Do you feel the IEP meeting anxiety? I used to get all the IEP meeting anxiety- nausea, hives, sweating, dry mouth, ALL of it. What if I told you you don’t have to feel that way? Let me show you how to be confident at the IEP meeting.
Plan for the IEP Meeting
The first step in being confident for the IEP meeting is to plan it out. I use my IEP planner to do this. Inside the IEP planner, I have the following things to help me plan:
- Student profiles
- Goal planning sheets
- Parent surveys
- Team input surveys
- IEP reminder sheets
- Meeting items to remember checklist
- Team contact info
- Parent contact log
- IEP at a glance sheets
- SO much more!
Prep this binder for your caseload and I promise a huge IEP stress weight will be lifted off your chest. Shop the IEP planning binder here!
Get Organized
The next step to being confident in the IEP meeting is to get organized. You’ve planned everything out, you have all your paperwork ready, now you need to organize everything. I use a portfolio folder for this. This folder has 8 folders within it. I use the flap of each folder with a label for a different piece of paperwork to keep myself organized for my IEP meeting. You can see a glimpse of the inside below.
I have folder flaps for paperwork such as parent rights, team member excusal forms, meeting notices, progress monitoring data, conference summary, draft IEP, evaluation reports, various forms, etc.
Get a Peer to Review Your IEP
A great practice to get into is to have a peer read and review your draft IEP prior to the meeting. I have my teacher bestie read mine, she annotates any edits I need to make or suggestions she has for me so I can fix it prior to my meeting. This always makes me feel more confident!
Wear an Outfit You Feel Confident In
Another guaranteed way to make you confident for the IEP meeting is to wear an outfit you feel confident in. I have a few shirts, sweaters, and pants that I save for IEP meetings because they help me feel confident!
IEP meetings don’t have to be anxiety filled. You can go into the IEP meeting confident and ready! What things do you do to help yourself feel confident for an IEP meeting. For more IEP meeting tips, check out this blog post!
