School Age Resources - Learning Ideas Tipsheets

Click on the Tipsheet titles listed below to open an accessible PDF file. (Download Adobe Reader here.)

Building Educational Support for Children and Youth in Foster Care (PDF) – Education is a change agent for children and youth in foster care… education creates hope for succeeding in the adult world. Former youth in foster/surrogate care emphasize that placement stability and high expectations from teachers were related to their positive educational attainment.

Special Education Tips for Foster Parents Who are Surrogate Parents (PDF) – Surrogate parents are appointed to represent children with disabilities whenever the birth parents or guardian of a child with a disability cannot be identified, located, or when the child is in the custody of the state. They have all the rights of birth parents for educational matters, e.g. permission for evaluation and placement, release information and request for educational hearing. The primary responsibility of surrogate parents is to ensure that children with disabilities are provided with a free, appropriate public education.

Universal Design in Pre-K and Early Elementary Classrooms (PDF) – Universal Design is an approach to designing environments and products so that the greatest number of people can use them. When applied to curriculum, teachers consider the potential barriers inherent in materials and activities, and plan many avenues to learning. Children enter classrooms with different experiences, backgrounds, interests, emotional, social, and academic strengths and needs. Planning for this diversity by intentionally creating accessible teaching processes and materials will allow more children to learn successfully.