Ch. 4 - Creating Collaborative Relationships and Fostering Communication

- Comprehensive planning teams engage in a wraparound process, a student and family focused process for collaboratively designing individualized, culturally sensitive, school and community based educational, counseling, medical, and vocational services for students and their families. Teams include
o Family members – provide information on the students adaptive behavior and history
o Administrators –coordinate meeting, in charge of delivering services.
Ensures legal guidelines of due process and confidentiality are followed.
o General educators – can identity strengths and weaknesses of the student of well
as the effectiveness of specific teaching methods
o Special educators – provides information on the student’s skills and responses
to different techniques and materials
o Paraeducators – identifies instructional strategies and goals for the
educational programs
o School psychologists, Speech and language clinicians, social workers,
counselors, vocational educators, school nurses, physical and occupational
therapists, community agencies, ESL or bilingual educators
- For affective collaboration, all members need to work towards a common goal, are held accountable, share their expertise and perceptions. Understand their role and the roles of others.
- Co-teaching – one teaching/one helping, parallel teaching, station teaching, alternative teaching, and team teaching
o Difficulties of team teaching: lack of time to plan and implement programs, no
administrative supports, limited resources, unclear roles, resistance from
colleagues, and increased responsibilities.
- Collaborative consultation –working together to solve problems and implement solutions to prevent and address learning and behavioral difficulties and to coordinate instructional problems for all students. Gives general ed teachers improved knowledge and skills through working with a consultant, an experiences specialist. The steps involved are:
o Clarifying and identifying the goals and problems, observing and asking
questions, focus on one problem at a time
o Analyzing the features related to the goals and problems, planning an
appropriate intervention strategy
o Implementing the plan – outline in detail and determine responsibilities and
time lines
o Evaluating the plan – checking the effectiveness periodically, getting feedback
- Congruence – making sure there is a logical relationship among the curriculum, learning goals, teaching materials, strategies used in the general classroom and in supportive services. Based on common assessment results, goals, and objectives
- Communicate and collaborate with families
o Gain trust – offer a broad range of flexible, usable, and understandable
services addressing a variety of needs. Interact in a variety of settings, in
the community, and respect cultural values
o Advocate for students and their families – communicating with others and
participating in committees that influence decision making, join professional
organizations
o Resolve conflicts constructively – avoid miscommunication, recognize differing
views on educational matters and identify the factors that might explain their
perspectives. Commit to what is best for the student.
o Address the diverse needs, background, and experiences of families
o Offer open houses, orientation sessions, and workshops on specific issues to
educate families. Allow them to access information at their convenience and
select material that is useful to them.

Resources
Collaboration Between General and Special Education: Making it Work. NCSET

The continuing trouble with collaboration: Teachers talk. Current Issues in Education

The Access Center Strategies to Improve Access to the General Education Curriculum.