#46 Individual Learning Plans that really work with Emma-Rose Parsons

Psychologist Emma-Rose Parsons joins host, Leisa Reichelt to discuss how Individual Learning Plans (ILPs/IEPs) can become practical, neurodiversity-affirming tools rather than “tick-the-box” paperwork. 

Emma-Rose explains ILPs should document reasonable adjustments, support equal access to curriculum and school life, and help schools meet obligations under relevant disability and equal opportunity legislation—ideally through true collaboration with parents and, where possible, students.

They identify common red flags and Emma-Rose shares examples of better goals focused on access and regulation. The episode also covers school objections around “fairness” and staff capacity, noting the need for better whole-community understanding of equity and more teacher upskilling. 

They discuss how allied health can help by providing brief, prioritised recommendations with clear rationale, and how implementation often breaks down in high school without clear responsibility for sharing plans across multiple teachers. 

People & resources mentioned in this episode:

• Emma Rose’s website: https://emmarosepsychologist.com.au/
• Nuturing Sparkles Video Library” https://learn.nurturingsparkles.com.au/
• Neurowild octopus iceskates cartoon re: equal vs equality - https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02T5WZVb94KbcK5BzZannYZTNkRAnG39PWVqEVE9HS19PDY9LCJzErzE6KXzExV6Q5l&id=100087870753308
• Neurowild on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neurowild_
• Lived Experience Educator: https://www.livedexperienceeducator.com/
•  Onwards and Upwards Psychology: https://www.onwardsandupwardspsychology.com.au/
• Yellow Ladybugs: https://www.yellowladybugs.com.au/

Transcript

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 0:05

Hello and welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast. I'm Leisa Reichelt, and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia community. Caring for a young person who is struggling to attend school can be a stressful and isolating experience, but you are not alone. Thousands of parents across Australia and many more around the world face similar challenges and experiences every day. Today we are joined by Emma-Rose Parsons, who is a psychologist with a deep interest and expertise in educational support for neurodivergent children. In our episode today we're focusing on individual learning plans known as ILPs or IEPs, or some other acronym depending on where you are in the world. Emma is going to help us understand how we can create great collaboration between parents, students, and educators to turn these documents into really useful tools that can support better experiences for our kids at school. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Emma-Rose Parsons, thank you so much for joining us for our podcast today. Really appreciate you taking the time.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 1:09

Oh, its great to be here. Thanks for having me along!

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 1:12

Fantastic. we are going to talk about, basically the idea that schools sit down and work out an individual plan for some students, I think it might be like an IEP or I don't know what else is it called?

Emma-Rose Parsons : 1:29

ILP

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 1:30

all kinds of different names. But that's the thrust of our topic for today. But before we get into that, Emma, I would love to hear a little bit about your story. What's brought you to have this as a topic that you care about and know so much about?

Emma-Rose Parsons : 1:42

Oh, that's a very long story! Try and do it short, but I've been a, a psychologist for a long time, 20, 25 years, and in that time have worked almost exclusively with neurodivergent individuals. And, I really see the impact that students have when they're in schools that are not yet understanding neurodiversity well. And I find that the better I can upskill schools to understand neurodiversity, they can then support students better and they actually need then less support one-on-one with clinicians outside of that context. So it's essentially going up the stream. How quickly can get up the stream and make sure that the places where students spend so many hours of their week is actually going to be somewhere that they wanna be, that's supporting them and that they've got people on site that really get it. And then I guess the ILP component or the IEP component is where schools are documenting and clearly articulating what they're doing to support these students. And I think that it's really important'cause so many schools that they've got these ILPs or IEPs and and they're really not worth the paper that they're written on. And so it's a lot of effort for everybody to create them. But if they're not really a usable document or they're not really a meaningful document, then we don't have time for this. Like we don't have time for wasting these days. So, ensuring that that document is then really good and it actually is a neurodiversity affirming document, I think is really powerful. Both for the student and for the teaching team, the educators.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 3:16

I resonate with what you've said there because my son for most of his educational life, has had one of these documents, and I have to say that almost all the time it's been next to useless. It's been a meeting with the teacher at the beginning of the term, meeting with the teacher at the end of the term, at no point did anyone sit me down and tell me what this was and what could go in it and how it could be used. I was learning as I went. Can you talk about what the intention of these things are

Emma-Rose Parsons : 3:45

I think this is a really interesting question, right? Because, if the intent is not what they perhaps should be for, then sometimes I feel like that is the start of the slippery slope. So one of the most important parts about having an ILP is that a school is showing documentation regarding the adjustments that they're making. About how they are ensuring that they are meeting their legal requirements, their Equal Opportunities Acts or Discrimination Acts or Disability Acts. And looking at actually personalizing a plan for that student to be able to have equal access to curriculum and equal access to school activities as their peers. Now that's what it's supposed to be about. It's supposed to be a document that is done in collaboration with the parents and the student, to ensure that there's really specific individual goals or adjustments or supports in place for that particular student. And, I think that that often gets lost and instead it's-here's another document that we have to create'cause it's really hard to do this and it sometimes becomes a bit of a check the box, kind of situation. Copy paste, this is one we've used before, let's just do this. And it actually loses so much of that meaning as soon as it's kind of a tick the box process.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 5:06

Yeah, when my guy was small, like year three, year four I understood it as being a special plan that was intended to help fill his extra deficits. I don't think I saw it as a, how can we help make school work better for him, be easier for him. I think somehow I interpretted it as a, he has gaps that need to be filled. Here's our plan to fill those gaps. His main ones always were handwriting and socializing and it was like, he's gonna have to do more handwriting and get extra help with handwriting and we'll give him some help in the playground to play with people more often. And that was kind of it.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 5:45

Traditionally, been really consistent. Like, I've seen many, many, many ILPs or IEPs that look very similar to that, where it's, there's an academic goal and it could be that they're going to learn X, Y, and Z spelling things by this particular date or whatnot. And there's often a, a social goal. And it could be something like they will learn to respond to their peers when their peers say hi or something like that. And there's often some sort of a behavioral goal. You know, Freddy will be able to sit on the mat for an entire lesson without touching the kid next to him. And where that's really starting to change is that a lot of those goals really didn't take into account a neurodivergent presentation. They were a generic, behavioral kind of perspective, or a generic learning or academic perspective, but they actually weren't tailored to the individual's neurotypes. And I think that that's where things are starting to get some change and some shifting. And I think that's where the power of these documents can really come in.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 6:43

So if I was starting again in the early times and going in to have a meeting with the year three teacher to work on one of these things, what do you think I, as a parent should know and should be thinking about going into that session?

Emma-Rose Parsons : 6:58

OK, There's a couple of really big things. One is making sure that it's a collaborative conversation around what are the things that are actually going to really support my child. And I think that there are very few situations where children shouldn't be involved in the discussion around goals. I think that we must presume competence that kids actually are really able to articulate problems if we give them the right strategies and the right ways to articulate what they wanna work on, what their goals are. And if we start with things that are meaningful to the child themselves, we are so much more likely to get a meaningful goal and then a meaningful process. So I think wherever possible, having that true collaboration of all parties. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that the child come to the meeting. I mean, they may have that conversation out of context, and it might be included another way. It depends on the child's age and developmental stages. Also, how safe they feel to be able to talk about things that are tricky for them in that context, right? Are the people in the room, people that that person actually feel safe to communicate with? So, number one, making sure that it's a true collaborative process. The second thing is I would be creating or somehow having a list of things that you might consider red flags for your particular child and things that don't resonate for you or for them, or that you know, are not neurodiversity affirming. So for example, if you have got a, very high movement needs ADHDer, and one of their goals is to be able to sit on the mat, crisscross five star listening, which is terminology a lot of schools will use, for 30 minutes. Now, my question would always be, what's the point of that particular goal? Because there are a lot of students who will actually be able to do that and they'll put all of their focus in the learning of sitting still. And because they're putting all of their focus in the learning of sitting still. They're not putting any focus into the learning of the actual content that's being taught while they're also sitting still. So a lot of the time, I think it's coming back to what is the actual point of the goals that we have? What are we actually trying to achieve? And we know that students who feel safe and they feel supported and they can be their true, authentic selves in school environments are going to do academically better. So, rather than having a goal that is, how do we get this child to fit into a mainstream school and look exactly like all their other peers. The question should be how do we help this student to be able to feel comfortable, to learn effectively in this environment? So I think a lot of it comes back to being really clear about what your intent is as a parent. What do you want for your child? And then how can you assist in articulating that and how can you self-advocate for yourself and what you want, and also advocate for your child. Because there is a lot of schools who will still push, you know, five star listening. There's a lot of schools who will say, you know, you need to be able to stop wriggling, um, stop rocking on your chair. So we want Freddy to be able to sit and not rock on his chair. We want this student to be able to make eye contact and greet the teacher with good morning such and such and such and such. Whereas we know that that is not how a lot of people communicate naturally and, and having some really clear goals around true connection rather than just having to fit into those sort of stereotypical communication styles. So I think just being really aware of more traditional goals of ILPs or IEPs and what you actually want for your child and what ideally you would like their schooling experience to look like. Because if you keep coming back to that, it's gonna make it really easy to then figure out how does the next bit go? Like what are the steps within that? And I think that's a really good thing. The other thing, I think a lot of families may not be aware of is the legal requirements in terms of what are the Acts that are relevant to these documents. What does the Equal Opportunity Act look like? What does the Disability Discrimination Act look like? And how can I ensure that when we are looking at reasonable accommodations, they actually really are reasonable because some schools will bend over backwards to help students and some schools really don't know where to start. So really helping yourself to be as upskilled as you can in some of those areas so that you can advocate as well as you possibly can. And if that is something that you don't have capacity for, for whatever reason, having someone with you who might be able to help you with that bit.Because we don't all have the same amount of capacity every day, and parents have got a lot on their plates already. And sometimes also getting their heads around this stuff in a situation where it could be emotionally charged, might be where a support person could help them to then communicate those goals and those needs for that family.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 12:01

There's so much to unpack in all of that I'd love us to sort of work through it. And I think just remembering as well, a lot of the folk who are listening to this, their kids are often in a distressed state with regards to school, nervous system overwhelm, and even just getting to school at all is, challenge number one. So with that in mind, can we unpack goals first? Then we might take a look at what are the kinds of things that you can put in an IEP that might be worth considering. Maybe let's also talk about how to utilize a support network to help with that too. I would love if you might give us some examples of, some more red flag goals and then also what might good goals look like?

Emma-Rose Parsons : 12:50

it really is going to depend on the student and their profile and their individual needs. And so I would say my first red flag is a copy paste. If you feel like this is just a generic copy paste, that would probably my first red flag because it's not an individual learning plan, it's not an individual education plan. It's not supposed to be a generic.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 13:14

How would you know that as a parent?

Emma-Rose Parsons : 13:16

Sometimes they come pre-filled, and you read them and you kind of go, what? That doesn't seem to have any real connection to how I see my child, or the goals just seem to be very academic and my child's actually not even getting here. So if there's a big mismatch between what's on the piece of paper and what you see as a parent, I think that's a really great start point. Parents are pretty intuitive when they see things that they kind of go, oh, that doesn't fit. And I think if you get that ick feeling, it doesn't fit, it probably doesn't fit. If you can trust that gut, if you've got ability to do that on that day, I think that's a really good start point.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 13:54

I think that trust in the gut thing is something that people say on this podcast all the time. Trust your gut, trust your gut. But, you know, I just wanna flag that for so many parents, they are told so frequently that the problems that their children are experiencing is as a result of their parenting, all the things that they're doing wrong. And so they're told by the very people they're walking into the room to have these conversations with, that they shouldn't trust their gut. So it is a bit of a bind, but just reiterating that, you know, your intuition and your understanding of your child is better than anybody else's in this context.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 14:29

And if you feel uncomfortable as the parent, but you are not sure yet why you feel uncomfortable like you're not sure exactly. You know, you don't feel right about it, but you so you can't put your finger on it. It's also okay to say, something's not quite right with this but I can't articulate it yet. I need to take this away and have a think about it and come back and buy yourself time. Just because the meeting is going ahead. If you are not ready, or you're not quite sure how to put your finger on what the issue is, you do not have to go ahead. It's okay to go, look, I need some time to process that, and I'll come back to you and just say, look, I'd like to pause a meeting and come back. We all process differently, particularly in times when we are stressed and if our kids are stressed, we are gonna be stressed.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 15:14

I think a lot of us have got a background of people pleasing in the educational environments as well. Right.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 15:19

A hundred percent. And you we get tired, you know, it's hard.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 15:24

Absolutely.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 15:26

Okay. In terms of red flags. Obvously, anything that's cookie cutter, anything where the goal is something that has to happen a hundred percent. If there's sky high, goals in there, then I would also red flag those. I would red flag a ILP that was purely academic. If the situation was such that the person had high stress levels or they were neurodivergent and they only had academic goals in their ILP, I'd be concerned about that. I would be really concerned, and I'd have it as a red flag, if the ILP had the onus only on the student to make change. So if in there you've got all these goals, you've got all these strategies, and then it has often like a section that says who's responsible for those. And if it's always the student. It means that all the work to try and fit in is probably going to be on the student. And that's not gonna work. It needs to be shared responsibility in a really clear and careful way of making sure that that has been distributed in a way that's actually gonna be effective. Red flags would be, there's a laundry list of goals. Some ILPs, you look at them and there's like 20 things on there. It's like, how on earth are you actually going to target 20 things? It's never gonna happen. Pick two or three and do'em really well. Then get them done and move on to the next two or three. You don't have to have pages and pages of these. Just have a couple really nice, beautiful ones and move on. This one's a really tricky one I guess, and I say it's tricky because it needs a lot of knowledge from both the school and the family and the student, but if any of the goals are not affirming goals, and I think that is trickier because a lot of our community are still trying to understand what is affirming and what's not. So in this context, I'm talking about anything that makes a person have to pretend that they're something else Or someone else. Or they're doing it for other people's sake rather than for their own sake. Those sorts of things I would have as red flags. So, as an example, Johnny doesn't annoy other people at the mat. Because that's kind of insinuating that it's about the rest of the class. It's not about the fact that Johnny may not be regulated or he may actually need to move to learn.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 17:43

Yeah, as you were talking Emma-Rose, I'm thinking about my son's persistent themes that he had all the way through primary school. I think about the handwriting one, he's now, going into year 10 and for the first time we're having conversations about getting a scribe to help him because it turns out he probably has dysgraphia. He's had IEPs for such a long time and it's taken this long for this to be a discussion. And I saw I sort of rolling it back and going, is it because we were focused on the wrong thing earlier on? It was all about having nice handwriting and actually, does that matter? Does it matter if you have nice handwriting or not? I hope not.'cause mine's terrible.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 18:24

mine too, and I always find it hilarious I'm going off to schools and doing presentations and I often like write on the board. I always say, you know, I, I don't think I ever got my pen license or I got it by some kind of, you know, we give up here it is.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 18:36

Yeah.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 18:37

You know what, as, as an adult, you can go to Officeworks just buy a permanent marker without a license. Like

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 18:42

Turns out,

Emma-Rose Parsons : 18:43

no one cares.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 18:44

So I just like, I mean, I, I think back to his IEPs that we just constantly handwriting has to be better, handwriting has to be better, and I'm just like, it feels as though the framing there is all wrong and is very much about. You know, you will learn to do things the way that we want you to do them, rather than we can see you're having a really hard time expressing yourself in this format. What else might we be able to do to help, extract the obvious intelligence that's there in a different format?

Emma-Rose Parsons : 19:09

If that was an example, if you could go back in a time machine and you were to rewrite that particular goal, it could be that Freddy is able to identify three different strategies to communicate his knowledge in history, including a video blog, talk to tech strategies and utilizing a scribe. And that he has fluency in one of these most days by the end of term two. So that might be a reframe of that sort of thing.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 19:44

Yeah. Interesting. You know, there's a lot to learn on this journey for a parent. There really is. Give us some more examples of good goals that you've seen.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 19:53

OK, So lets go for some movement ones, cause these are really common ones that I see in ILPs. Being able to sit on the floor, sitting on the mat without interrupting others, or, not calling out. Now for our kids who need to move to learn or have difficulty to be able to hold ideas in their head and not share them immediately'cause they're so passionate about what they've got to share, it is very easy to go, okay, that kid is interrupting my class time, or is interrupting my ability to teach the class this topic. And therefore there's a real kind of blaming that goes on the child. Versus saying, this child has great ideas that they need to share. How can I help them find a, a strategy to pause before sharing? So for example. You might have a goal in there that might say Freddy can utilize a post-it note strategy to jot down or to draw if he's not a writer, to draw an idea that he's desperate to share and hand me the post-it note, and that will be like the pause. That'll represent the pause. And as soon as there's a natural opportunity for me to ask Freddy about the thing that he'll be able to tell me more about that idea that he had. So it's more about teaching those sort of strategies. It could be that Sally has a higher need of movement in order to feel regulated enough to take in complex information in a calculus class. And Sally is able to identify a position within the class that feels physiologically comfortable to enable her ability to take in this complex information. Strategies that are available to Sally could be using a standup desk, be standing on a bosu ball at the back of the room with a computer, or could be munching on some crunchy foods to give the regulation while the the learning is occurring. And that Sally's able to identify which one of those strategies is going to work, or move through strategies if multiple strategies are required. So to be things like that. I mean, that essentially is saying, let's help you to figure out what you need to be comfortable enough and regulated enough so that you can take in this data. So now the thing with that though is there's a lot of onus then on Sally to do that. The point where this then becomes shared responsibilities, you'd love to see in there that the teacher will provide standup desks and will encourage the students to taste test different arrangements, standing seating arrangements within the class to identify preferences. Or, the teacher will use a non-punitive gesture or reminder that is private to Sally to remind her to relocate into a way that makes her comfortable because she might've lost attention. So it's about looking at how do we A, have the strategies in there for access to learning, and B, who's gonna take responsibility to ensure that that's actually going to happen? So it might even be that there's some pre-teaching that needs to So that we can actually explain this out of context rather than just in the middle of the class. And, and then who's responsible for doing that pre-teaching? So they're the kind of things that I would love to see as replacements. Students who find it really difficult to share their knowledge through writing. What are all the other options available to them? There's so many. What about students who find things like sitting in assembly really difficult? Most schools have AV equipment, most schools can actually live stream assemblies into a different space so that student can pace if they need to while still taking in the data that's being presented in assembly or being part of it there. What are the adjustments like that, that the school can put in place so that the student can still access assembly in a way that they're able to stay regulated while they're doing it? Because we don't want them to miss out on the content of assembly, but if all of their energy is in just not doing the stim,'cause they don't wanna get in trouble. What's the point? They're not taking it in anyway. Ah, I think where we really need to look at how we readjust old school thinking about ILPs and goals for students and put it in the lens of what are the adjustments that actually need to happen. And I think we just need to get better at being creative with those too. Right. And really keeping on coming back to how do we make this accessible to you? Does that mean move more, move less louder, quieter? You need more headphones? You know, I mean, we are now getting schools who are saying, look, we understand that for some of our ADHDers, having tunes in actually really increase their ability to stay paying attention to the thing that they wanna pay attention to and they're getting better outcomes. Okay, We might have a no phone policy in our school. We might not wanna negotiate on that. And I think where this really often gets a bit mushy is there is a fear of there's a fear of other students and there's sometimes even a fear of other parents, right, for schools. But it's not fair. How come they get to have headphones and my child doesn't? How come they get to have extended time and my child doesn't? So there's a kind of a us and them misunderstanding around what does actual accessibility look like? And I think that schools get worried sometimes about putting in these reasonable adjustments that actually make the playing field level because other people see it as special treatment rather than other people seeing it as leveling the playing field. I think that that sometimes stops schools from putting in true accessible options.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 25:30

That's exactly what I was gonna say, Emma. Some of the examples that you've given sound brilliant, but they also sound like things that many schools would object to, either because of issues of perceived fairness or just the fact that it's a lot of extra bother. And, acknowledging that a lot of schools and a lot of teachers are already at the limit of what they have capacity to do, just in terms of their time and their attention. And in a lot of cases, their budget and resources as well. How do you suggest parents handle objections to these kinds of suggestions when the school's saying, you know, either on the fairness front, which I think you've touched on already, but also just on the capacity side as well.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 26:17

OK, I think they are two totally different things. So if it's on the fairness front, I think that that really comes down to being very, very clear in the way that we communicate with our whole school community about what equal opportunity actually is. And, there are some brilliant images on the internet around this. One of the the ones that I really like is an image by Neurowild who's a, a speech path. And, it's everyone gets two pairs of ice skates. And the octopus just gets two, but the octopus has eight, legs. I know they're not actually legs, but you know, in this analogy. And so the reality is if everyone actually gets equal, versus everyone gets what they need to make the playing field equal, I think. We are very good at getting jealous in our community. Right. And all of the data that I've seen in terms of accommodations for things like exams, as an example, so special considerations for exams, it still doesn't actually level the playing field. And so we, we give students extra time and they still often don't actually have a level playing field. And so their fear is often unfounded. And it's an emotional fear rather than a fact-based fear. And I think that's where we really need to be working hard as an entire community at looking at some reasonable adjustments that we put in place and some special resources or accommodations we might make for one. They're either going to level a playing field for that person or they might actually be mutually helpful for many, many people. A great example, ramps, right? We, generally speaking, put in ramps for people who need them for wheelchair access, but they're also fabulous for anyone who's ever been on crutches. For if you happen to have, you know, a trolley with deliveries or a pram or, you know, a thousand other people also benefit from something that's put in place primarily as an accessibility for people who might be in wheelchairs. But we, we, as a community, we, we are very scared that someone's gonna get something that we haven't got and it's not fair. And I really feel like that argument needs to be educated out of our community. So I think if that is the conversation that you are hearing in your school, that is an excellent time to say, right, we actually need to talk about what this is as a whole school community and help our people to understand that equal access is paramount. So that's one thing. The second part of that was talking about capacity in our educators. Now, I am absolutely in agreeance that most of our educators are past capacity. We are losing teachers left, right, and center. The vast majority of new grads don't make it through five years of education, and that is massively problematic. We are burning out our teachers so quickly for lots of different reasons, partly because there is such an expectation on educators to educate the entire child rather than just educate between 9 and 3.30. There are so many layers that teachers are expected to have, and one of the biggest ways that we burn out our teachers is we actually don't give them the skill sets that they need to do the thing. So if we have teachers and we are saying to them, look, you've gotta fit within all these disability acts and discrimination acts and everything, and you've gotta do this kind of, you know, neurodiversity affirming style of ILP, and they don't even know what language you're talking about because no one's actually ever told them what that means. And how do they actually stay within that? They're of course gonna feel out of their competence. They're going to be defensive because there's no way they can actually do that thing. We have a systemic problem in that we are still not teaching our new teachers enough about this. We're expecting this of teachers, but we're not training them. So I think that that's a really real and fair comment for some teachers to say, I haven't got the capacity to do this, because often they actually don't. Right. But it also doesn't solve the problem for the student. I think it's a case of helping teachers to figure out how they can get that upskilling. Where can you go to get that knowledge that's really accessible? How can you self-advocate to your leadership team that you need this? You've got a student in your class that has a disability, they have diagnosis that needs additional support. But I don't know how to do that in a way that's actually going to meet the criteria of what my due diligence actually is as an educator. That is really, really really important. If we're going to expect them to write these documents in a high quality and be neuro affirming and actually understand the difference between a great goal and a really crappy goal, we have to teach them that. We can't expect that they're just gonna have that necessarily from their education from university. And if they're a teacher that's been in the industry for ages, they may have never learned that either.'cause it might not have even been a thing. It's it's a really complex one.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 31:21

It does feel as though a lot of the educational burden then falls to the parent In the advocacy role the parent then is the one who has to go. Actually, I think this should be the goal. Actually, these are the things I think we should be doing. Actually, no, I don't think that that's right. I think we need to do that. Actually, you have to do this because it's a legal requirement. I feel as though a lot of that right now in the absence of that happening systemically is happening individually in those discussions between the parent and the teacher, and is very, very dependent on where you are in your journey, as a parent and as an advocate as well. Like I said, I failed dismally at this when my son was in his primary school years. I think I got a little bit better towards, the last couple of years of high school that he did, but

Emma-Rose Parsons : 32:07

And you repeat yourself every year,

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 32:09

yeah.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 32:10

That's frustrating, right? I think its getting better.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 32:13

I remember all the way through my son's journey, I would go, look, this is a real problem. If you make him do three exams in the same week, he's just not gonna come to school. And they would be like, okay, well which exam would you like to do? And it's like, what do you mean I get to choose? There's an option of not doing three. I didn't even know that was an option on the table. I just, foolishly assumed that if there are assessments you had to do them. Otherwise I don't know what I thought happened. So it's like over time gradually is revealed to you more secrets of things that you can and can't do at school maybe I'm just really dense. A lot of this stuff never occurred to me.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 32:50

Look, I think this is a changing landscape. We are getting more educated parents on this topic, and there are parents who are now actively advocating loudly and it started a ripple effect. So what's happening, I mean, Term Four is normally very, very quiet for me in my professional development side of my work, right? So half of my work is in clinical work. The other half is in professional development for teachers and educators. And usually term four is super quiet. No one wants to do professional development, professional learning in, in term four. All the teachers are done. They're trying to get graduations, they're trying to get the end of the year play done, and then everyone's done, right? But what's starting to happen is we are starting to get parents who are taking legal action against schools for not maintaining documentation, for not actually abiding by some of the Discrimination and Equal Opportunity Acts, et cetera. And so it's creating a sort of wave sometimes of schools who are saying, yikes, okay, we've now been court mandated to do this training. And sometimes schools just saying, we don't wanna get to that point. We need to get onto this ASAP. We are recognizing that this is something we can't kind of muddle through anymore. We really need to be upskilled in this. so I think we are getting. A really good buy-in from schools. And I have yet to come across a teacher who's genuinely not wanted to do better. I think teachers do wanna know, like they really do care about their students, sometimes they're not sure what they need to know. And, and so having schools who are getting more on the front foot and saying, okay, we are actually going to get this training going. I mean, I'm slammed the first week of next year, and I think it's because there's so many schools putting their hand up going, we can't wait. It needs to be now let's get going. Our teachers need to know this. It's going to get easier and as teachers know better, they're gonna be able to educate parents better. And so parents aren't gonna have to do as much self-education. It is a process and so it's not gonna be done in the next 12 months, but it is definitely making progress.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 34:58

It's great to hear that optimism, so thank you. Thank you for sharing that. One of the ways that I learned about how to advocate for my son better was through partnerships with his psychologist and with his occupational therapist and, other people in the wider team of support that he has. Are you able to give a little bit of guidance as to like, what, what, how, when to involve Allied Health, other support people in the process of learning as a parent and also potentially liaising with the school about these plans?

Emma-Rose Parsons : 35:32

Yeah, absolutely. I having other Allied Health involved can be super helpful because they sometimes can come up with things that you may not have considered or that school might not have considered'cause they're not emotionally involved. I guess, one of the things remember is as psychologists, we are so good at writing pages and pages of suggestions and that so frequently that's not helpful for schools because it's overwhelming. Like, where do I start? Ask them to really prioritize the recommendations and to keep them very succinct. Short and sweet. If you're going to use Allied Health, please ask your allied health to give you, you know, what are the not negotiables that are going to make the most impact immediately. And then what are the nice to haves, what are the like additionally beautiful ones to have on the side if we've got the time and capacity? Also choose the clinicians that child really responds to and really relates to. Because if it's a recommendation coming from them and it's someone that the student feels really connected to, they're also probably gonna have more buy-in in the strategy.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 36:36

Definitely, On an earlier episode Neurowild herself, Emma said she thinks part of the reason teachers don't pick up on these recommendations from Allied Health professionals is because it's all about the what and doesn't say the why. You know, you should do this. And they, and it doesn't say like, why, why is this important? Why is this gonna make a difference? And so maybe that's another one to think about as well, is that it's less about just the action on its own, but also a little bit of explanation as to the rationale, the thinking behind it as well.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 37:07

I completely agree on that and I think most of us are that way, driven. And when we understand the background behind something, we are so much more likely to run with it than if we don't understand and we're just being told what to do. That comes back to though also ensuring that there is time to upskill our teachers. There is so much myth and misconception out there on neurodiversity, if we can actually dispel a lot of that and we can actually teach what these identities actually are, then I also think it helps to explain why we're doing this thing. As an example, you know, the, the discussion of ADHDers not being able to pay attention. I mean, it's such a myth. ADHDers are excellent over attenders. You know, and how do we help them to direct that attention in the way that they would like to, and the teacher needs them to, like, how do we help the redirection of attention rather than saying, well, you're not paying attention. So those sorts of subtle redirection strategies are coming from a basis this is not a person who can't pay attention. This is a person who needs support to pay attention to the thing.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 38:14

Let's assume that we've managed to get a really good plan in place and now the term is progressing. What certainly has been my experience that you can sit down, write a really good plan, go, this is gonna be fantastic, it's gonna be so great, and then term goes on and you're just like, I can't really see if this is happening or not. It seems like it might not be happening. Can we talk a little bit about what can we do as people that are on the edge of the system in a way to try to promote the actual use of these plans if we think they're not happening.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 38:49

Where I see it fall apart most commonly is in high school where there's multiple teachers versus primary school where you've usually got a main teacher and it's easier to upskill, communicate and coordinate with one person than it is with, you know, seven or eight different teachers across different classes in high school. So a hotspot is definitely schools ensuring that everybody has access to the information and that they have time to actually read through it and understand it in order to implement it. Because when you are a math teacher who's got seven different classes coming through in a day, you know, um, and you have to learn the profiles for all of these children and the strategies for this particular child, you may not actually have the time to do that. So ensuring that there is someone responsible for doing that handover of data, and it's not just sending them an email with, Hey, read this attachment, that doesn't work. So who is responsible? Is it the year level coordinator or is it the wellbeing coordinator? Who is the person responsible? This should be on the ILP, the person responsible for communicating, how they're gonna communicate and what's the strategy to ensure that the teachers have that accessible data. Right? So whether it's a one page cheat sheet that comes with each class or whatever it might be, I don't know. But what is a strategy that works for that teacher? I'll often say to teachers, I can give you every idea under the sun, but at the end of the day, if you don't think it's gonna work, it won't work. And opening up clear dialogue for teachers to be able to say, I think that's a great idea. I can't see how I'm gonna make it happen. Can we talk about it? Can we come up with a different idea? Can we start somewhere smaller? I need it to be a manageable chunk as a teacher them to be able to take that on board as well. So allowing the teacher an opportunity to say, I think this is a brilliant idea, but I actually don't know how to execute that particular strategy in the context of my class at the moment. I need some support.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 40:52

So that brings us back to the point that you were making at the very beginning, which is about collaboration. Maybe trying to walk out of that very first meeting, feeling confident that the teacher actually feels as though it's realistic for them to do the things that we're asking of them. On the high school side of things, it feels as though, as a parent you're really having to hand a lot of this over to somebody else. But I don't know how many other people were listening and in their own mind designing their own cheat sheet for their own kid and making various copies of it to hand out to all the teachers themselves because they know they can't count on the year coordinator to have the time and capacity to do it. As a parent in this situation, you just gotta feel like if it's gonna get done, I'm gonna have to do it myself. And I say that with a great deal of understanding for exactly how much we're asking our teachers and how spread thin and burned out many of them are, you just need to feel like you can do something sometimes. Don't you? Yeah. So, I was gonna say, teachers have got access, presumably to professional development education, on all of these topics. Where would you recommend parents go to try to build their own understanding of, how to engage more effectively in, in these IEP/ILP discussions?

Emma-Rose Parsons : 42:05

Well, Leisa, I'm very biased in that answer and I would say Nurturing Sparkles, which is a video library that I've created for this exact reason.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 42:14

Amazing.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 42:15

I'm absolutely biased in saying that it, the whole point of doing it was to upskill parents and educators to actually know how to support our kids at home, but also in schools and how to understand things like neurodiversity affirming language and, and the interplay between autism and ADHD and learning just differences and, and then what does that even look like in the classroom? And how do we actually help our kids to be their authentic selves and with a Different not Deficit lens. So totally biased in that. If that's not your jam, are some brilliant resources out there. I mean, Neurowild's great. There's also the Lived Experience Educator. There is Onwards and Upwards Psychology, and there are so many organizations out there that are starting to really get this out into the world. Yellow Ladybirds, excellent starting point. Ladybugs rather, there's, there's actually a lot of different resources out there now that is starting to be really good for this kind of thing.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 43:13

You've listed off so many amazing resources there. It's fantastic because the thing that I was thinking was, you know, there was a point where I just put it into ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT for some ideas of like what I could be asking for accommodations for in particular scenarios. And it did a pretty good job actually, so... And it actually does do a pretty good job,

Emma-Rose Parsons : 43:30

right.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 43:31

And its not a

Emma-Rose Parsons : 43:32

bad start point.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 43:34

Fantastic. Emma-Rose Parsons, thank you so much for spending some time with us to talk about this. It's been very enlightening and I hope people have found it really helpful and I really appreciate your time.

Emma-Rose Parsons : 43:45

No worries, its been super fun. As you can tell, I could talk about it till the cows came home.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 43:50

We'll put links to all of the amazing resources that you suggested in the episode notes for people to access

Emma-Rose Parsons : 43:55

Awesome.

Leisa Reichelt (Host): 43:56

Well, if you've had some struggles with learning plans for your kids in the past, hopefully Emma-Rose has given you some fresh ideas on how to tackle them moving forward. I know in Australia, we are in the thick of ILP meeting season right now, so this couldn't really come at a better time, could it? Don't forget to check out some of the wonderful resources that Emma-Rose recommended. The links for those you'll find in the episode notes along with links to the School Can't Australia resources as well. Be sure to check those out. If you have found the podcast helpful, it would be so amazing if you could take time to subscribe on whichever podcast platform you are listening to us on. Maybe leave us a rating or a review, if that is possible. It really does make a big difference in helping us get this podcast into the ears of those folk with School Can't kids who haven't yet found the School Can't community and all the information and support that we share. If you have some feedback for us, maybe a suggestion for a future topic or guest or perhaps you have been inspired to share your own lived experience story, which we know everybody loves so much, please drop me an email to schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com and I would absolutely love to hear from you. If you are a parent or carer in Australia and you are feeling distressed, please remember you can always call the Parent Helpline in your state or call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Please do know you can reach out for support. Thank you again for listening. We will talk again soon. Take care.