I'm more than my IEP

by Billi Storz
(Sheridan, AR)

I'm more than my IEP.
I have the energy to be all I can be.
I need your help, and your the key, to help me learn trouble free.
Give me access to my future please,
and make my horizon as bright as can be.


My son chance was born at 24 weeks gestation and battled cancer at age 3. He has been diagnosed with SPD along with other medical conditions and he is getting ready to start kindergarten and I have started IEP meetings. While I was sitting at the computer worrying about how the meetings would go I came up with this poem. It's about looking past the paperwork and the plan and seeing the child and the future that we have in our hands. We are the key to helping these kids become all they can be. I put the poem on the front of my IEP planning book along with a picture, so the school team could see what we are fussing about. It's not about some name on a file, it's about a little boy who has some disadvantages that will make learning a little harder and it's up to us to solve our differences and Focus on the child.

Who knows, we may be giving him the building blocks to become the scientist who cures cancer or the biologist or chemical engineer who helps to develop clean energy.

Whatever he becomes, he is needing our help to get there.