Meet Izzy! Izzy is a 9-year-old girl who is about to enter 4th grade as a new student at Cedar Creek Elementary. Izzy loves reading and writing, but she struggles in the classroom at her current school due to lack of services for her visual impairment. Izzy benefits from receiving any support that helps her to be able to see texts and images better. However, her old school would only give her a portable magnifier for reading texts, which didn't allow Izzy to have access to everything in the classroom.

Izzy and her family are moving from the city of Nashville to a rural town called Cedar Creek. Along with the move, Izzy is transferring from a private school to a public school. 

Izzy is nervous about the move, but her parents are excited because they've heard wonderful things about Cedar Creek Elementary's Special Education program. Izzy's mom, Mia, wanted Izzy to go to a public school so that she could exercise her right to a Free and Appropriate Public Education. Izzy's old school offered many services to help Izzy with her academics, but her parents knew she didn't receive all of the help she truly needed.

On the first day of school, Izzy and her parents were introduced to her teacher, Mr. Kilgore, and the Special Education teacher, Mrs. Luna and they had a meeting. After Mia expressed her concerns for Izzy, Mrs. Luna explained that her and Mr. Kilgore will closely monitor Izzy's performance in the class for the first couple of weeks to get an appropriate evaluation of Izzy in the classroom. 

Izzy's Evaluation

- trouble with small text

-struggles with seeing shapes 

and colors in back of the 

room

-struggles with seeing videos

After monitoring Izzy's progress in the classroom over the course of 2 weeks, Mrs. Luna and Mr. Kilgore decided it was time to have another meeting with Izzy's parents to discuss creating an IEP for Izzy. Izzy has never had an IEP before since she was previously in a private school, so they were thrilled to be able to collaborate on accommodations the school will put in place for their daughter. Mrs. Luna explained that an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is an official document that is put into place for a student with a disability with the purpose of providing services for the student to help them succeed to their full potential.

IEP

What is this?

While going over the components of an IEP and collaborating over the services that will be provided to Izzy, Mia was concerned about the section titled 'Least Restrictive Environment'. She thought this meant that Izzy would miss out on a lot of time in the classroom alongside potential collaboration and interaction opportunities with her peers.