Parental Involvement in Special Education

 Importance of Parental Involvement in Special Education:

Parental involvement in special education is tremendously important. It is beneficial to help the child reach their educational goals. An important part that parents need to be involved in is the child's Individual Education Plan (IEP) team. The IEP team's role is to express the needs and form educational goals for an individual child. Parents know their children the best and know what type of support their child needs. Another great thing about parental involvement in the IEP team is that they can advocate their own goals they would like to see their child succeed at. Parents can also help a teacher with the case history of their child. They can identify what techniques work best for their child and which ones do not work the best. An additional thing is that parental involvement can help parents incorporate techniques that the child has learned at school and practice them at home. 

My Beliefs/Experience:

Mother and son with disability sharing
a loving moment or touching
foreheads

I completely agree that parents need to be involved in their children's education, especially special education. It is empowering to the children to see their parents involved in seeing them succeed. From experience, it can make any child lose motivation for schooling when they feel their parents do not care. A parent's involvement is one of the most important things to a child. I believe that parental involvement has many benefits when it comes to education. In a special education classroom, it can be extremely difficult to completely understand and gain the trust of a child. With the help of parents, they can give teachers great and very helpful information in order to assess their children to the best of their ability. The sharing of information can be beneficial to parents too. Teachers can share milestones and challenges with the parents and they can also work with those milestones and challenges at home on their own. A child can feel more comfortable at home with their parents and may be open to trying new things. In conclusion, I feel parental involvement is not only helpful to the child but to the teacher and the parents themselves.