Melissa Chiplis, a special education coordinator, used the PROGRESS Center’s Looking for Connections: Ensuring the Parts of the IEP Work Together activity to build staff capacity in creating strong individualized education programs (IEPs) that are driven by the needs outlined in the present levels of academic achievement and functional performance (PLAAFP) statement. The activity asks educators to analyze the alignment between the students’ needs and the proposed services and goals within the IEP.
Chiplis, a PROGRESS Educator in Residence, said, “We used the activity to look closely at the present levels of academic achievement and functional performance [PLAAFP] statement to develop our goals and then connected those with the services that the students receive to ultimately create the least restrictive environment.”
Chiplis used the activity with approximately 60 educators during a professional development day. She held two, 2-hour sessions—one session for elementary educators and one session for secondary educators. This allowed her to tailor the activity to the specific contexts of the different age levels. To increase the educators’ engagement, she first modeled an example, then had them work together as a large group, and finally had them work in small groups. This structure gave educators dedicated time to be reflective within the activity and consider the implications for their own IEP development.
Rather than use the district’s own IEPs, Chiplis used samples.
“I think they enjoyed ripping apart someone else’s IEP, and saying, ‘There’s no way that they could have had this goal for that, because there wasn’t enough information,’ or ‘The student should have never been removed from the classroom because they hadn’t done this first,’” Chiplis said. “They were able to dig deeper because it was a sample IEP; no one in the room was feeling vulnerable. It was a very safe environment.”
Having first used sample IEPs to look for the connections, the participating educators can apply these skills, discussions, and ideas to their daily work.
To maintain the momentum from the professional learning, Chiplis worked monthly with the instructional leads from each of the school buildings. Chiplis shared, “We talked about keeping the momentum going by using what they learned from Looking for Connections to talk about the different students and the challenges that they have, so that they can put together quality IEPs for students.”
If you would like to learn more about using this activity to support the development of internally consistent IEPs, please connect with us at progresscenter@air.org.
Melissa Chiplis has been serving students with disabilities for over 25 years. As a classroom teacher, she worked with students with developmental delays, specific learning disabilities, emotional and behavioral disabilities, and autism in the public school setting and a private residential treatment center. Melissa also served as a lead teacher and liaison between school-based administration and the special education department, as a chairperson for the RTI and MTSS teams, and as a PBIS team member. For the past 13 years, Melissa has worked in special education administration as an instructional specialist and a coordinator of special education services. As a coordinator of special education services, Melissa supports LEA reporting and compliance with state performance indicators, special education programming, and parent engagement. Melissa Chiplis is a doctoral student at the University of South Carolina pursuing a Ph.D. in Special Education Leadership.