Sharing Ways Of Collaborating With School For Special Needs

Collaboration is a process where by two or more parties(which may or may not have any previous relationship) work joinly towards a common goal. Common goal essentially refers to the child progress.


Collaboration is already important in our normal day to day work and even more so in the field of SPED, as doing it right, right for the first time will lead to successful outcome in on going positive relationship with the SpEd Team & helps maximizing strength of each individual within the Team, ensure on going problem solving, efficient use of time and most importantly to maximize progress of our child.


Apparently, collaboration with school does not normally come easy as there remain some potential challenges such as sacrifice of personal time, school staff time, resistance and defensiveness from others such as in the way things are done and that they have tried but invain etc..Mistrust due to lack of mutual understanding or effective communication skill.

All these potential challenges can be manage and reduce if we can practise collaboration through the following ways which I have experience and will continue to explore them in the future where possible:-

1) Provide information

Overview of the child, montage or video clip in his daily life, home practises and on going updates or changes in therapies etc. I am glad that I have played this part right from the beginning until now and sure is a blessing to share, build trust and understanding without any expectation in return from teacher as this walk is about relationship with the child, any effort to enhance or elevate this speed of development will go a long way to the child progress within ther SpEd Team.

2) Seek information about class activities and child's day, establish relationship with teachers with regular positive communication/feedback, empower ourselves to offer assistant and also ask for one when we need one.

3) Share data, verified, evaluate and feedback regularly to establish mutual goals in maximizing the learning potential of the child.


4) Compromise without sacrifice the quality of intervention by being open and clear about expectations and prioritize them accordingly to the importance of the child learning needs agree upon.


5) Be proactive and take steps not to let concerns build up, request feedback or seek opportunity to meet up.


Our collaborative effort can be made easy if school is able to exploit the use of modern technology in communication, which can help print less paper & save more trees. We may have e-Lesson plan send to parents via email notification the moment teacher submit through the system in school. Parents can be authorized through login/password protection to input/retreive individual child's e-Lesson plan or shared data via school website or even post improvement suggestion/thank you message for any spontaneous recognition to teachers who have gone extra miles in making positive impact to any child's progress/development. This may also improve the parents-teachers interaction.

Winners Statement:-

It isn't easy enough to talk about peace, one must believe it. And it isn't enough to believe in it, one must work for it.