Feel like I have inherited a ticking time bomb of an IEP.
I'm looking for some advice from those of you who have inherited really complicated IEPs.
I'm an elementary contained sped teacher, and one of my new students has an IEP that appears to have been written to keep the peace with the family and their attorney. The student is not new to the school, just my class. I am familiar with the student. It took a dozen meetings at 2-4 hours a time for them to agree on the final one.
From everything I've reviewed, I feel like I'm walking into a ticking timebomb. Last year, the student spent the vast majority of their day in a self contained classroom. Toward the end of the school year, the family requested nearly full time general education and involved an attorney. The final IEP ended up placing him in general education for the majority of the day (roughly 22 hours/week), with about 10 hours/week in my classroom, including lunch.
Here's where I'm struggling.
The students present levels paint the picture of a child who is mostly non-speaking, does not follow directions, needs full physical prompts 100% of the time, cannot match at all, does not recognize their name, and cannot attend to any tasks. The new IEP has well over 20 annual goals (4-6 in nearly every area) for me alone including goals like rote counting, matching all uppercase to lowercase, and other skills that seem inappropriate for what the student's present levels describe. This doesnt include related service providers. The student was unable to attend to any alt testing, and appears to attend to limited tasks for 1 minute at a time.
I'm absolutely going to do everything I can to support this student, and I want them to be successful. But I'm honestly feeling overwhelmed trying to figure out how this is supposed to work in practice.
For those of you in similar roles:
* If a student spends 80%+ of the day in general education, who is typically responsible for adapting the general education curriculum and materials? Is that primarily the special education teacher, the para, the general education teacher, or is it truly a team effort?
* How do you realistically provide meaningful instruction on 20+ IEP goals when you only have the student for about two hours a day? Plus, a caseload of others who will be in the room.
* Have you ever inherited an IEP where the goals didn't seem to align with the student's present levels? How did you approach that?
I genuinely see some big ethical issues here, and I feel like the scapegoat.
I truly believe every student deserves the least restrictive environment that's appropriate for them. Unfortunately, I just don't see how I am expected to navigate this situation ethically while know we arent serving the student appropriately. I'm just trying to wrap my head around implementing an IEP where the goals, present levels, and placement all seem so disconnected.
I'd really appreciate hearing how others have navigated situations like this.