American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Convention 2024 NOPBC CONFERENCE AND BOARD MEETING
by Casey West Robertson and Carlton Anne Cook Walker
From the Editor: The Individualized Education Plan (IEP) outlines the goals and objectives in the education of a child with disabilities. For decades the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC) and its state chapters have helped parents negotiate the IEP process to obtain the best outcomes for their blind children. This year the NOPBC and the NFB’s Jernigan Institute launched an exciting new program to train parents and Federationists as IEP advocates. Casey West Robertson introduced the IEP training program at the NOPBC board meeting.
Casey West Robertson: One thing to note about the National Federation of the Blind and NOPBC: if you have a great idea, be ready to carry it out! During a convention a couple of years ago, the NOPBC board started coming up with ideas about training parents on IEPs. Carlton Walker and I work around the country trying to get access for blind and low-vision students through their IEPs. We felt that parents need to have that knowledge. Parents need to be empowered to go into their IEP and get the services their child needs. We recognized that when a blind person goes to an IEP meeting with us, the entire atmosphere in the room shifts.
When a competent blind person walks into the meeting room, the low expectations the school staff have for the blind child go out the window. They can no longer say, “She can’t do that because she’s blind.”
Thinking about that phenomenon, Carlton and I realized we need to train both parents of blind children and blind adults to be IEP advocates. After going back and forth for a few days we came up with a name for our new program. We called it IEP Advocacy Academy.
At that point we had a plan, and we knew who we wanted to train. But where was the funding coming from? Fortunately, the LaVelle Fund partnered with the NFB to make our program possible. In May 2024 we trained the first sixteen advocates to focus on blindness and the IEP. This cohort will run IEP sessions here at Convention tomorrow night. Another part of their commitment is to go back to their states and hold an IEP training for parents and blind people at their state conventions.
We know we still need to do more. This is a two-year program. We will train another cohort of fifteen people this coming year. We continue the training through meetings every three months via Zoom. It’s as though we took a college course and condensed it. We filled the participants with information for three days in Baltimore and sent them out the door. We hit the basics in those first three days, and we give them more training through a webinar every three months.
Each participant will have a mentor when they go out on their first IEP advocacy case. Their mentor will work with them as they prepare for the IEP meeting. So we’re hitting this issue with a top-down and bottom-up approach.
We hope to continue this training for years to come. We hope there will be a new cohort training with us every year. We would love to have a spring cohort and a fall cohort someday.
An application for the next cohort will come out early in 2025. To show the need for this program, I’ll tell you we had fifteen spots to fill, and we had a hundred and twenty-five applications! Out of all those applications we had to select fifteen people—we actually ended up with sixteen. We tried to look at the geographical range across the nation. We tried to get a balance between blind people and sighted parents. Now Carlton will tell you about some of the things we worked on during the weekend when everyone came to Baltimore.
Carlton Walker: I started life as an attorney. Then I became the parent of a blind child, and later I became a teacher of blind students. It’s been an interesting journey. I get to do both my attorney thing and my teacher thing at the IEP Advocacy Academy.
We start with the basics. What is an IEP? What are the rules of the game: the laws, the statutes, the regulations, the Dear Colleague letters? How does all that material become integrated as we develop the IEP for a particular student? We also gave people boots-on-the-ground tips, things to look out for, things to say, things not to say. We highlighted the top issues for blind and low-vision students.
Being a lawyer, I love the Socratic method. We had lots of discussions, looking at why a rule applies one way at one time and another way at another time. We let the people in the seminar explore the IEP process to gain a deep understanding.
Casey Robertson: One of the highlights of the weekend took place on the final night. We had actors come in. The teams being trained rotated through different rooms where people acted in the roles of a school district and a set of parents. We held mock IEP meetings in these rooms. Each one was meant to bring out particular emotions in the advocates and the families. The participants could work on how to deal with the feelings brought out during various scenarios they might see. Sometimes it got very emotional! We left with tears!
Some of the parents had been through similar situations themselves. Other parents, who had had wonderful IEP experiences, realized how fortunate they were. They felt they were more prepared to go out and help other parents who were not having good experiences.
To learn more about resources in your state, contact [email protected]. You will reach the education team. Karen Anderson has a running list of IEP advocates. She and I will try to pair you with the best person in your state, and we’ll take it from there.
Carlton Walker: None of the advocates are attorneys. What we offer is not legal representation. There is no attorney-client relationship involved. What we provide is knowledge, experience, and emotional support.