How I Actually Got to Student-Led IEPs (And Why I Don’t Think Students Have to Lead the Whole Meeting)
I didn't always know what I was doing in IEP meetings.
Especially in my first few years of teaching, I had assumptions about family involvement that I understand very differently now. There were families I assumed weren't going to participate much in the IEP process. Sometimes there were language barriers, immigration concerns, complicated family dynamics, or simply families who didn't know what resources were available or what questions they were allowed to ask.
I was wrong.
What I learned, over and over again, was that families wanted the best for their kids. Not knowing how to navigate special education is not the same thing as not caring about your child's education.
And I started realizing something else during meetings: sometimes I was learning things about a student at the IEP table that I should have known long before we sat down.
Their family knew things I didn't know. The student knew things I didn't know. Other people supporting them knew things I didn't know.
I needed to get better at bringing those people into the process before the meeting, not just inviting them into the room after everything had already been written.
Student-led sounded intimidating
Eventually, that same thinking changed the way I looked at student participation.
“Student-led IEP” can sound like we're handing a student a 30-page legal document and saying, “Good luck, you're running the meeting.”
That's not what I mean by student-led.
I started paying attention to where individual students were actually comfortable participating. Maybe one student was ready to attend their meeting. Another could introduce themselves. Another could talk about a strength. Another was ready to explain an accommodation or discuss a goal.
Those are all meaningful forms of participation.
And that eventually became my IEP Levels of Participation:
It Couldn't Just Happen the Week of the IEP
One of the biggest things I realized was that I couldn't suddenly ask a student to take ownership of their IEP five days before the meeting.
If I wanted a student to walk into that room and talk about their strengths, explain an accommodation, understand their goals, or share what they wanted after high school, we had to be having those conversations all year.
So I stopped thinking about student-led IEPs as something we prepare for and started thinking about them as something we practice.
I began weaving pieces of the IEP process into things we were already doing. Students reflected on their strengths. We talked about accommodations and, more importantly, why certain accommodations helped them. They looked at their goals and their own progress. We practiced asking for help and explaining what we needed. We talked about life after high school and what support might look like when there isn't an IEP team sitting around a table anymore.
Over time, I started creating resources to make those conversations easier and more consistent.
My Student-Led IEP Starter Kit came from needing a realistic way to help students participate at whatever level they were ready for. Not every student needs to walk in and lead the entire meeting.
My IEP at a Glance gave students a simpler way to see and understand the important parts of their own IEP instead of expecting them to navigate a giant document written mostly for adults.
The Self-Advocacy Toolkit grew out of another piece of the puzzle: knowing what you need isn't enough if you don't know how to communicate it. Students need opportunities to actually practice asking for help, explaining their supports, and advocating for themselves.
The Goal Setting Toolkit helps bring students into a part of the IEP process that can very easily become something adults do to them. I want students to understand what they're working toward, why it matters, and how they'll know they're making progress.
And eventually, I needed somewhere for all of this to live. That's where the Student-Led IEP Binder came in. We can keep the student's IEP, accommodations, services, goals, progress, work samples, reflections, and transition planning together and actually use it throughout the year instead of pulling everything together right before a meeting.
None of these resources started because I sat down one day and thought, I should make a bunch of student-led IEP products.
They came from problems I kept running into in my own practice.
And together, they've helped me build a system where the IEP meeting isn't the first time a student is being asked to think about their strengths, goals, needs, accommodations, or future.
The meeting becomes a chance for them to share work we've already been doing all year.
“But Adelaide, I have 25 students.”
I know.
And I don't have a magical extra period in my schedule either.
I use paraprofessionals. I use service time. I use small groups. I weave pieces into things we're already learning. And, increasingly, my students help me gather the information I need to write better IEPs because they're actively participating in understanding their own progress.
The setup is the hard part.
But once the system exists, I don't have to reinvent it for every student and every meeting.
I'm not scrambling right before an IEP to figure out a student's strengths, ask what they want after high school, collect a work sample, or suddenly teach them what their accommodations mean.
We've been doing that work all year.
The system that initially takes time eventually gives some of that time back.
Start Small
If you're reading this thinking, This sounds great, but I don't have time to completely change how I do IEPs, don't.
Start with one student. Start with one part of the meeting.
Ask them to share a strength. Help them understand one accommodation and why it works for them. Let them choose one goal they want to talk about. Ask what they want the adults in the room to know about them.
Then build from there.
Student-led IEPs don't have to mean handing a student the agenda and asking them to run the meeting. For me, it's about creating more and more opportunities for students to understand and have a voice in something that is ultimately about their life and their future.
It has taken me years to build the systems I use now, and I'm still learning and changing them as I go.
But if there's one thing I'd tell the teacher I was when I started, it would be this:
You don't have to know everything about your students. You do have to make space to hear from the people who do, including the students themselves.
Start there. ❤️
Adelaide
Aligned with Adelaide
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