Alternative Ways to Participate In Team Meetings

(upbeat music) - Some people wonder if, after the first couple of weeks or even maybe the first couple months of school, if it's really necessary for all the team members to participate in team meetings. And my experience tells me, that there are exceptions to that, "every team member needs to be present." I know some speech language pathologists who have 60 students, 60 students on their caseload spread across across multiple school buildings. There just may not be time in the day, time in that speech language pathologist's schedule for her, to go to elementary school A, from 9:00 to 9:45, every Monday it just physically, may not be feasible. But, if the team puts their planning forms and their planning documents in a shared drive, what the speech pathologist can do, is to take a look at those upcoming weekly plans to see if there's any place that she needs to insert her expertise. So she may not have attended the planning meeting, but she understands that students will be giving a book report the following week. And she sees on the planning form, what the topic is that the student with complex access needs is going to present about. That tells her that sometime before the student gives that report, she needs to program some new vocabulary, into the student's augmentative communication system. One reason why it, may be acceptable for a team member not to come to every single planning meeting is, that sort of large caseload number, or large distances. Now with every one having become much more proficient with attending meetings via distance learning platforms like this, that's another possibility.