Terrilyn H.

Ladd
AT Department Lead Teacher/2 years
Activity: Chaired the Student Support Team Process (A. b.)


It is hard to believe that the nearly 100 year old school in which I worked did not have a solid process for
referring students for the Student Support Team (or SST). The SST process is usually the first stop a student makes
before being referred for testing to determine if a student is eligible to receive special education services. However,
when I began working at the small school (150 students) about five years ago, teachers and parents were used just
asking that testing be completed. And when the parents and teachers wanted their students tested for
speech/language or any other disability area, they were assessed. When I arrived at the school, there were several
students on a list to be assessed. Some students were being placed in special programs, some were found as not
eligible but still required some type of support, and even some parents were not sure that they wanted their students
tested even though there were some apparent academic weaknesses.
The problem was that there was no defined process to keep track of support provided to the students nor
was there a formal process to handle referrals for assessments to determine eligibility for special education. That is
where I came in. I was seeing the students on my caseload and many other parents felt that their children would be
just fine if they could just have speech classes. I was becoming overwhelmed and we had to have a process to help
our Special Education Department in the school keep things straight (as the RTI process was not clearly defined yet
either).
When a parent or teacher wanted to refer a student for the SST process, the name of the student was given
to me by the teacher and I gave the teacher forms to complete that included forms for the parent. I had to notify the
parent (and invite the parent to a meeting although they did not have to attend) that their student would be discussed
in a SST meeting. The SST team (the SLP me, school psychologist, teacher, special educator, parent, principal)
would meet to discuss the referred student and develop strategies to help the student in the classroom. Those
strategies were be tried for a certain amount of time and the SST would meet together again to determine if the
student is progressing well or if the student needed to be referred for testing. I was in charge of coordinating and
scheduling the meetings with the SST team, and I kept each referral packet in a file.
What went well?
The special educator who had been at the school for over 20 years retired suddenly because of health
related concerns. That meant that I became the veteran (since I had been there 3 years) and would chair this
apparently new process. The good thing was that I had an awesome team with which to work. The school
psychologist was knowledgeable about the SST referral process and always had tons of strategies to share. The new
special educator, although she was new to the teaching profession, was the most conscientious person I had ever
worked with and she genuinely cared about the students. We worked well together and coordinated an almost
flawless process for helping the students once all the kinks were worked out.
What did not work well?
The most difficult part of the entire process was perhaps coordinating a schedule to meet on the students. I
was only at the school for 2 days a week, the psychologist was there for one day, and the special ed. teacher was
new to the profession and the school. The ones that knew the most about the process (the school psychologist and I)
were not at the school nearly as much as seemed necessary when implementing a new program. It was not easy to
serve the students already enrolled in the Exceptional Education program and find time refer, meet and assess those
that required support beyond what was being offered in the classroom. Although it was a small school, it was a very
busy little school. There seemed to never be enough time in the day or week when we could all get together.
Additionally, by some standards, our SST team just did not move fast enough.
If I could do it over again, what would I do differently?
The only thing that I would change if I could, would be the time it took to get the process started. Time (or
lack thereof) seemed to be the major factor in why the start of this project did not begin smoothly. Time
management has always been an issue for me and I believe I was not as time-wise as I should have been at the start
of the process. We were just trying to figure it all out in terms of how this SST process would work. I would
definitely develop the steps first instead of having to wing-it. In the end, it worked out to the benefit of the
students but there were some bumps in the road along the way.