Toolkit for teachers: Navigating IEPs

An Individualized Education Program (IEP) serves as a roadmap to help you support many of your students who learn and think differently. It describes an individual student’s strengths and the services and supports the school will provide the student. An IEP also fosters collaboration between educators, families, service providers, and the student.

The IEP is powerful — but it can also be daunting if you’re not familiar with it. That’s why we created this toolkit. 

The toolkit aims to: 

• Demystify the laws, definitions, and processes of the IEP 

• Give practical and actionable tools to clarify your role as a teacher

• Ensure that all students with IEPs thrive (whether during in-school learning or distance learning)

Ready to dive even deeper into IEPs? There’s a course to go along with this toolkit: IEPs From A to Z: Understanding Individualized Education Programs. The self-paced course — developed by Understood and available on the Canvas Network — is open and free for you to take.

For families

Looking for resources to give to family members of students who have IEPs? Share these tools:

• How to tell if your child’s IEP goals are SMART

• Download: IEP goal tracker

• Questions to ask about your child’s IEP goals