Victoria Ballew
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The Others
Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. Fairies dipping and diving while they spread their magical lights and light up the sky. It had been this way since The Awakening. Ronia stood in the window of her studio apartment where she lived with her beloved Jax, the orange and white tabby cat she had rescued last year from the dumpster behind her apartment. She had chosen this apartment mostly because it was cheap but also because the window gave her a clear view of the sky. She loved gazing at the night sky and watching the fairies dip and dive while they played in the moonlight. Ronia couldn’t imagine growing up without watching the fairies like her grandmother had. Her Mimi had been a teenager when it happened.
By Victoria Ballew3 years ago in Fiction
Closing The Gap
Picture yourself sitting in an IEP meeting and the team is discussing services for a student. Let’s say the student has a Specific Learning Disability in Reading Comprehension and Basic Reading Skills. As the team moves into discussing services, the district proposes 60 minutes a day for specialized instruction (For some reason, 30 minutes per area has become a “magic” number). They further propose the services be conducted in the special education setting, i.e., outside the regular education classroom. You may be saying to yourself, “That sounds reasonable”. I say it isn’t and here is why….
By Victoria Ballew5 years ago in Education
When Meetings Go Bad
When you’ve sat through hundreds, if not thousands, of difficult and emotional meetings, you start to see patterns in ways that meetings can turn sour and be unproductive. The other day, someone asked me my thoughts on the top reasons meetings go south. When I started making the list, I went back through my many years in education. I remembered in vivid detail some of the moments I knew we were headed in the wrong direction and down the proverbial “rabbit hole”. Meetings, whether they are about IEPs or behavior plans, or professional collaboration, get emotional when people are discussing things like children. Combine that with professional or parenting self-esteem and you have a perfect storm brewing. Therefore, my list and examples show how an already brewing storm can become a full-blown disaster in a matter of seconds.
By Victoria Ballew5 years ago in Humans
Do You Hear What I Hear?
When sitting in IEP and 504 meetings there are certain comments/phrases that can and are interpreted as negative. Some could also be interpreted as violations of Part B of IDEA or Section 504. So, when I hear administrators or teachers make certain comments, I wonder if they realize what the other party is hearing. Likewise, as parents, do you know what they are thinking when you say certain things? Below are a few of the common ones I hear and how they are often heard or interpreted:
By Victoria Ballew5 years ago in Education
