Growing up alongside a sibling with Down syndrome, Catherine Whitcher discovered early on the impact that specialized education can have. Now, as a seasoned and dynamic consultant working with special education parents, teachers, administrators and therapists, she joins our podcast to share her transformative journey and the heartening strides she's made in the world of special education. Her personal narrative not only touches on the challenges and victories she's encountered but also shines a light on her groundbreaking work in revolutionizing the Individualized Education Program (IEP) to better serve families and educators.
In a conversation that is as enlightening as it is moving, Catherine unveils the intricacies of her Master IEP Coach program. Her innovative approach to collaboration and problem-solving within IEP meetings has established a new standard of support for those navigating the special education landscape. By equipping participants with essential tools and fostering a collaborative spirit, Catherine's mentorship program is creating ripples of positive change, ensuring that every child is poised for success in education and beyond. Join us to hear her remarkable story and the ways she's making a difference in the lives of countless individuals through dedication and expertise.
Barbara Beck is the host of the FAST 15 Podcast. She is a highly dedicated Disability Advocate and Special Education Consultant specializing in IEP Transition Services. Barbara has an extensive background as a special education teacher spanning nearly 30 years. She has dedicated her career to empowering transition-age youth and fostering positive post-school outcomes.
Barbara's expertise lies in providing comprehensive support and guidance to students with disabilities, ensuring their successful transition from school to adult life. She possesses a deep understanding of secondary services and possesses the skills to develop tailored strategies that maximize individual potential.
For more information and resources on special education school-to-adulthood transition planning and independent living, visit www.mykeyplans.com. Join us on social media for updates, behind-the-scenes content, and discussions about special education, inclusion, and disability advocacy. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and use #IEPLaunchpadPodcast to join the conversation. Thank you for tuning in to the IEP Launchpad Podcast! 🎧🎙️#IDD #teaching #specialed #specialneeds #InclusionMatters #DisabilityAdvocacy #EmpowerVoices #edtech, #education #edtech, #teachers
Growing up alongside a sibling with Down syndrome, Catherine Whitcher discovered early on the impact that specialized education can have. Now, as a seasoned and dynamic consultant working with special education parents, teachers, administrators and therapists, she joins our podcast to share her transformative journey and the heartening strides she's made in the world of special education. Her personal narrative not only touches on the challenges and victories she's encountered but also shines a light on her groundbreaking work in revolutionizing the Individualized Education Program (IEP) to better serve families and educators.
In a conversation that is as enlightening as it is moving, Catherine unveils the intricacies of her Master IEP Coach program. Her innovative approach to collaboration and problem-solving within IEP meetings has established a new standard of support for those navigating the special education landscape. By equipping participants with essential tools and fostering a collaborative spirit, Catherine's mentorship program is creating ripples of positive change, ensuring that every child is poised for success in education and beyond. Join us to hear her remarkable story and the ways she's making a difference in the lives of countless individuals through dedication and expertise.
Barbara Beck is the host of the FAST 15 Podcast. She is a highly dedicated Disability Advocate and Special Education Consultant specializing in IEP Transition Services. Barbara has an extensive background as a special education teacher spanning nearly 30 years. She has dedicated her career to empowering transition-age youth and fostering positive post-school outcomes.
Barbara's expertise lies in providing comprehensive support and guidance to students with disabilities, ensuring their successful transition from school to adult life. She possesses a deep understanding of secondary services and possesses the skills to develop tailored strategies that maximize individual potential.
For more information and resources on special education school-to-adulthood transition planning and independent living, visit www.mykeyplans.com. Join us on social media for updates, behind-the-scenes content, and discussions about special education, inclusion, and disability advocacy. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and use #IEPLaunchpadPodcast to join the conversation. Thank you for tuning in to the IEP Launchpad Podcast! 🎧🎙️#IDD #teaching #specialed #specialneeds #InclusionMatters #DisabilityAdvocacy #EmpowerVoices #edtech, #education #edtech, #teachers
Speaker 1:
Today, on the Fast 15, we're welcoming Catherine Witcher. For over 20 years, catherine has been sitting at IEP tables helping parents, teachers and teams create IEPs that work. Inspired by her brother with Down syndrome, she became a special education teacher. With a master's degree and five teaching certificates, she was determined to change the special education community from the inside of her classroom. After just a few years of teaching, catherine was in high demand for special education consulting and speaking. She left the classroom and dedicated herself to changing special education by helping hundreds of families every year. When districts experienced her collaborative, common sense approach to solving even the toughest problems, they soon started hiring Catherine to help their special education teams from the inside. As an international speaker and founder of online training programs, the Master IEP Coach, mentorship and Network, catherine serves thousands of parents and teams from around the world. She's determined to change the special education experience for everyone who sits at the IEP table. She's always ready to jump into all the hot topics, sticky conversations and share the solutions that are needed for all children to be prepared for further education, employment and independent living.
Speaker 1:
Join me in welcoming Catherine to the Fast 15. Good morning, catherine, and hey, I'm just so excited to spend some time with you and welcome to the Fast 15. We wanted just a chance to get to know more about you today and it's just it's a privilege to have you and find out about your story, about your journey kind of the early days. What's your career kind of been like and how has your journey led you to what you're doing now with the Master IEP Coach. We want our listeners to find out all about that, the whole journey.
Speaker 2:
We want our listeners to find out all about that, the whole journey, yeah. So I'm so excited to share and to hopefully really show what is possible for other families and teachers who are out in our special education community. You know, in the trenches every day. So my first introduction to the disability community was through my brother. So my brother is in his late 40s. He has Down syndrome. When you do all the math we will get into a history lesson in math here about special education. But he is the first generation of fully educated adults with disabilities. So the law was enacted in 1975. My brother was born in 1977, which means that I watched my mom navigate the system as the first fully educated, from beginning till you know graduation, which was really interesting as a sibling.
Speaker 2:
And we had a very I'm going to call it kind of a traditional household. It was me and my brother, it was my mom and my dad and my dad, you know, went to work to every, every day and he was the breadwinner in the family, you know, in charge of us kids, right To take care of it, just to do all of the things. And she definitely was my brother's advocate and she was his voice and she did a lot of the negotiating and as a sibling, I was very nosy right, so I'm listening to everything and my thought was why can't the teachers just teach my brother? Now, for all my teachers who are listening, I was like 10 when I remember thinking that. So, like, don't come at me, all right, I was 10, right. I was like I don't get it. Like why can't they just do this? Why does my mom have to negotiate for a new school and negotiate for a different classroom and negotiate for all of these? Can't she please just cook dinner and us not talk about IEPs? Like why does she have to pick me up late from school because she's too busy on the phone with the special ed director? That was real life. So I decided to become a special education teacher because you know I'll just solve all the problems of special education from the inside of my classroom. That didn't quite work out Once I got into the system and I was like, oh okay, this is a struggle Like. This is not just all the pieces of being a teacher, but there's a lot of red tape.
Speaker 2:
And having that experience and watching my mom go through it from the family side and me experiencing it as a sibling, and my very first IEP meeting I ever attended, I was probably about 18 years old. My brother was 16. We were talking about transition planning. I'll give you guys a little quick snippet of what happened at that meeting. The school said basically they said to my mom what's going to happen when you die? And I was like what? Like what is happening at this IEP meeting? We're talking about mom dying, great.
Speaker 2:
And so I was like so my mom goes, he's just going to live with his sister. And I was like we're putting that in the paperwork, what does that mean? But here's the thing as the older sister at Tavon Light that I had, of course that's what I assumed growing up I just knew that's not an issue. That was not the issue. The issue was why are we having this conversation here? And then the team said that may not be feasible. She may not want him to live with her. What other plans do you have? And my mom was like hold up, stop right there, let's move back to the things that we need to talk about school. We don't need to have a future planning session here at the IEP team. That was my first IEP mid-end.
Speaker 1:
Very intrusive.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, it was pretty rough. So I become a teacher. I see all this red tape behind the scenes. I know the struggles that families are going through and I actually walked into my classroom. This is back when they used to like print IEPs like. You got a stack of IEPs. Yeah, I'm old, oh well how about the triplicate forms?
Speaker 1:
Were your handwriting. I have experience with triplicate forms.
Speaker 2:
I do. I do Okay, so little white out of trying to print out from things on there, type them out on there. Oh, it was a lot. I walked in and I have this stack of IEPs and basically an empty classroom and it's good luck. And I'm like what do you what? What? Now here I am, 25 years later. I realized that was the norm and still is the norm. That wasn't something that anybody told me was going to happen, but it was happening everywhere.
Speaker 2:
So as I tried to go through this IEP paperwork and figure out what am I supposed to do as this new teacher, I remembered how my mom negotiated things when she was upset and it was not nice and I did not want to be on that side of having the parents call me and be really upset that the teacher couldn't do what needs to get done. So I was proactive, which is pretty gutsy. I got my first teaching degree when I was 20. So I look at, okay, I have a 20-year-old daughter now, like I couldn't imagine I was 20, so I'm just calling up the parents and I'm like, hey, like I'm the new teacher and I'm looking through your child's IEP and I love everything that's in here and I would love to know what's your priority? And they were like floored what, like, what do you mean? Are you kidding? Yeah, I was like here's what I see and what's going on at your house and what are priorities and what. And I went through this whole kind of national interview with them and when they saw that I was thinking to design their child's day not just around the school's priorities but their priorities as a parent, I had their trust.
Speaker 2:
Now, yes, everything was not smooth, like that is not the end of the story. I was still going through a ton of red tape on the back end. So what I found is I was teaching by day and coaching parents at night. This is what you need to ask for. This is how you need to do it collaboratively. This is how you do it without throwing a teacher under the bus.
Speaker 2:
And when I started teaching that to parents, the parents told other parents, who then told other parents, and I ended up with this big, long list of families that I ended up helping and eventually I left the classroom and I started doing that full time as helping parents navigate the system and the one last kind of piece of kind of the transition, of how I ended up where I'm at now, of what's going on, is, as I was then helping parents and I was sitting side by side with them or coaching them through what they needed to do. Districts saw what I was doing and they said we've never seen this before. Can you come train our teachers to build IEPs like you're building IEPs? And that blew my mind, because I was sure that I was going to have to choose.
Speaker 1:
Hey listeners, we're going to take a quick break from our intriguing and compelling story after just a quick word from our sponsor, sdes.
Speaker 3:
Functional Academics by SDES's collaborative work with educators and families, just like you, provides an in-depth understanding of your needs in the community we serve. You've asked, we listen, it's coming. Stay tuned with more to come at SDESworkscom.
Speaker 2:
Do I work for the schools or do I work for the parent? And I have the opportunity to be an independent practitioner helping parents through the process. And then schools brought me in to do training and consulting. That to me was just magic. That to me. I was like this is it, this is where it is. So that's how I ended up with our current training programs through Master IP Coach, which are the only training programs where every program is built for parents, teachers, admins and therapists to learn and work together.
Speaker 1:
Right, and if you're listening and you want more information about the Master IEP Coach, catherine, where do they go?
Speaker 2:
Masteriepcoachcom and you can go get some free resources and you'll see other programs and trainings and mentorships and all different ways that you and I can connect.
Speaker 1:
Right, and what year was that? When you, when you actually started into it?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So I will tell you it was probably. I started coaching parents while I was still in the classroom. That was in the late 90s. I only was in the classroom for a few years, which is why I'm not your person to teach how to run a classroom. I'm not that guru of how to run this perfect classroom. I got obsessed with building IEPs that made sense for the real world, for all people that were involved in the IEP process, so I've been doing this for 25 years.
Speaker 1:
Massridebee Coach, I think, was established around 2017, but that's just when we put a name on it right and um, I'm curious about if you've had that that long of a period of time just kind of working with families and reach is growing. Um, is there one particular giving away any names or or real personal information I'm curious about? Hasn't that you walked through through from elementary all the way through to addition? Has there been a a story like that? I have, it's one of my favorites.
Speaker 2:
And funny is that the mom still comes on my Facebook page and is still hi, our Javerin, she was with us forever. So what happened she called me up around second grade is when she decided she really needed some help for her son, who is diagnosed with autism, and a lot of other things too, Just a lot of things going on with this child, and another layer to that is that he had a genius IQ. So it was definitely a situation where everybody's like what do we do? We're having some of those I'm going to call them kind of traditional struggles that we kind of think of when I have things like anxiety, ADHD, autism, OCD. You know, we can kind of picture some things as just with our experience. And then we layered on this child had a genius IQ and so there was a lot of moving parts in there. So I stayed with them all the way through high school graduation.
Speaker 2:
Mom kept me in the loop through college and him navigating the disability office at college and it was really exciting I would say probably the most exciting piece of being able to work with this family, because it wasn't always about working through them, through conflict. It was about really finding opportunities and this hope and possibilities and opportunities. It's not that there was conflict every year, it was okay. It's that time again. Here's where we're at. Let's work together and have this brainstorm, think tank what is possible. And then, yes, sometimes there were definitely crisis situations happening, but my favorite with him is in high school we were able to help him learn how to self-advocate for himself inside of the IEP meeting, and that was huge.
Speaker 1:
To have the whole team, and especially the parents, saying what is wanted and needed for you know, from their perspective, that's just an incredible shift when we're able to get the student's voice at the table to be the loudest voice at the table, right.
Speaker 2:
He had trouble expressing himself verbally and he would be very loud, but always in a negative way. Ok, always in a negative way. We actually figured out the way for him to self-advocate as I was coaching him through this one situation. We're having a lot of difficulties, a lot of explosive behaviors happening, like to the point where the school wanted to call the police.
Speaker 2:
The school wanted to really take some extreme measures because it was an extreme situation, and I finally gave him a piece of paper and a pen and I said can you draw for me the classroom and what you need me to put in the classroom and where do you need to sit to make this classroom work for you? And he drew out everything in detail to make this classroom work for you. And he drew out everything in detail and we realized that him being able to have another way to communicate, even though he was capable of the verbal communication and he was getting loud and he was the loudest at the table, it wasn't until we could get him to draw it and actually that was the loudest and I try to explain that to parents a lot of times even for themselves.
Speaker 2:
You can actually have sometimes the biggest impact without being the loudest person, when you know exactly what you're looking for.
Speaker 1:
That is so powerful. I love how you just said that. That's wonderful. Well, I have to get more information all about the specifics, about the Master IEP Coach, your team, how you actually go through the process of working with people, just so that, if they're interested in learning more and being a part of what you're doing, we want them to be able to, you know, get a real idea of the process, the tools.
Speaker 1:
This has to be two episodes. We're going to come to the end of this episode, but we've got to have our listeners listen into part two of our time with you. Catherine Wicher, thank you so much for being on this episode and we'll catch you in the next one. Thank you for having me. A heartfelt thank you to our generous sponsors, specially Designed Education Services, publishers of the Functional Academics Program. Please take a moment to learn more about the only true, comprehensive functional academics program that enables students with moderate to severe disabilities to improve their ability to live independently and show meaningful growth, both academically and personally, while creating accountability with data-driven, evidence-based results. Visit SDESWorkscom to learn more.