How do I prepare to work with my child's new aide?

If your child has newly been assigned an aide, it can be helpful to communicate with them about your child's needs, either directly or through your child's teacher.

Aides won’t always know your child's goals or have access to IEPs. Rather than asking them IEP-specific questions, you could ask casual questions about how the day is going, what your child likes, etc. to build the relationship. Your child's aide can be helpful relationship/ally to have.

When it comes to following up on what happens at school, think about what you need to know daily or weekly; don’t make them send a book full of notes home every day. For example, if you want to know what goals were worked on, you could ask that weekly. Health/safety things could be reported on daily. Check out our communication log template for ideas.