A Guide to Itinerant Early Childhood Special Education Services

Itinerant special educators can be much more than "tutors" for young children with special needs. They can transform whole classrooms and help inclusion flourish--if they have the clear guidelines and best practices they need to make the most of their critical roles. This is the book that every itinerant early childhood special educator has been waiting for, the first one that takes the guesswork out of their jobs and shows them how to make a real difference in preschool classrooms.

Aligned with DEC recommended practices and developed by the leading authorities on itinerant early childhood special education, this groundbreaking book will help readers go beyond direct service provision and slip into 5 essential roles that ensure better outcomes for young children. Itinerant teachers will get the research-based guidance they need to successfully play the part of

• Consultant. Partner with parents, teachers, and other members of the education team to identify goals and help children reach them.
• Coach. Empower general educators by actively helping them develop the skills and knowledge they'll need to work with young children with disabilities.
• Assessor. Collect accurate information on both the child and the classroom environment, and support general educators in meeting their assessment responsibilities.
• Team member. Guide the complex IEP process, manage and resolve conflict, and effectively persuade others to adopt changes and innovations that will benefit the child.
• Service coordinator. Ensure the smooth delivery of IEP services, stay attuned to community resources that support children and families, and assist with transitions to other programs.

To help them excel in each of these roles, teachers will get a detailed start-to-finish model for providing itinerant services, from gathering information to evaluating the effectiveness of their services. Extended case studies and sample dialogues illustrate what successful itinerant services look like, and guidelines on logistics help readers resolve everyday challenges such as managing a busy schedule and working with a parent or teacher resistant to change. Readers will also monitor their performance with the PIECES, an easy-to-use tool the authors developed for assessing itinerant service delivery.

A professional development resource that programs will rely on as itinerant services continue to thrive, this urgently needed book will help "traveling teachers" become agents of change in early childhood classrooms--and give young children with disabilities the best possible start in school.

Includes practical forms & tools:

• Sample letters to parents, teachers, and program directors
• Sample planning forms for consultation/coaching sessions
• PIECES tool for assessing itinerant services
• Sample agreement to support itinerant services
• and more

Dr. Laurie Dinnebeil is a Professor and holds the Daso Herb Chair in Inclusive Early Childhood Education. She was a preschool special education for five years before entering higher education. She has taught a range of undergraduate and graduate courses related to early childhood education and early childhood special education and has published extensively in the area of itinerant ECSE service delivery. Dr. Dinnebeil is a proficient grant writer, having secured over $6 million in national and state funding over the past 15 years.

Dr. Dinnebeil is very active in the field of early childhood special education at the local, state, and national levels. She is a past president of the Council for Exceptional Children's Division for Early Childhood and a past president of the Ohio Higher Education Consortium for Early Childhood Education. She is Associate Editor for Topics in Early Childhood Special Education and serves on editorial boards for numerous academic journals related to early childhood education and special education. Dr. Dinnebeil is active in the local, state, and national early childhood education communities. She is a 2002 Mid-Career Fellow for Zero to Three. She also has college administrative experience as a department chair and associate dean for graduate studies and research.

Dr. McInerney is a Professor of Special Education in the Judith Herb College of Education at University of Toledo in Ohio. He teaches graduate-level courses in the early childhood special education (ECSE) area. Throughout his career, Dr. McInerney has secured U.S. Department of Education-Office of Special Education Programs (USDOE-OSEP) funding to support graduate-level training of ECSE teachers and early intervention personnel. He has managed several grants that have focused on itinerant early childhood special education (IECSE) services and has coordinated, with his associates and the Ohio Department of Education, a statewide professional development program for IECSE teachers and their supervisors. He and his colleagues at the University of Toledo have presented their work at professional conferences and have consulted with school districts and state education agencies concerning the status and future of IECSE services.

Dr. Buysse is Senior Scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to directing a program of research on Recognition & Response, a model of response to intervention for prekindergarten, her research interests include innovations in professional development; models such as consultation, coaching, mentoring, and communities of practice that support professional development and program improvement; and educational practices and interventions that address the unique needs of diverse learners--those who have disabilities, who have learning difficulties, or who are dual language learners.