Students Should Know What’s in Their IEPs

If you work in special education, then you have likely worked on an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). IEPs are plans developed to ensure that students…

5 Steps to Help Students With Special Needs Make a Smooth Transition to In-Person Learning

With the end of the pandemic in sight and some communities already reopening, it is time to understand what it will take for special education…

Teachers Are Working So Hard This Year, But Students With Disabilities Need More

I am a special education teacher with 17 years of experience in the classroom and a parent of two children with dyslexia. Recently, I learned…

As a Mom of a Son With Multiple Disabilities, I Have the Receipts on Remote Instruction

Here at brightbeam, our North Star is “How Are The Children?” As parents look back over the last nine months of COVID-related school disruptions and…

I’m Glad To Be Back in the Classroom. My Students Need Me.

November 12th was our first day of school in-person since March of last year. On my drive to school, I was excited and grateful—thinking about…

We Need a Cooperative Approach to Improve Education for Students With Disabilities

Ten years ago last month, a team of advocacy organizations filed the New Orleans special education lawsuit (P.B. v. White) in federal court. The class-action…

I Thought Vouchers Were Wrong, But Now I Realize They Helped My Son

Recently I wrote that a residency hearing with two children, Kayla and Tasha, represented to me our deeply-embedded structural inequities in education that decades of initiatives,…

How I’m Helping My Child With Special Needs Navigate Remote Learning

My children always start school two weeks before everyone else. So after two weeks of e-learning—or what I am calling two-weeks “in the trenches”—I feel…

Our Students Have Strong Emotions Right Now, And That’s Not a Disability

When a local newspaper featured a picture of one of our students at a peaceful protest against police brutality, the staff at the small special…

My Son Cracked the Code in an Atypical Way With a Focus on Phonics

When my three older children learned to read, it seemed to us as natural a process as learning to talk. We read to them every…