Episode 8: Insights on IEPs and Student Success with Gaby Diller

In this episode of the Reading Symphony Podcast, host Katie Megrian engages in a comprehensive conversation with Gaby Diller, founder of Lotus Advocacy. Launched in 2020, Lotus Advocacy aims to support special education departments, families, and students by centering families as essential members of the special education team. Gaby shares insights on her personal journey with learning challenges and her extensive experience as a special education teacher and administrator. She offers practical advice on creating effective IEPs, the importance of specific and strength-based goals, the necessity of multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), and the benefits and limitations of private evaluations. Gaby also emphasizes the role of collaboration and transparency in advocating for students' needs. This episode provides valuable insights for families, educators, and advocates striving to support children with special needs in their reading and overall educational journey.

00:00 Introduction to the Reading Symphony Podcast

00:27 Meet Gaby Diller: Founder of Lotus Advocacy

01:23 Gaby's Personal Journey and Professional Path

04:21 Understanding and Supporting Students with IEPs

07:53 Navigating Evaluations and School Responsibilities

12:57 Effective IEP Goals and Interventions

18:01 Creative Collaboration and Advocacy Strategies

22:41 Closing Thoughts and Resources

Where to find Gaby?

https://www.lotusadvocacy.com/
https://www.instagram.com/lotusadvocacy/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriela-diller-8b056230/

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Reading Symphony Podcast, the place where clarity meets compassion. This is where families and caregivers get evidence-based trustworthy information about how reading develops, how to understand reading progress, and how to turn overwhelming information into simple, actionable steps that help every child thrive. I'm your host, Katie Megrian educator, parent, and relentless advocate for helping every child become a joyful, confident reader. Let's get started. Hi everyone. I'm thrilled to share a conversation with Gaby Diller, who is the founder of Lotus Advocacy, which she launched in 2020 to better support special education departments, families and students. Her work centers families as essential members of the special education team, and emphasizes creative collaboration, transparency, and education around special education, law and processes. Gaby is a doctoral student at Northeastern University where her research focuses on transition planning, and she brings over a decade of experience as a special education teacher, leader and administrator to her advocacy work. She's also a certified yoga teacher and lives in Milton with her husband and rescue pit Bull Rainey. Gaby welcome. I'm so excited to talk to you today about all things student advocacy, and we share a lot of different intersection points in our own careers, working in charter schools and supporting students with special needs. And our listeners will learn so much from your experience and expertise. So I'd love to just let you start by explaining the arc of your career. How did you start and how did you end up to where you are today? Yeah. Thank you for having me Katie. So I think starting with. Where I was in school is important for my trajectory. When I was in high school, I knew I learned differently. I was an incredibly hard worker, but I needed extensive support, particularly in math with writing and with. Executive functioning. I had amazing teachers that supported me because I knew how to advocate. My family had instilled that in me and I was able to ask for what I needed without having a document, but I knew something was different. And then as an adult, I was later diagnosed with A DHD and ended up having some medical related needs that have affected me professionally. For me, I saw the effects of intervention and teacher support, and that's what drew me to special ed as a educator. So then found special education, taught for many years, became an administrator, teacher coach, and then realized that the system was really unfair and I was really struggling to navigate how to be the best. Special educator that I could be within the system. So started Lotus Advocacy in 2020 and it got very busy without me even realizing that schools needed help, families needed support, and students needed more one-to-one support as well. I did not have an IEP growing up as a student, but there was this moment when I was. Was it freshman year? I think it was freshman year in college. I was taking this statistics class and I had been an A student, but math was always harder for me. I had to work really, really hard. Like you said, my mom was an accountant really strong with math and so really helped me a lot. I was the kid that asked for help when I needed it. I would show up on my teachers' lunch hours and ask for help. My friends would help me. But when I went to Bates and was taking this statistics class, which was a requirement for psychology, I just flat out failed the tests. Mm-hmm. Which had never happened. And I would study, study, study, and I would just get these Fs back. And I remember busting into the professor's office hours and I just burst into tears. I was like, what's happening? I'm failing this class and I'm working so hard. Anyway, he was wonderful and, and ended up getting me, a referral to be evaluated and found out that I had a mathematical based learning disability And so I didn't actually get an IEP at that point, but it allowed me to have extra time on tests Thank you for sharing a vulnerable moment. I resonate for sure. Although, you know, I think having our own personal experiences probably makes you realize like it's not just about working harder. Right. That was like a blow up in my brain to be like, you can work as hard as you can, but if you're not given the right intervention or the right support, you're not gonna see the results. And I think we're two examples of like incredibly, you know, to speak freely, like type A, organized people who advocate and reach out and know exactly what to do and can still fail because it's not accessible to our brains and what we need. Yeah. Absolutely. So one of the reasons why I'm so excited for you to be on this podcast today is because you've seen so many different schools and you've gotten a chance to get a sense of the quality of special education programming across the Boston area, Massachusetts. And so within that you're gonna see a lot of different IEPs. And this is a literacy focused podcast. So if we zoom in onto the. Reading related IEPs that you support your clients to secure and to ensure that they're working for them. Would just love if you could summarize what are some of the green flags of a really strong IEP so that our listeners, if they have students or children who are seeking an IEP or they're not quite sure that it's meeting exactly what their kids' needs, I think those characteristics will be helpful to hear. Absolutely. And I will say my experience as a special educator working mainly at the high school level, I definitely supported students with dyslexia and different reading difficulties. I'm gonna speak more like holistically and would defer to the reading specialists that are listening and the reading specialists in the different teams to materialize some of the suggestions that I'll offer, but the biggest thing that's near and dear to my heart, two things. One is the language of an IEP. It's really important to me that IEPs are strength-based and that they're objective. I see so many IEPs that use a lot of qualifiers vary significantly. Or, they'll kind of say like, you know. A student can do this however, or a student can do this, but, and it's like, just tell me what the student can do objectively. What can they do? Don't give me any sort of qualifiers around that because it feels like you're not being disability respectful or strength-based. You're telling me, well, if they did this, then they could do that. Or what does vary mean? What does significantly mean? These like subjective words? So that's a personal preference. Making things as strength based and objective as possible is really important to me. Second thing is goals. Goals are probably the most important part of an IEP and what I would really wanna see for a green flag. Three components to the goal. The first part is called baseline. It used to be called current performance. So the old thing was current performance. Now it's called baseline. Then you have the annual goal, and then the third piece are the objectives or the benchmarks, the small steps to get you to that big annual goal. So when we think about what should be in the goals, this is the part where schools fail the most, is the baseline. They give me an anecdote about the student's reading abilities. They have strong comprehension, but they struggle with decoding or, you know, they're able to do this with teacher support. What the heck does that mean? Baseline should be as quantitative as possible. So if you have a goal that a student will be able to decode multi-syllabic words with 90% accuracy. I wanna see in the baseline the current accuracy level. So they should say, you know, the student can decode at 50%, because if we don't have a clear baseline starting point, there's no way for a parent or the school to measure true progress. I don't always like the physical comparisons, but when we have these invisible disabilities, it's helpful to think about body things. If you. Hurt your arm. I have bicep tendonitis. I'm going to physical therapy. The first thing you do at physical therapy is they assess your baseline. How many bicep curls can you do currently? Then you get like a midpoint check. Okay, great. I started with five bicep curls. The goal is eventually to be able to do 20. Then they measure your midpoint where you are. They measure your pain scale, and then you keep building till you get there. I don't know why as schools, it's so hard to just get that baseline data and put it in, and then from there you just want really uber specific objectives and goals. What would you want Parents overwhelmed by the whole idea of seeking out an evaluation to know. What I'm gonna say is this, it's a school's obligation to educate families. So that's first and foremost is that they should be. Theoretically getting education from the school. If that family is questioning about an evaluation, I would've already wanted that child to be in a pre-referral process like MTSS, multi TI Assessment Report or RTI, response to intervention. And that should be communicated to the family. So they know you're attempting interventions and truthfully, its. The onus is on the school really with IDEA under child find. They are responsible for finding and identifying. So I would wanna make sure families know that not to create adversarialness, but also to take the burden off of them to recognize. It really is the school's responsibility to know when an evaluation should take place. They don't always do that though, so you have to be vigilant. So I would say to educate yourself on the process and to either speak to an expert like yourself or an advocate or a trusted person in the district to ask like, when does an evaluation make sense? I will also say there's really no harm in requesting an evaluation. So if you're concerned. Make the request. Schools have to respond in five days. They're either gonna say yes or no. They have 30 days to test, and you have a meeting in 45 days. And then from the school's perspective, just have really strong RTI and MTSS. The MTSS is the multi-tiered system of support. So it's thinking about what as a school system are we developing as the tiers? What are our tier one, tier two, tier three interventions? The hope is that the tier one, which is the whole class instruction, hits as many of the growth needs and learning needs as possible for our student population. And we know that not every student learns the same way. And some will need a higher dosage of instruction. This is why I'm so thrilled that Massachusetts has. Implemented dyslexia screening requirements. These regular points where you're getting a litmus test of how the entire grade is doing, and then from there you can, do additional assessments and come up with those interventions. And then if more than 20% of your population of kids within a particular grade or school is below benchmark, then that often is an indication that the tier one or the general education instruction needs to be strengthened in some way. Because that's just a lot of kids in intervention and then it's watered down. They're not able to get the most precise supports for kids I think this is why so many families are requesting evaluations. Because they're just seeing their kids struggle. They don't see the big picture. But the best schools that I've worked with to support families or also consulting with schools have really strong MTSS and they have cut down on the amount of students evaluated and the amount of students with IEPs. MTSS information is so crucial to thinking about eligibility, but again, on the flip side, don't wanna deter families from requesting testing because you know your kid best. And if you are listening to your kid read aloud and you're concerned get the testing. Don't feel concerned about overburdening the school. They have to take the data and respond to it. They're required to do the testing at no cost. Of course, families can also privately do it. I do have a lot of families that will privately get an evaluation. Some is covered through insurance, some usually is out of pocket. Can be anywhere from two grand to five grand and they wanna go there first'cause they don't want the school to know, or they wanna keep it private or they'd rather have an unbiased opinion first. So that's also an avenue for a family, depending on insurance and different financial means. I've heard people say, and this is not my area of expertise, but they found that private evaluations are often more thorough. so I just actually had a conversation with a special ed director of a big district, and we were talking about this and he was telling me, he's like, I'm not gonna let my families buy IEPs. If they have a private eval, I'm not gonna take it. I'm gonna make sure we do our own testing first, because I'm not setting a precedent to create inequities around the families that can afford these expensive evals. I was like, dude, you can't do that. But I also appreciated this concern. There's all these reasons why schools say no, and one is precedent. So some families will have an opinion or a district policy or a concern around precedent with outside evals, and there are some private evals that I think aren't always unbiased. So yes, maybe it helps the family get what they want, but also maybe it's not truly what they need. However, I've worked with amazing neuropsychologists that are private, that do incredibly thorough reports. And if there's a kid that's like tricky, a neuropsych privately can be so helpful because the school's testing is comprehensive in their own way, but it's still very foundational. They usually do a couple of academic tests, one cognitive test, maybe some questionnaires, and that's it. Versus a private neuropsych is usually gonna use three or more different academic test scenarios. You don't always need it though, so I worry that families are getting told myths and going out of pocket when they could actually be spending that on an advocate. And the school's testing is sufficient. Yeah, so it depends on the case. With a dyslexia diagnosis, I would love to hear what a really solid IEP would be and I know that that will vary based on their age and even within students who are dyslexic. I was speaking to a parent recently who has an eighth grader who has just recently been diagnosed with dyslexia, and has really good grades and is actually scOrtong quite well on state tests. Their spelling, for example, is really, really weak, or writing is really weak. They will not read unless they absolutely have to. So they've developed some coping strategies clearly, or have a really strong knowledge base or really strong vocabulary, but there's different, needs. For dyslexia based on spectrum where you're at, but what are some great services you've seen in place for dyslexic readers? So I think first and foremost, back to that goals piece is you wanna make sure the entire team understands this particular profile of dyslexia because that's gonna determine the type of intervention. And what I'm learning is. Do we know Orton Gillingham and Wilson are the evidence-based cream of the crop services? Yes. Do I wanna see multi-sensory evidence-based reading instruction on an IEP for a kid with dyslexia? Yes, but I'm learning that there's actually some other different types of reading intervention for different types of dyslexia that a lot of schools aren't trained on. So I think, you just wanna make sure you're clear on the profile and that the program you're using is evidence-based for those skill deficits. And then from there and I don't want it to seem like foundational or basic, but schools have a very hard time following very basic processes. The person providing that service is trained in whatever you agreed you need. And then of course, back to the goals piece, if the goals are really specific then you wanna see progress over time in those progress reports. And if the progress reports are getting are not showing progress, you reconvene the team to evaluate. Something else I think is so crucial is, ideally that a child isn't pulled out of tier one ELA instruction to receive intervention. There may be very rare circumstances where the disability is so severe with reading that it's just inappropriate to provide them with grade level access. That's rarely the case. And so really thinking strategically about when kids can miss or when they should miss and when they should be exposed to grade level text. So are there situations where based on all of the data presented, that the schools approach to providing services is actually the right approach and maybe the parent or caregiver may need to change their perspective or approach in order to do right by their kids. Yeah. What I found is the root cause of why these conversations are happening is that the IEP meeting is vague and there's all the red flags. We talked about green flags, but like the red flags, like lack of transparency. It feels like there's secrets. Teachers are talking about times that they've met without the parent or if they're not answering our questions, there's again, lack of clarity or vagueness. So the most important thing that I always try to do with families is use the IEP meeting to completely understand everyone's perspective. The goal is not to get what you want and to advocate exactly for what you're asking for. Yes, we need to do that. We'll put it in writing. We'll let them know our position. But oftentimes it'll change at the end of the meeting'cause you hear and you learn. So the goal for an IEP meeting is to understand everyone's perspective and build some trust. So that's the very first thing. Now, if a school's done something to break that trust, I have a lot more work that I have to do behind the scenes to rebuild. So that's what I'm doing behind the scenes to say we need to compartmentalize. They made mistakes. They broke our trust. But let's talk about the content and where they're coming from and keep it student centered, focused on the data. Here's what we heard, here's what they're recommending. Think about it. I think the other thing is families feel like an IEP meetings they have to make a decision. They don't have to make any decisions In an IEP meeting ever, for the most part. Someone who's listening as an advocate, email me if I'm wrong on that. But you know, schools make a proposal. We talk, parents make a proposal, we talk. Ultimately, the school will make a final determination. But it's families, right? They have 30 days to sign the id. So you have time to really think it over, get a second opinion, look back at the data, look back at your notes, talk to the student, talk to the teachers, make a decision. So hopefully the goal is they understand the school's perspective. If not, we're coming back to the data. We're trying to rebuild that trust. If we need to meet again, we meet again and we just rinse and repeat. And do parents mostly get you involved when they're feeling like they're not being heard? Or do you enter at all parts of the process just based on the situation? So yes, I enter all parts of the process. My favorite is when I get a preschool client because I'm like, great, it's a blank slate. They've never met the special ed team. I have two of those clients and they're my favorite clients. I'm not supposed to have favorites, but it's because it's like this blank slate. And we can start from the very beginning, relationship and content with a quality IEP. I get, I have a senior. I have everybody. So I either get called'cause they're like, I just want a second opinion, or I'm advocating for this specific thing, or my kid's failing or the IEP is not working. Or I think they need this or I think they need that. More times than not it's'cause there's lack of trust or the kid's not making progress. So unfortunately, that's the majority of the time I get called. Can you talk about a time when you positively navigated a really thorny situation with a school. I think the biggest thing that we try to instill at Lotus is creative collaboration. So oftentimes we're at an IEP meeting and disagreeing, or the district's being a stickler about something because this is how we've always done it, right? So teams that are unwilling to. Look outside the box and like when we're able to again, build that trust and keep it student centered. If you can let the school district know you've been there, you understand lack of resources, maybe there's something that already exists that would be better. So can we slowly just like peel away our box mentality? I think that's. Generally speaking, when I've had most success, just some specific examples, I've had families reach out and say my child needs an OUTTA district placement. They're not making progress. And families and schools don't really think about what alternative ways can you creatively support if your particular program doesn't quite fit the student. If a district has a reading specialist on staff and they wanna utilize them and pay them, great. You can pay for additional afterschool tutoring, which is a quarter of the price if that of an out of district program. Right. Or you're creatively working with a school district to change or update the program? We've had to advocate a lot with a lot of my clients for a co-taught model. They'll often be like, oh, they get their reading services. C grid, which is the pullout services, but they're really struggling to generalize. And so what do you do when they're in English class? They're alone now and they don't have any support and they're not practicing OG anymore when they're in English. So really working with the school district to build better programming that actually has a special education teacher in ELA class. And that becomes part of the program. And again, these are all measures that school districts can take. Not that we wanna phrase it this way, but to avoid. Paying for Landmark and other OUTTA district schools. So the best results have been when you can peel away the red tape and get districts to creatively work together, think about the resources that already exist, and then use different corrective measures if you need to go above and beyond what the districts offering. So thinking about tutoring can be a great supplement to advocate for if the district's exhausted everything and it doesn't work. And we've had some good successes. do you ever have families who are like, Ugh, bringing an advocate? I'm like worried that's gonna feel like confrontational and will up the ante too much. Yeah, absolutely. It's really important to me that I'm not described as adversarial. I was just in a meeting where someone said that for the first time in my six years and was not expecting it, and he completely apologized and we had a conversation afterward to just reset and we were able to move forward. I am very clear with families that wanna work with me, that that is not my style. I understand the school districts, I understand families and my goal is to bridge the gap. I hate using the word pitbull'cause I have a pit bull and I love my dog and she's the cutest thing in the world, but we always use this in the world of advocacy. I'm just not a pit bull. And there are advocates out there that are needed and that works for some families. But my goal is bridging and understanding and really thinking and working together. And so that's what I would always ask my family clients to do is let's be open-minded. Let's listen. Let's state our concerns clearly, right? I still bite when I need to. There's a lot of different strategies and approaches. Mine is to be curious, to ask questions, to assume the best, to really come in understanding it's an unfair system, and we're in this together. I like to describe IEP meetings as like a think tank and disagreements can happen outside of the process. And then, I can coach families on that. So if you are a parent shopping for an advocate, just make sure it fits with your style and you'll know by having a call with them or reading their website, what their style is and what you're looking for. You might need a pit bull. You might want someone more middle of the road, or you might want someone that feels more like a. Kumbaya best friend. So there's a spectrum. I call it like the spectrum of spicy. Yeah. So we're like medium. So if you want mild or spicy, you can find us. And the core of it all is what's best for kids. And so if you need to bite, sometimes it's just in the name of that child and to ensure that they're getting what they're worthy of as children. If people want to find out more about you, how do they get in touch with you? You can go to our website, lotus advocacy.com. There's a contact button. It'll go right to me. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn. Feel free to go there. My number's on the website too, so people can text or call. And we would just, schedule a call to see if we think we'd be a good fit and talk about what you need. And then move forward if it felt like a good fit. So if you wanted to leave our listeners with one or two closing thoughts. Specificity. Anyone should be able to pick up an IEP and know how to implement it. So if you have a question about something on there and accommodation, a goal of service, get it clarified at the team level. Be curious, utilize and exercise your rights. If that means going to a supervisor, if that means getting a second opinion, if it means requesting something like mediation, there are corrective measures that you can take. While still being curious and understanding where the school is coming from. So don't be shy to exercise your rights, but really ensure that you have a clear picture of the school's perspective. Ask as many questions as you need to until you are clear on what they're proposing. Why? If there rejecting something, make sure you know why. That way you know how to respond and react. You are the best. You are a gift to our field and I'm glad to know you as a friend as well. So thank you for coming on. Thank you, Katie. Yes, of course. Likewise. Thank you so much for listening to the Reading Symphony Podcast. My hope is that each episode leaves you with more clarity about what actually helps children become skilled, joyful readers. If today's conversation was helpful, I'd be so grateful if you would follow the show. Leave a quick five star rating or review and share this episode with a friend or teacher or another parent who cares deeply about kids. Those small actions make a big difference in helping this work reach more families. You can also find resources, deep dives and practical tools for families by subscribing to my free weekly substack newsletter at katiemegrian.substack.com And you can connect with me on Instagram thereadingsymphony Until next time, take care. And remember, reading doesn't happen by accident. It develops when the right parts come together.