School Story
Principal Lee:
Role Confusion and Disconnection
At Green Valley Elementary, Principal Lee begins to notice that the roles of special educators are often unclear and misunderstood among staff, including the teachers themselves. Instead of collaborating as equally important members of students’ IEP teams, special educators at Green Valley often assume full responsibility for meeting the needs of students with disabilities. They work independently to modify lessons and ensure that students receive their appropriate accommodations and modifications, with seamless integration, throughout the school day.
Despite Principal Lee’s efforts to establish a collaborative culture for her staff, these silos leave Green Valley special educators feeling as if their expertise in components of special education, such as specially designed instruction (SDI), are unrecognized and underutilized. When asked about confusion related to staff roles and responsibilities supporting students with disabilities, general educators share that they feel unclear about how to best meet the needs of students with disabilities and don't understand their individual responsibilities under IDEA.
Moreover, special educators indicate that their roles often change depending on students’ needs and instructional settings, which causes their days to look and feel less predictable. For example, in some settings, special educators take on more direct instructional roles, whereas in others, they focus on providing support and resources to general educators. This ambiguity leaves general and special educators unclear on how to collaborate effectively, resulting in a fragmented approach to meeting the needs of students with disabilities within a least restrictive environment.
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Principal Actions
Determined to address these challenges, Principal Lee clarifies the role of all staff in supporting students with disabilities by creating job descriptions that clearly define their expectations for implementing students’ IEPs. To encourage staff to exceed these expectations, Principal Lee begins using recognition and reward systems that acknowledge teachers who go above and beyond in supporting students with disabilities.
She checks in regularly with staff to understand their preferred modes of recognition and collaborates with district office staff to provide financial rewards, to the extent possible. Principal Lee continuously supports general and special educators by providing protected time for collaboration and helping them create meeting agendas that allow for individualized, data-driven discussions that focus on student learning outcomes.
To further support collaboration, Principal Lee establishes a community of practice (CoP) model for ongoing professional learning and mentorship. Through this CoP model, special and general educators at each grade level identify and address common problems of practice related to services for students with disabilities. Principal Lee partners with district leadership to allocate IDEA funds toward supporting this collaboration. Through this collaborative practice, Principal Lee also sets clearer expectations for IEP development and implementation, including progress monitoring data collection and analysis, and allocates learning resources focused on understanding how to implement IDEA.
Finally, Principal Lee works with her district office to reallocate budget funds to create teacher leadership roles for experienced special educators. She distributes administrative responsibilities to these experienced teachers and tasks them with providing on-the-job coaching and mentorship to newer general and special educators. By implementing these solutions, Principal Lee improves role clarity among educators, ensuring that they understand their responsibilities in supporting students with disabilities and implementing IDEA.
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Toolkit
Clarifying Roles and Creating Belonging
Explore strategies that research and best practices highlight, along with short, medium, and long-term solutions, essential to clarify both general and special educators' role.