241: IEPs, Goals, and More – Back to School with Ease
Show Notes:
This week, Hallie is bringing the back-to-school energy with special guest Lacee! They're covering all the essentials, from understanding IEP basics and setting achievable goals to surviving—and thriving—in your first year as a school-based SLP. Lacee shares her own experiences, including mistakes she’s made so you can avoid them. Whether you're new to the field or a seasoned expert, prepare to soak up some valuable insights! 💡 Lacee, an ASHA-certified speech-language pathologist, is in her 11th year of practice as a school-based SLP. She loves creating resources and sharing therapy ideas through her Teachers Pay Teachers shop and Instagram page.
Tune in, take notes, and let's keep it simple—because who needs to complicate things? ✏️💪
Here's what we learned:
- Advice for surviving your first year in the schools, including why it's okay to make mistakes.
- How to prioritize and set goals that are realistic and impactful, without overwhelming yourself or the students.
- Why “following directions” goals are trickier than they seem and how to make them work in the real world.
- How to get the most useful feedback from teachers, even when they’re swamped!
- Why less is more when it comes to setting goals and writing IEPs.
- How to present IEP findings without drowning parents in technical terms
RESOURCES
✏️ Lacee's Teachers Pay Teachers Store
A FREEBIE FROM LACEE: Speech Machine
Learn more about Hallie Sherman and SLP Elevate:
🎧 Check out the Secondary Secret Podcast here!
Where We Can Connect:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Hallie: Welcome to SLP Coffee Talk, the podcast designed exclusively for speech-language pathologists who work with older students, grades 4 through 12. I am your host, Hallie Sherman, your SLP behind Speech Time Fun, the Speech Retreat Conference, and the SLP Elevate membership. And I'm thrilled to bring you conversations, strategies, and insights that will give you the jolt of inspiration that you need. Whether you're tuning in during your morning commute, on a break in between sessions, or even well-deserved relaxation time. I am here for you each and every week. Let's do this SLPs.
00:00:45 Hallie: This is a live for you. If you are listening to this as a podcast replay, this podcast episode is for you. I'm gonna have a special guest here where we're gonna be talking all about IEP basics, goal basics, and necessities and must-haves before back to school. So I'm gonna just give her just a moment here to hop on in. Yay, there she is. Lacee, are you there?
00:01:14 Lacee: Yay, okay, awesome.
00:01:15 Hallie: Hello, hello. So Lacee, thank you so much for joining me here, for anyone who might be new or just tuning in, just a little bit of background of who you are.
00:01:27 Lacee: Yeah, thanks for having me. This is my very first live, so I'm super excited. My name's Lacee, I'm in Arizona. I have been an SLP for 11 years, mostly in a school setting. I graduated from Southern Illinois University Carpenter. So from Illinois, moved to Nashville, worked in public schools in Nashville. And then we, my now husband and I moved to Arizona and I've been here ever since. So I've done some private practice. I picked up a few like PRN shifts at a sniff once. And then I've just been in schools. That's my home. So, and that's what I love.
00:02:09 Hallie: So I love it. I love it. What advice to be given to someone who might be new to going to work in the schools this year or going back? So what would you say they should be doing to prepare for themselves?
00:02:18 Lacee: Oh, man. So I do, I love taking interns. And typically in their graduate last year, you know, they have so many questions and they just want to make sure everything's going to be okay. And they're like, well, they just want answers. I'm like, listen, year one is survival. You're just figuring it out. You're just, you know, you're learning how to play with kids, you're learning what they like, you're learning your groove, how you're gonna fit in with your staff, what materials, what your therapy style is gonna be. So I would just say, breathe. I look back, I know personally on my CF year and I think I made a lot of mistakes and they were okay. It's okay now, it's a learning curve for sure and it's okay to make mistakes. So just breathe.
00:03:04 Lacee: Preparation-wise, I would just say get in your room, see what you have, see what the school provides. Sometimes it's fully stocked. I've been in a school, you know, where cabinet is full, way full, and then I've gone and there's nothing. There's just like a one, you know, WH question deck or something. So that's what I actually got into, making my own resources. But I would just say one day at a time, you know, don't burn yourself out.
00:03:28 Hallie: I would say don't buy everything under the sun because what your case was gonna be and what your case would is that one year doesn't mean it's going to be that way for after. I bought so many things that were big and expensive. My C&R. And I switched settings. And there's a lot of things to lug out of that room.
00:03:48 Lacee: Yeah, or you switch schools. Yeah.
00:05:51 Hallie: So someone who might be concerned about the IEP process and coming up with goals and knowing where to start with that, what advice would you give to someone?
00:03:58 Lacee: Well, you're going to walk into a school and you're going to inherit someone else's goals, if you're new to that school or if you're a new grad. And I would just say, learn, I mean, just do your thing, work off what they have. And then at that annual IEP, change it to how you contract data efficiently and how you do your therapy. So no one likes working off someone else's goals, but we all kind of know how we can get there or how we can manage that until the time, you know, comes.
00:04:30 Lacee: There's only been a few cases where I've had to, okay, we need to amend this IEP because this is a mega goal and there's five goals in this one goal and I can't do it. And it's just not realistic. So I would say keep your goals simple. I never ever, ever write more than three because you only have one calendar year to meet those goals. So even my, you know, our tick and language or social and our tick or, you know, kids with a lot of things going on, I try to figure out top three priorities, sometimes top two, and what's impacting them the most. And that's where I start. And you can always, if you finish those up, you can always amend it, and you can always, you know, write another one.
00:05:14 Hallie: Right, what's prioritized?
00:05:15 Lacee: Right, right. So in my world, I would look at, especially in the evaluation, you kind of have to figure out, okay, what's impacting them the most? Is it the social language happening? Is it like a phono issue that's going on? So then I would choose, and so let's say they have a variety of phonological disorders, I would say pick one that is gonna like omissions. You know what I mean? Like let's get some sound there. So we just have to think and prioritize. We can't target every phonological process under the sun for sure.
00:05:48 Hallie: But we have, we see them once or twice, maybe three times a week about the math on that. That's not to target all these goals.
00:05:55 Lacee: No, I know. And I've had, you know, I've had to put on progress notes, like this goal was not targeted this semester, we are focusing on K and G or, you know, and it's not, that's not what an IPS for you know what I mean? So you don't want those to be consistently on your progress notes. So just keep it simple. Take that goal off.
00:06:14 Hallie: Kiss. Keep it simple, right? You recently posted on your Instagram or a post or I saw it on your Instagram about, just because they can't follow directions. Don't let them go on that. Just because they did poorly on a standardized test on this. Can you explain that a little bit?
00:06:31 Lacee: Yes, so that is coming from when I was in undergrad. One of my professors actually just beat this into it. She said, if you take one thing from this class, do not write your goals to teach to the test. So don't take a standardized assessment like the self and have a poor score on following directions and then write a goal that mirrors the better, you know what I mean? So you're not gonna teach to the test. It's not functional. That's not what those standardized tests are meant for. You use that, you keep that in mind, right? And that's compared to peers, how they're doing on following directions and it's a hard test. But I take that as, okay, one, are they attending?
00:07:16 Lacee: So if you're, we're just thinking about following directions. Did they attend to the direction? Did they understand the concepts within that direction? So are they understanding temporal concepts, like before and after? And then are they holding that? Are they able to hold that in their working memory long enough to execute? So if they don't have those three things, or one of those three things, then the following direction kind of falls out the window. And I feel like that's what happens in the classroom a lot.
00:07:45 Lacee: So if I see a deficit in following directions. I typically like to go into the classroom and see how the teacher is giving the direction, see what the student might be doing during those multi-step directions that teachers often give. And there's a million ways you can improve that, different strategies, right? So like talking to the teacher about simplifying their language and, you know, saying about half of what they usually say.
00:08:11 Lacee: So instead of, okay, everybody to the floor, but before you come, don't forget your book and remember we have this to do. So it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you want the students to do? Yeah, so I'm thinking of like kindergarten students when there's so much going on and it's heavy, heavy language and you might need to rewind. And what I like to give teachers is super low prep and easy for them. I give them a little whiteboard and I mirror for them how I want them to give the student directions. So I write one, two, three, first book, then carpet, and then whatever. And that's what the student has to look at as a visual or, you know, I might use pictures too, if it's a younger student. But anyhow, back to the following directions score, I just I see so many incoming IEPs and so many transfer IEPs that the student will follow three to four step multi-step directions.
00:09:07 Lacee: And I'm like, what do you mean? Are we doing sequential concepts? Are we doing temporal concepts, conditional concepts? There's so many, you know, different things you can add in that direction. And then not to mention, I know this is long-winded, not to mention the syntax of that direction. Are we embedding different clauses in there where it's just going way over the student's head and they're just not picking up on the syntax in the sentence? So there's so many things that could be impacting that I just feel like a blanket following directions goal. And I did that, you know, but when I was a new clinician, absolutely. I'm like, this kid needs following directions. And I would just sit there and drill, you know, like, okay, clap your hands once and spin around. And you know what I mean? I never did that. Why did I do that? I did it. And I'm sure it's still happening. And you know, we all learn from that, you know.
00:10:00 Hallie: I know many IEP systems that I utilize had a gold bank embedded. And that was a typical goal. That was on there. And I've done it too, where I just click like they did poorly here. That's the goal that's available to me. I'm going to click. Those goals are basically designed as a starting point. It's so important that we make our activities relevant. If we're just spinning and clapping our hands. Ever need to do that.
00:10:30 Lacee: Are we doing? Right?
00:10:32 Hallie: You must see yourself into the classroom to see first hand how’s acting them there and even breaking down all the different areas that they can be struggling with that can be causing that. These standardized tests as a starting point and not like we have limited time you have we have an hour and a half to assess the student. I have to million other things. When do you do with us? When do you fit it in? How do you make sure you get it all in?
00:10:56 Lacee: Yeah I try to do one. You know one observation and then if I can't or for some reason I didn't get a lot of good info I always do a teacher language checklist. So I, you know, need more than, cause we have for our referral process checks, they can check, okay, the student has trouble following directions. Do you have that? This trouble participating in oral conversations, et cetera. And then I can add that to my report, but really what does that look like? So I always like to give, it's an academic language checklist. And then there are spots to fill in. Give me an example of what this looks like.
00:11:34 Lacee: What does the student do when you give a multi-step direction? Do they look at peers? Do they have that strategy to follow a peer? Do they just kind of sit there and stare into space? Like, are they not attending? You know what I mean? So, and then from the information that I gather from the observation in the forum, then I can say, okay, we need an accommodation. We need, the teacher needs to do, you know, different strategies in the classroom, or the kiddo is gonna work on learning basic concepts, you know, or prepositions to figure out the different vocabulary that they're lacking. So I always like to get one observation, and then I always like to do teacher checklists. So I would say those two things are essential in addition to those standardized tests because nobody, I mean, just those scores are just scores. They don't give you a lot.
00:12:29 Hallie: I like to also teach my students compensatory strategies and self-strategies on that. And we have a question about like, you mentioned like where did you create this checklist? Where have you found checklists that are?
00:12:41 Lacee: Yes, I will share it. It's, I believe it's from Karen, Dr. Karen. Do you, am I saying, what's her last name? I forget, but I will share it and we will get it available because I love using that. And I'll share a couple other forms too that I've made personally that helps me decide kind of where my goals should go.
00:13:04 Hallie: So, so true. There's so many resources available out there that we don't need to always reinvent anyway.
00:13:09 Lacee: No, no, absolutely not.
00:13:11 Hallie: What would you say to someone who is really struggling to get the teacher input? What would you say to them?
00:13:17: Lacee: That's a struggle every year for me too. And I've been at my school, you know, it's a newer school, but my, the teachers at my school are amazing, but they are so busy. So when they are filling out any kind of form that I sent, you know, I put on there, obviously, please use complete sentences, give me as much information as you can. And they'll type it up. And sometimes it's good information, but I just need a little bit more. I always meet with them, catch them in the hallway, you know, catch them on, I sit in the lounge at lunch and I get more information from sitting in the lounge at lunch than I do from any form.
00:13:52 Lacee: So making yourself available, approachable, and having an open door to a certain extent to where teachers feel comfortable coming and talking to you. By the time I get to an avow, I know a lot about that student because of all of that. So the forum is just, you know, how am I gonna word this in my report really? Because I know the teachers talk to me about it and you know, I've seen the student in action. So those tips are a game changer for sure.
00:14:20 Hallie: So helpful. What would you say to someone who's constantly getting asked about processing?
00:14:26 Lacee: Oh, I know that's like the new buzzword.
00:14:31 Hallie: And I think of it when it comes to following directions, when it comes to right and speed and all that thing. It is someone who's constantly being asked about it or asked to evaluate or observe or whatever.
00:14:44 Lacee: I mean, it's language, language is language, we can call it processing, we can call it, you know, whatever the buzzword of the week is, it's all language. So I just bring it back to that. And I kind of give them our pillars, receptive language, expressive language, semantics, morphology. I kind of break it down for them because when you say processing, it's so vague. Auditory processing, language processing, like what are we, you know, it's confusing. It's confusing to parents. And I feel like it's that word that you hold on to because it sounds good, but it's language.
00:15:17 Hallie: So, so true. What advice would you give to someone who is nervous about presenting IEP findings and report writing, no skills.
00:15:26 Lacee: So my first couple of years, I remember in IEP meetings, I would get shaky and my voice would… like I would catch my breath. You know, you just get so nervous because you're new at this and you're not fully confident. And sometimes I'm still like that. If it's a, you know, a high, you know, me. It's like a super serious case and you're unsure of how the parent or the team is going to take it or you have to really stand your ground. Like I still get nervous in those moments. For me, it just took time and it kind of just took experience. And I know that's not the best answer for new grads, but you know more than you think, you know, for sure. You are the expert at the table. You know, I feel like if you do a thorough job and you do your due diligence, then you should have nothing to be scared about or nervous about when you report those findings. But also lean on your mentors, your CF supervisor and all the people that,you know, or your little circle, call a friend,you know, give your spiel to them and see how it came off. Like, did you come off nervous? Or unsure, not confident or like you weren't sure that this is the right finding or something.
00:16:44 Hallie: And I also find we want to, especially in the beginning of our careers, we want to show that we know what we're talking about. We also need to be careful of too much jargon. And SLP talk. Parents don't know some of these words and lingo. And we need to make sure that we're being clear and consistent. Many numbers and bell curves and all this stuff can be very difficult.
00:17:05 Lacee: Yes, I agree. And you want to sound, you know, you want to sound intelligent and like you're, you know, you're a professional, but also break it down to layman terms and always provide a visual. I even like to sit on the same side of the table as the parent sometimes, because when you're across and you know, it's just like this divide. Sometimes I like to move to the side, show them my computer, show them my bell curve. I always bring a bell curve in a dry erase page and then I draw lines of where their students fell. So it's more, it's a visual for them, them to understand other than just spewing numbers out after they've heard the psychological report and the OT report and they have no idea what these standard scores mean. I always like to bring a visual and just make it as simple as possible, you know.
00:17:52 Hallie: And I like to share how this score is impacting them in the class. In the class. So the more perfect you would like, yes, because they just, yes, they might just go poorly on the recalling sentences, but this is going to impact their ability to…
00:18:07 Lacee: And that piece is so important because they, you know, parents and even teams, teachers and, you know, OT, they don't understand, you know, it's hard for me. Sometimes I need to go back and reread the manual, okay? What is the subtest really looking at? And sometimes the manual will give you like, this may impact the student like this in the classroom. And if that's fresh in my mind, I can give better examples for the student and the parent, or not the student, but the parent.
00:18:32 Hallie: Right in front of us. I put it right in the report so I can highlight it right there. And also somebody asked about favorite language test. I find more than sometimes a basic language test just to get the scores is still enough. But that informal assessment is even more observations, the teacher checklist, the probing a little further on what is what they're stimulated for, what is not going to help you more for goal writing and recommendations than a number.
00:19:00 Lacee: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, we all have our favorites and we all kind of have to use what our school has too. So, you know, if you use one more than another, I feel like everyone gets more comfortable interpreting those scores and kind of figuring out, okay, well, you know, where does this kiddo fall compared to what I've seen in the past and that kind of thing. But it also depends on the student. Like if I have a student who mainly has social language issues, I might grab the castle as opposed to the self, just that's just my opinion, you know, but yeah, I think informally, the language sample gives you more than an assessment ever could, you know? Sometimes.
00:19:36 Hallie: I like using wordless picture books, slam cards, anything to get them just talking. You can get structures, vocabulary, their ability to organize language is so much that you can get just from talk. Then asking them these crazy, you know, touch the X, oh, and then tap your head.
00:19:54 Lacee: Yes, agreed.
00:19:57 Hallie: And often a lot of these standardized tests are also not normed to the students we're giving them to. So keep that in mind.
00:20:04 Lacee: Yes, always. They always have to put in a note, you know, some discrepancy about, you know, it's normed on monolingual students. And if the student has a history of hearing a different language at home or, you know, lived with a family, you know, a couple of years, you know, you know what I mean? Just take it. It is good to have. It's a good baseline. It's a good measure objectively to look at and have in your mind. But all the other things are just as important.
00:20:32 Hallie: My last question for you would be all about, what about the academic relevance? How do you determine that?
00:20:39 Lacee: So it's tricky because every state is a little bit different, right? Every district is different. And I've worked in two different states, three different districts, I've worked contract. And you just kinda have to know, you sped law, and you have to know your district and what they require. But for me, if a student comes to me and they've been through, we call it the stat process, they've been through the multi-tiered systems of support, and they've been through different interventions, and we get to the evaluation point, we know there's an academic impact, because we have so much data to support that.
00:21:16 Lacee: It gets trickier when you have students with one speech sound error, or you know, a student that stutters, then you kinda have to dig deeper, right? And see, like, is this really impacting them, you know, in the classroom to access their general education curriculum? Is it? And it's a team decision.
00:21:36 Hallie: So emotional is impacting and that's what you might do a little bit of counseling and digging deeper. And they're more aware of what they want to work on and things like that.
00:21:47 Lacee: Yeah. When they're older, you can definitely kind of, you know, but I've had kindergarten students that pretty severe stutter and they don't care. They talk away. You know, they're just excited to be there and they stutter and they tell their friends that they stutter. And I'm like, you know, the parents are looking at you like fix it, you know…
00:22:05 Hallie: Not here. Right. I'm just saying….
00:22:08 Lacee: We have to find academic impact. And that's a hard conversation to have.
00:22:14 Hallie: And that's a great place. Like we need to be comfortable to have those difficult patients. We need to be that advocate for our students.
00:22:21 Lacee: Right. Right.
00:22:23 Hallie: We say everyone.
00:22:26 Lacee: Yes. Yeah. We can't and it's law. You know, you can't pull them out. You can't, it's the law. You cannot if and unless it's impacting them. So you have to be careful and you have to stand your ground. And sometimes I even had to bring like the lead SLP in to help me stand my ground. You know, as a younger SLP, having someone there with you at the table to have your back, it's priceless. So if that, if your district offers that then do that.
00:22:49 Hallie: I've even had principals who understands nothing about speech, they might just sit there as like a backup, like I need someone with admin license to take over when things get messy, then when in doubt always I always have a cup of water or coffee if I need…
00:23:08 Lacee: A break?
00:23:09 Hallie: The break that and that's okay.
00:23:14 Lacee: Yep, that is okay and even tabling the meeting is okay ,you know, if you find yourself in a sticky spot you just table it and then you refresh and you bring yourself back.
00:23:24 Hallie: What advice would you give to someone going back to school worried about the IEP process right worried about goals worried about anything. What advice would you give to them?
00:23:34 Lacee: Well, I've had lots of friends go from medical to school setting and even my interns that had no interest in schools It I think personally it's the best job and I hope that I show that when I have interns and on my social media and on and when I do things for other SLPs, I hope that that comes through because I think our impact is so great in the schools and their students' natural environment that it outweighs all the other, you know, it really does. I mean, not every school is the same. And if you're in a not so good placement, you can always find a different placement.
00:24:12 Lacee: That's the beauty of a school SLP. So I would say go for it and access, you know, there's so much information on social media, like, access that, find a mentor and just, it's amazing. I've had the best experience with it and I love it. So…
00:24:30 Hallie: I love, my entire career was in a school setting. I can't imagine any other setting. I love being able to collaborate with other professionals, being able to work with groups. I know people fear groups. I love groups. I can't do individual sessions. I find them boring. I find, I feel like I have to plan extra because like, that's just one kid. What am I gonna do? I can't talk to my phone. I mean but not that fun all the time.
00:24:53 Lacee: Oh, it's so fun.
00:24:54 Hallie: So I have them working together, but I love also just showing students that they can have fun and that learning can be fun and then bring language is just amazing. So thank you so much, Lacee, for joining me here today. Everyone go check out her Instagram, check her out on Teachers Pay Teachers, all that fun stuff. Thank you, Lacee and everyone. Thank you so much for joining us.
00:25:16 Lacee: Thank you so much, Hallie. See you. Bye
00:25:27 Hallie: Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. It means the world to me that you're tuning in each and every week and getting the jolt of inspiration you need. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at my website, Speechtimefun.com. Don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. See you next week with another episode full of fun and inspiration from one SLP to another. Have fun, guys!
