In-service 1: (8 points)

Two out of the three in-services sessions that I attended had to

do with brain injuries and returning back to school after them. The first

one was called BrainSTEPS. BrainSTEPS is an organization that comes

into school to assist students in the classroom after experiencing a

concussion. They assist with implementation of the Return to School

Protocol. They train staff at the district, school, or classroom level on

the effects of concussion. They provide consultation to school

personnel and parents for referred students at 4 weeks post-

concussion, or earlier if needed. They provide symptom specific

educational accommodations utilizing the Brain Injury Supports

Framework. They assist in ongoing monitoring of symptoms and

accommodations until the concussion resolves and facilitate

communication between family, student, medical, and educational

entities. This is related to special education because a lot of the time,

these students that undergo a concussion will be placed in the special

education setting for a period of time because of some of the

symptoms they experience. A concussion can directly effect how you

learn and impede your functionality in the general education setting.

These students sometimes have a more difficult experience moving to

the special education setting because they were once extremely

capable of participating in the general education setting and now they

are having a very hard time and dont understand why.

The final session I attended was two hours long. A lawyer

came in to talk to us about legally defensible IEPs. She talked a lot

about the fact that your present levels, baselines, goals, and SDIs all

need to perfectly correlate. She also talked a lot about how to write

measurable annual goals. Goals must have a measureable ending

point which is determined by knowing the current starting point as

indicated in the present levels and projecting where the student will be

performing by the end of one year. When writing a goal one should

include an operant condition, students name, clearly defined behavior

of the measurable response, performance criteria, criterion level,

number of times needed to demonstrate level, and evaluation

schedule. This presentation was extremely applicable to special

education because the lawyer talked directly about IEPs. She went

into detail about what needs to be included in them if you want to

avoid going to due process. As a future special educator, this

presentation really opened my eyes to how serious IEPs really are and

how much I still have to learn about them. It was also really beneficial

to hear about all the aspects of the law from a lawyer instead of one of

our professors.
In-service 2: (8 points)

Another in-service I attended was a meeting between all of the

special education teachers in the district. The district has these

meetings once a month to discuss any issues the special educators

may have. At this meeting specifically the teachers discussed incoming

students IEPs and where to place them. Around this time the teachers

are beginning to find out who their EI kids were going to be and the

teachers were trying to determine which type of classroom would be

best to place these students. The teachers also talked about which

seminars they wanted to sign up for the next in-service they have.

They also discussed a lot about the CBIs that they are planning to go

on. The key points that they focused on were the amount of time and

effort it takes to plan them. One of the things they mentioned was that

they need to make sure that the bathrooms in the community have

handicapped accessible bathrooms because many of the teachers have

wheelchair-bound students. The district wants the teachers to write

out a long lesson plan for the CBIs that they plan on going on. The

teachers agreed that they understood why they needed to go through

that process because those outings into the community require a lot of

planning to go into them. However, they believed that the format they

wanted them to use was too long and detailed and was taking their

time away from more important things they could be working on.
Another thing that was discussed was that they need more time

allotted to their prep time. All the teachers agreed that they

desperately needed to have IEP days where they could focus on

revising and editing their students IEPs. The last thing they discussed

was how to handle the paraeducators that are in their classroom. This

discussion really benefitted me because directing the paraeducators

was one of the weakest aspects for me during my student teaching. It

was something I struggled with because it was a topic that we never

really covered during our classes at KU. It was comforting to here that

even my co-op and her colleagues were struggling with it as well and

were able to have an open discussion on how to handle certain

situations.
In-service 3: (8 points)

This in-service was similar to the previous one where all the

special educators from the district got together to discuss any

problems or concerns that were occurring. This in-service was shorter

then the rest of them and the teachers only met for about thirty

minutes. One of the discussions they had was how they should go

about keeping their certifications up to date. This conversation was

very beneficial to me because I wasnt sure how to do that myself.

They talked about how many hours they needed to complete and

where they were supposed to upload these hours after they completed

them. They also discussed their CBIs again. The teachers all

brainstormed what was the best way to go about writing the long

lesson plan and what information was necessary to include in them.

One of the points that they discussed was the fact that they dont

think they should be forced to go on the CBI trips. The autistic support

teacher was telling the rest of the teachers that she believes it is not

beneficial for her students because they are much more high

functioning then usual and already have the functional skills to go into

the community.
Upcoming in-service (8 points):

We recently had to sign up for an in-service that we would like to

attend through Kutztown University. The two topics that I picked I

would like to go to were job interviewing and using technology in the

classroom. This in-service is coming up so I am going to discuss what I

would like to get out of it.

When it comes to job interviewing, I dont have very much

experience at all. I have worked for my parents my entire life so I

never had to go through the interviewing process. From this

experience one of the things I would most like to learn more about is

the types of questions that I can expect to hear in an interview so I

can better prepare myself on what school districts are looking for. I

would also like to learn about any major tips they have when it comes

to interviewing and strategies to keep your nerves down.

Growing up in the generation I grew up in, I feel pretty confident

when it comes to using technology in the classroom. However,

technology is always expanding and I would really like to learn about

the most recent updates in technology and how I would be able to

utilize them in my future classroom.