Carolyn, how can we start the conversation that helps families begin their planning for the future?
This is a really tricky one. Educators out there, how many of you have wondered how to broach realistic planning with a family who you fear might not be realistic about their kids' future? And families, how many of you have had fears about coming into a meeting with a teacher or school staff that you're worried that they're going to come in and underestimate what your kid can do, and what their long run potential might be. This is the topic that we're talking about here.
The way I think to broach this conversation for teachers with parents, or parents to really open your thinking in this area to reduce that fear factor is to think about what I've nicknamed the cone of possibility. And that is, if you imagine during hurricane season, when you're watching the news, and we have a hurricane that's out over the water, and we have projected landfall that's coming in in the shape of a cone we can't yet tell where exactly that hurricane is going to finally hit shore. And so that represents, for me as a parent, where my child is now, but I'm trying to predict that future path.
When I envision the two sides of the cone, one side is my child today on his best day projected 10 years into the future. He's got all the skills and competencies that I can imagine, he's got all the potential that I can see, and all of our hopes and dreams together are intact and right there.
I want to plan for that, and educators, this is the fear that parents have coming into that conversation with you. Parents are afraid that you're not recognizing that, or that you're going to try to talk them out of that.
On the other side of the cone is my child on his worst day today. And from the point of view of trying to really plan and prepare for every support that he might need, and to be sure that he's going to be OK in the long run, I owe it to my child to plan for that eventuality also. Parents, this is the part of the continuum that teachers are afraid that you can't see.
So when we're doing this future planning, and we're thinking about the cone, what we really want to do is plan for both points.
I'm in that landfall area. We want to honor and stay open to that 10 year projection of my child on his best day. And we want to be sure that we're being protective and proactive enough to cover his needs on that 10 year projection of him on his worst day.
One of the best tools I've found for helping families initiate planning and thinking is to bring a little group together. So we can call it person centered planning, we can call it visual transition planning, we can call it just let's sit down and talk. I like to think of it as sharing my vision, or encouraging the parent to share his or her vision of the future.
I find that it's a way to really ease anxiety. And I can tell you from my own experience, my son was 20 and suddenly it hit me, even though I've been in this field, it still hit me like it does everybody that he's going to be out of school soon. And I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what to do. And I'm panicked, overwhelmed, full of fear.
But I asked the school district to do person centered planning for us. And I discovered that having that group together and really airing our hopes and our fears, both sides of that cone, began a conversation that eased my anxiety and really opened the door so that I felt I could talk, our family could talk, my son could become aware, and others in our lives could start hearing about our hopes for the future and our fears, our worst day scenario too. And so we became part of a little team that was able to brainstorm for some important goals. Our goal was what's my son going to do with his day from early to late after graduation?
But whatever the go it's an opportunity for families to start gaining ideas from other people, to hear from school staff, to capture what schools have learned about their child for the future, and to start a dialogue a process, or a conversation that begins to support families and the student with a disability to truly open up and start thinking creatively and collaboratively about the future.
Person centered planning comes in a lot of different formats. Depending on your district, depending on resources that are locally available to you, it might be a visual transition plan, it might be a path meeting, there are lots of different mechanisms to engage in person centered planning. The key concept that's embedded within that no matter what the format is this concept of telescoping back and forth between the future and today. We want to set that vision, those high hopes, in the future, so that's the direction that is going to inform our day to day decision making today and along the way.
But then, we're going to telescope back to today and look at where is my child today? What do I need to be building in order to get to that future vision? That's great ground for parent-school collaboration, because there's lots of room there for families to be taking things on in the community that will support that future vision, while at the same time, your school team can be taking on things within the IEP will help get that future adult to the vision point in the end.