Ebb and Flow – Preparing to Change Paths

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For me, 2023 has been a year of finally and fully reclaiming my own power. Part of that process has included reflecting on where I am in my personal and professional lives, where I want to be in the next 3-5 years, and then preparing beyond that.

Since 2015 or so, I have toyed with the idea of law school, with the intention of specializing in special education law. I love being a pediatric speech-language pathologist. I love working in home health and have no intention of stopping in the next 3-5 years. But, I acknowledge, I’m not going to want to sit on the floor in 20 years. (I do plan on being able to get up and down off the floor, however!)

In my community, the local school district is widely acknowledged as not the best. Families of children who are typically developing routinely seek out private or charter schools for their children’s K-12 education. If I had a child enrolled in this district, I would to. High school students talk about having to sit or stand around the edges of the classroom because there are not enough chairs with 30+ students in each class. The state’s flagship universities have to provide remedial math and English courses for college freshmen because public high school graduates are not prepared to learn at the pace in today’s higher education classrooms.

For parents of children with special needs, the situation is even worse. For most of the families I work with, private or charter schools are not an option because my clients need more support than an hour or two in resource and/or contracted SLPs or COTAs who provide 20-240 minutes of therapy services every month. These families are stuck with speech therapists who tell them that all incoming non-verbal kindergarten students get the same non-SGD intervention when they arrive at the school door. These families are stuck with “Ken” special education teachers and IEP/MDT teams who tell a family, “it’s autism, or he doesn’t get an IEP.” In Fall 2023, four different families who live in different parts of the area were told they didn’t need to schedule an IEP meeting when they requested one; their concerns could be handled through a staff meeting. It took every one of these families multiple requests in writing and flat out stating they were invoking their parental rights to be able to schedule an IEP meeting.

These are just some of the situations I’ve coached families through in the last three years. If it’s this widespread among the handful of families I work with clinically, these things very likely happen every single day to most families with children with special needs. To me, it’s a systemic problem.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

There are families who ask for things that are unreasonable (e.g., one parent who asked for 400 minutes of speech-language services per week [~80 minutes/day] for their 14 year old, non-verbal child with severe autism.) There are families who ask for private-level services in a one-on-one setting for therapy (that generally just can’t happen with the numbers of children who have to be provided with therapy). There are families who ask for things that are outside of the scope of the school/school district (e.g., help with behavior at home, etc.) But, that’s not what the families I work with are or were asking for. These families were asking for the MDT/IEP team to take their child’s developmental history into account, or to make sure their non-verbal child had access to the same communication system they have at home, or to have an IEP meeting with the child’s new team to address reports of escalating behavior in the classroom.

I’ve decided to start an online law school program in January 2024. It’s self-paced and generally takes people who finish the degree program between 3 1/2 – 4 years to complete. Eventually, what I’d like to do is clerk for a law firm that specializes in special education law. I have a Ph.D. Clearly, I learned a long time ago how to read things that are complex and boring to most people. I know how to research topics, analyze data, and summarize and compose an argument that aligns with the data I have before me. And, I think I write pretty well. This ebb and flow in my career path also means I can continue my advocacy work with and for families of children with special needs from a cushy adult-sized office chair.

As always, thank you for reading!