2008-2009 School Year

How to Communicate Positively with Public School Personnel

And How to Document Your Communications

Date: Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2008 7:00-8:30pm

Location: Swampscott Middle School Library

Featured Speaker: Attorney Clare Vann

Ms. Vann will speak on topics including:

-How you can get school personnel to pay attention to your concerns

-What it means to communicate positively with school personnel

-The kinds of information you should communicate to school personnel

-How to document communications with school personnel

Attorney Vann, who has family members with a variety of disabilities, began working to help disabled children and their families in 1981 as a volunteer at the Federation for Children with Special Needs in Boston. She later became an advocacy consultant for the Federation for Children with Special Needs. In that position, she trained parents in their rights under special education law, helped to teach the Federation advocacy training course, advised new advocates about how to handle their cases, and wrote training materials. While working at the Federation, Ms. Vann also worked as a special education advocate herself.

Ms. Vann has been a trial attorney since 1986 and has extensive trial experience. The only kinds of cases she handles are special education cases as these cases mean so much to her. She frequently provides training to parents.

Special Education Workshop – Basic Rights: Denied

Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2008 6:00-8:30pm

Location: Swampscott Public Library

Featured Speaker: Ellen Chambers, MBA of SPEDWatch

Workshop participants will learn how to handle the most common obstacles that parents and other advocates face at each stage of the special education process: referral, initial evaluation, eligibility determination, IEP development, placement, and reevaluation. Attendees will also learn how to file a Massachusetts Department of Education complaint.

Come learn the strategies used by the instructor during her ten year career as a successful special education advocate. The material, presented in a straightforward easy-to-understand format, is powerful and empowering.

The workshop is suitable for those whose children already receive special education services, and for those who feel a child may have been inappropriately denied eligibility for services.

Fee for the workshop is $6.00 per person and registration is required by emailing the SEABoard chairs at seaboardswmp@comcast.net.

Ms. Chambers is the founder and Executive Director of SPEDWatch, Inc., a statewide nonprofit civil rights movement working to secure the educational rights of all Massachusetts schoolchildren with disabilities, ages 3-21.

Labeled Disabled

By Maggie Doben

Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 7:00-9:00pm

Location: Swampscott High School

During the last decade, classroom teacher, Maggie Doben, has worked with early childhood students, helping them to explore and understand physical disabilities. The transformation of perception is an amazing process. Each year as the lessons begin, they reveal the stereotypes and discriminatory behaviors that are imposed by society. LABELED DISABLED addresses curriculum that challenges those biases and demonstrates, through first hand experience that they are stereotypes, not reality. Watch what actually happens in the classroom as children discuss and challenge prejudice. In conjunction with anti-bias education and the idea that knowledge is best acquired through concrete experience, the viewer witnesses the inspirational progress of children; from what they perceive to be true, to what is true.

In addition to her teaching, Maggie Doben is a professional photographer and photo-documents events throughout New England. Maggie earned her B.A. in Studio Arts at Bates College and Glasgow School of Art, Scotland and earned her Masters Degree in education at Lesley College. She is currently employed by the Cambridge Friends School as a first grade teacher, and also maintains her own business, Mdoben Photography.

Legal Issues regarding Summer/Extended Year Services and MCAS Accomodations

Attorney Dan Heffernan

Date: Monday January 12, 2009,7pm-8:30pm

Location: Marblehead Veterans Middle School

Attorney Heffernan, of the Cotin, Crabtree and Strong law firm specializing in special education law, is a strong advocate for families and their students and has been a welcome speaker at SEACOM in the past. All parents of children receiving Special Education services are encouraged to attend.