Don’t Forget Added Safety Measures in the Student’s Plan

New research confirms what I’ve been saying for years: students with ADHD are twice as likely to be injured as their non-ADHD peers and they are likely to experience more serious injuries.

So where in your student’s 504 Plan or IEP has the school team addressed any safety concerns?

See the article on this site on ADHD and safety, if you haven’t read it already.

Don’t forget Executive Dysfunction Goals in the IEP!

It’s annual review time in many school districts throughout the U.S. And while many states now have computerized systems for generating Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), the programs are often sorely lacking in addressing the many kinds of deficits students with Executive Dysfunction (EDF) experience.

Remembering that our goal is to prepare the student for independent functioning post-school, it is not enough to lend them our frontal lobes to chunk their work or to prioritize it for them. We need to teach them how to generate prioritized to-do lists, how to monitor their progress towards a goal, how to pace themselves, how to plan, how to sequence, how to organize their materials, time, and space, etc.

It’s a lot. And we need to ensure that we have goals for each deficit area. So here are some terrific resources to help you formulate goals, objectives, and accommodations for students with EDF:

Tigers, Too: Checklists for Classroom Objectives and Interventions (Dornbush & Pruitt, Parkaire Press, 2010). Tigers, Too Checklists provides an easy format to identify necessary and appropriate goals for the student. The book is a supplement to Tigers, Too: Executive Functions/Speed of Processing/Memory – Impact on academic, behavioral, and social functioning of students with ADHD, Tourette syndrome, and OCD: Modifications and Interventions by the same authors (2009).

 

Need some accommodation ideas for students with EDF in a convenient format organized by issue? See my book, Find a Way or Make a Way: Checklists of Helpful Accommodations for Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Executive Dysfunction, Mood Disorders, Tourette’s Syndrome, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Other Neurological Challenges (Packer, Parkaire Press, 2009). This book contains some of the great classroom accommodation ideas that are explained in more detail in Challenging Kids, Challenged Teachers (Packer & Pruitt, 2010).

Teen suicide: More schools bring issue out of shadows

A news report by John Keilman shows how some schools are trying to reduce teen suicide by increasing awareness about it and screening students:

The paper handed to each freshman at Oak Lawn Community High School recently was filled with blunt and uncomfortable questions. Had they lost interest in everything? Did they feel they weren’t as smart or good-looking as most other people? Were they thinking about killing themselves?

A squad of counselors stood by to interview those who, based on their answers, might have been struggling with depression or contemplating suicide. By the end of the day, more than 50 teenagers had come to see them.

Read the full article in the L.A. Times. As the article makes clear, it is not clear whether this type of initiative is really effective in reducing the suicide rate and there are significant privacy concerns to consider that require allowing students or their parents to elect not to participate.

That said, and as uncomfortable as it may be, I am generally in strong favor of teaching students about teen depressions, its signs, and what to do if they feel that they are depressed or that a friend is depressed.

If your teen’s school hasn’t provided information, feel free to download these 2001 handouts for teens from the National Institute of Mental Health: Let’s Talk About Depression. The articles are in the public domain and you can reproduce them and share them with others or use them in class to start a discussion.

Guide on Bipolar Disorder

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) released a Parents’ Medication Guide for Bipolar Disorder in Children & Adolescents (pdf). This free guide contains more than just medication information, however, and is a good resource for parents and educators.

As a comment: parents who are somewhat familiar with federal education law may be surprised to read the guide’s statement that students with Bipolar Disorder may qualify for special education under the category Emotional Disturbance. The Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice provides the federal definition of that educational disability category and discusses the differences in state laws as to how that category is defined.