Week 4: Attending Your First Annual Review Meetings as a Fieldwork Student

As a fieldwork student in school-based practice, you will attend many annual review meetings over the course of your twelve weeks. There is a good chance that most of these meetings will be annual review meetings for students on your caseload. You can learn a lot about the flow of IEP meetings in general when you attend an annual review.

As a fieldwork educator, I like to give my Level 2 students an outline of what to look for, what to listen for, and what information to write down during annual review meetings. As you attend more and more meetings, you will become accustomed to the basic format of the meetings, the attendees, and the documentation required within each student's IEP.

Here are some suggestions and questions to guide your learning as you attend your first few annual review meetings as a fieldwork student:

• Who are the team members present at the annual review meeting (parents, special education teacher, general education teacher, case manager, school psychologist, speech therapist, OT, PT, learning disabled teaching consultant/LDTC)?

• Who led the meeting (typically this is the case manager)? Outside of being the case manager, what other role does this person have with the student?

• As you listen to each professional team member review their portions of the the IEP with the parents and the team, jot down some quick notes about the student from each discipline's professional lens. What do they see as the student's strengths and challenges? What types of activities are they using with the student?

• Parent Report: Law dictates that parents are part of the IEP team. Listen closely to what parents and caregivers have to say about their child. You can learn much from them that can help you in treating their child. Additionally, you may be able to help them on the spot with specific concerns they have at that moment. Connect with parents by listening well and being present in the moment.

• What are the current recommendations made by the team in the IEP draft document? What is the student's classification and projected educational program? What related services and frequencies are recommended? Are there any updates to the student's medical status, diagnoses, or special alerts?

• Based on the recommendations and team discussions, are there any new areas of function in which OT could support the student in broader school contexts?

Listening, observing, and recording of information are skills that will help to familiarize you with the meeting process, understand roles of team members, and connect with families. This is an essential learning process for you as a fieldwork student, and will continue to be part of the job if you ever go into school based OT practice in your future career!

This post concludes the 4-week Fieldwork Friday series this November. Hopefully the information covered in these posts are helpful to any OT students who are already in, or are thinking about a school-based fieldwork experience!