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Gosh, that's so good. Okay, thank you for all of this. Like, this is all really, really helpful for, I guess, kind of wrapping up. Are there, Are there any other things that you've got? I mean, you don't have a binder, but you do have a notebook with pretty meticulous notes here. So, like, are there any other things that you want to touch on that you feel like it kind of last notes when as you're, as you're, you know, heading out. [00:36:43] Speaker B: The last thing that I have written on my notes. JD is, I think as parents, it can be really easy to get frustrated with school. And especially if our kids have learning differences, it can become really frustrating. They come home with homework or they don't come home with their homework because it's still in a folder at school because they forgot to bring it home again. But is to just be as much as possible realize that your kids are going to pick up on our, our attitudes towards school and our attitudes towards education. When we're doing math work, math homework with our kid, if we're getting really frustrated at them and they are going to pick up on that, that we're frustrated with them, that they're somehow not doing it fast enough or they're not doing a good enough job. So I think just as a parent, part of advocating for your kid in education is also paying attention to the way we frame it in our homes and the way we, you know, the. Where the rubber meets the road is how we treat them in home. In our homes. If I say it's okay for my kid to learn differently at school and that that's not a big deal and that they don't need to be embarrassed of having an IEP if I say that about school, but then they come home and I'm frustrated that they forgot their folder again because they have memory issues or memory loss or ADHD or something was different that day or there was a loud noise, um, there's all of these reasons why that might be. If I treat my kid like they are some giant burden or that they're doing something wrong. That attitude is going to be picked up on by our kids. Our kids are just going to read into those things. If I say all the time, which I have been guilty of saying, I hate homework. Yeah, I just want to go outside and play because that's just my personality is I would rather be out playing with my kids. I think most parents would probably rather be outside on a trampoline than we would be trying to figure out Common Core math. But I'm an English teacher. I don't know what's happening in math. Same. I'm all for other people teaching it to my kids, but being really cognizant of how we talk about school and how we talk about learning. Because especially, I mean, there's, there's kids with ADHD are going to pick up on their negative experiences a lot more than someone else. So if you are frustrated in math and just like this is just in your thing, your kid is going to internalize that and carry that with them. And so, and then that can just make it a lot harder on a teacher. If your kid hates homework because your family. Yeah. Then they're gonna go into the classroom or they're gonna go into the classroom thinking, I'm bad at math or I'm behind in reading, I'm not on the right reading level. But instead, like if we're gonna say, hey, it's really okay for you to learn differently at school, then that also needs to be okay at home. Yeah. That you learn differently or that you need differently. And I think my last piece of advice is to read. This is my plug as an educator, JD Is that read with your kids. Read to your kids. Put books around your kids. Like, yeah, reading is so incredible. And whether your child is non verbal, you can hold a book and they might be interested in looking at the pictures. Like all of those things are going to help them in their education. But that's a really cool way that as parents you get to be a part of. [00:40:10] Speaker A: That's good. [00:40:12] Speaker B: All of that for your kids. And so even if you feel like everything at school is going wrong, like reading to your kids is going to set them up for educational success in every other way. So if nothing else, if you feel like you're not, you're not quite sure how to get a binder going. Yeah. You could read a book to your kid. [00:40:29] Speaker A: Oh, that's really good. Any thank you? [00:40:32] Speaker B: Of course. [00:40:37] Speaker A: Well, again, just a huge thank you to Anna Marie for joining us and just sharing all the information with us. My hope for all of us, I'll include me in this is is that we would leave this episode now with just some deeper understandings of how to advocate for our kids and, and how to be able to help friends of ours who may have the same situations going on academically advocate for their kids. And so obviously our hope is that at all of the places of education that your kids and our kids are, are places where there are people who are looking out for them and loving them and have their best interests at heart. But at the end of the day, we, we can only expect us as parents to, to advocate the best and know our kids the best. And so hopefully you, you've got some more gas in the tank to, to use for driving that road. And so we're, we're hopeful that today was helpful for you as it was for us. So a big thank you to Anna Mar, a big thank you to everybody, our whole team at etc. There's a bunch going on behind the scenes that we can't wait to share with you here in a few weeks, but for now I'll just leave it at that. Big news on the way, but can't share it just yet. So for everybody here at etc, for Mo and Tana Ottinger, for Kyle Wright, who Edison engineers all of our audio for Tad Jewett, the creator of the music behind the Empowered to Connect podcast. I'm J.D. wilson and we will see you next week on the Empowered to Connect podcast.