Negotiating the Maze - Bay Area special education IEP/504 advocacy, research, support

I have worked in education, social welfare and community health for 25 years, in the US, Canada, the Caribbean, West Africa, and Australia, most recently as a local evaluator on a federal youth anti-violence initiative in Salinas. Helping participating agencies learn to set goals and objectives and measure their progress has had direct application to doing the same for Individual Education Programs.

I earned my doctorate in Public Health from UC Berkeley in 1994. My research on adolescent communication has been published as a book, in scholarly journals, and been cited by researchers in fifteen countries.

I have taught health promotion, writing and evaluation at the graduate level at the University of Sydney and high school English Language and Literature in Jamaica. As a substitute teacher, I have worked in K-12 classes in every school in Albany and Berkeley, with students as varied as autistic preschoolers, summer math middle schoolers, and AP French students. I taught in a long term position in the Berkeley High School Independent Studies program, which specializes in learners who don't fit the regular system, and have a particular fondness for "twice special" students, gifted with learning disabilities or ADHD. Based in Berkeley, California, I will attend meetings from Santa Rosa to San Mateo, and will work elsewhere by phone, fax and email.

I have been involved with special education since my son was first assessed in 1998, finding continual research and advocacy necessary to meet his needs. I have spent thousands of hours researching all kinds of learning disabilities, understanding educational assessment, preparing for IEP meetings, learning the law as it pertains to obtaining, designing, and providing an appropriate education program, using my evaluation expertise to write effective IEPs as an actively participating team member. I have reviewed files for the Community Alliance for Special Education (CASE) on a consultant basis, and was in the first cohort of a federal advocate training program (SEAT - Special Education Advocate Training) sponsored by University of Southern California University Affiliated Program (USC UAP) and the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) and funded by the Office of Special Education Programs, the first of its kind.