Contributing in Team Meetings

CPIR plain-language walkthrough of the IEP team meeting — who attends, the agenda, the order components are reviewed, how decisions are made, and what happens after — so paras can contribute observations at the right moment. Public domain.

In three sequential rounds (~35 minutes total), participants build the skills needed to contribute daily classroom observations in team meetings even when those observations complicate an existing plan. Round 1 (Observation Inventory, ~11 min) draws on the CPIR's 'Paraprofessionals: Roles, Resources, and Research' framing — that paras hold IDEA-recognized direct knowledge of the child's functioning — to make that knowledge visible: each participant lists 2–3 specific, concrete observations about a student they support and marks each as shared in a team setting or not yet, directly surfacing the deference-and-silence pattern by making withheld observations countable. Round 2 (Observation Frame, ~12 min) uses the PaTTAN 'IEP Team Member: Paraprofessional' guidance on the para's contribution role to draft a complete 3-sentence frame for one withheld observation: leading with observable behavior witnessed ('I noticed that…'), naming the discrepancy with the current plan without disputing it, and closing with an offer to the team rather than a verdict — building the specific language the deference pattern suppresses. Round 3 (Decision Impact Analysis, ~12 min) targets the privatization failure mode — sharing observations only with the teacher after the meeting instead of in it — by having participants trace the same observation through two delivery paths on a comparison table (in-meeting vs. after-meeting), recording who received the information and at what decision stage, then writing a one-sentence conclusion about what the team gained or lost by timing alone.