A late-August packet for meeting your child's team before the meetings begin
Every store in town is selling backpacks and crayons. Nobody is selling the school supply that matters most: the relationship between your family and the people who will spend six hours a day with your child. This packet is that supply. It takes about two evenings at the kitchen table, and it changes what every meeting for the rest of the year feels like, especially the IEP.
The idea is simple. When the formal season begins (conferences, IEP reviews, support plans), the usual story has the teacher and the family meeting as strangers, across a table, over a document. This packet moves the meeting of the people ahead of the meeting about the paperwork. You introduce your child in your own words before the file introduces them in its words. You and the staff agree on how you'll work together before there is anything to disagree about. By the time the formal season arrives, it is a conversation among people who know each other.
Late August: Write "My Child, in Verbs," the one-page introduction (pages 2 and 3). One evening, kitchen table, whoever knows the child best around it.
Week one of school: Deliver it warmly, to the teacher, and, if your child has an IEP or 504, to the case manager and specialists too. Ask for fifteen minutes (page 4).
Weeks two to four: Hold the meeting before the meetings, fifteen relational minutes, no paperwork (page 4). Leave the partnership page behind (page 7).
Before the first IEP or conference: Do the kitchen-table prep (page 5), with your people around you (page 6). Walk in as the author of the story, not a signature on someone else's.
This year in Seattle (2026-27): First day for grades 1 through 12 is Wednesday, September 2. Preschool and kindergarten families: your first day is Tuesday, September 8, and September 2 through 4 are family connection days, when the teacher meets with your family before school begins. That meeting IS the fifteen minutes this packet asks for. The district built it into the calendar; arrive with your one-pager in hand. For everyone else, early-release Wednesday afternoons are the natural slot to ask for. Elementary and K-8 conference days fall November 23 through 25.
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The Other School Supplies · Page for the Family to Write
My Child, in Verbs
A one-page introduction, written by the people who know them best, to give to the teacher and the support team
My child keeps doing this (what they build, draw, collect, organize, ask about; the thing that makes time disappear):
This is what steadies my child when the day gets big (and what makes things worse):
When my child does this... it usually means this... and this is what helps:
What we do at home that works (rhythms, words, foods, routines your team can borrow):
Our family's languages, and the practices that matter to us (what your child carries from home):
What we hope for this year, for our child and for our partnership with you:
How to reach us, and how we like to hear from you (text, call, notes home, interpreter needs):
Written with love by the people who have known this child the longest.
The Other School Supplies · A Guide for the Kitchen Table
How to Write It
Ten minutes of guidance for the one-page introduction
Lead with verbs, not labels. The file will say what your child is: ADHD, below grade level, English learner. Only you can say what your child does: builds elaborate worlds out of anything stackable; reads the same book seven times and finds something new each time; watches a new room from the edge before entering it, and then enters it completely. Doings tell a teacher how to reach a child. Labels only tell them what to expect, and usually too little. There is a second reason this matters for our families, and it deserves plain words: children of color are more likely to have their behavior described in harsher language for doing the same things other children do. A page of verbs, in the file first, is quiet protection. It sets the vocabulary before anyone else does.
Give them the decoder. You hold years of hard-won knowledge about what your child's behavior means. Hand it over plainly: "When he puts his head down, he is not defying you. He is overwhelmed, and two quiet minutes bring him back." "When she talks fast and loud, she is excited, not disrespectful." One good decoder line can prevent a semester of misread behavior and the paper trail that follows it.
Share what works at home. The countdown that makes transitions possible. The job that calms him because being needed calms him. The two words in your home language that settle her faster than any English sentence; teach the team to say them. Staff genuinely want tools that work. Yours are field-tested.
Name your hopes, not just your worries. A team that knows what you are hoping for will work differently than a team that only knows what you are afraid of. One sentence of hope sets the year's direction.
Keep it to one page, and write it together. One page gets read; three pages get filed. Let everyone who loves this child add a line: the grandmother sees things you don't, and so does the big sister. If English is not your strongest language, write it in your own language first and ask a friend, a family member, or the school's interpreter to help carry it across. The knowledge is yours; the translation is just transport.
The heart of it: Before you write, finish this sentence out loud around the table: "What this teacher needs to know about our child, that no file will ever tell them, is..." Whatever gets said next goes at the top of the page.
The Other School Supplies · The Fifteen Minutes
The Meeting Before the Meetings
How to ask for it, and what to do with it
In the formal season, you and the school will meet about your child, over a conference form or an IEP document, on a clock, with decisions waiting. This meeting is different. It happens in September, it takes fifteen minutes, and its only purpose is for the people to meet before the paperwork does. Teachers almost never get offered this. Most will say yes with relief.
How to ask. In the first week or two, in person or in a short note: "We'd love fifteen minutes with you. Not a conference, nothing formal, no concerns. We just want to introduce our child properly and learn how we can help you this year." If your child has an IEP or 504, send the same invitation to the case manager and, if you can, one specialist. Before or after school, an early-release Wednesday afternoon, or a phone call: all work. Kindergarten families in Seattle, your family connection day is this meeting, already on the calendar. Bring the page.
What to bring. The one-page introduction. Walk them through it in five minutes, in your own words. The page stays with them.
What to ask. Three questions, then listen: What does this year look like from your side of the desk? What is the most useful thing a family can do for you? How do you like to hear from parents when something small comes up, before it becomes something big?
What to offer. One concrete thing. An hour a month in the classroom. The dish for the class potluck. Your language, if the classroom has newcomer families. The offer matters more than its size: it tells the teacher you see them as a person carrying a hard job, and it makes you the family they know, which changes every phone call that comes after.
What not to do. Don't bring a list of concerns; there will be proper time for those, and this meeting is what makes that time go well. Don't stay past your fifteen minutes. Leave warmth in the room, and the partnership page (page 7) behind you.
Why this works: When the formal meeting arrives, the person across the table will not be a stranger reading a file. It will be someone who knows your child's verbs, has your decoder in the desk drawer, and has already said yes to partnership once.
The Other School Supplies · Before the First IEP or Conference
The Kitchen-Table Prep
One evening, before the formal season begins
Read last year's papers once, at your own table. The IEP, the report card, the evaluation: read them at home, unhurried, before you ever sit in the meeting room with them. Papers read for the first time across a table full of professionals land like verdicts. Papers read at your own kitchen table become what they actually are: one description, written by people who see your child a few hours a week, in one kind of room.
Make the two lists. Left side: what the file says. Right side: what you know. The file says "struggles with transitions." You know he transitions beautifully when he gets a two-minute warning and a job to carry. The file is a fact about your child. It is not the definition of your child, and the right-hand column is what you bring to the meeting that no one else in the room can.
Write three verbs the file has no column for. What does your child do that no assessment measures? She reads the emotional weather of a room in seconds. He teaches his little cousin with a patience no test has ever seen. Bring the verbs on paper. Read them aloud at the meeting, early. They change what the room is looking at.
Send your questions ahead. Two or three, emailed a few days before: "We'd like to talk about what's working, not only what isn't." "Can we hear about progress in plain language before the numbers?" Questions sent ahead shape an agenda; questions asked cold get the time left over.
Bring a companion, and take the night. Another parent who has sat at these tables, an elder, a friend: someone whose presence steadies you. You are allowed this. And you are allowed to say, warmly: "Thank you. We'd like to take this home and read it before signing." Sleeping on a document is not conflict. It is care. (For questions about your legal rights, ask your state's parent training center. In Washington, families use PAVE, or a trained advocate. This page is about the relationship; they are the experts on the rights.)
The posture: You are not walking in to receive a verdict or to fight one. You are walking in as the author of the longest, truest record of this child, with the team as partners in the next chapter. Formation is the strongest advocacy there is.
The Other School Supplies · New in the Community Edition
Bringing the Village
The oldest school supply of all
The forms assume one or two parents. Your child was never raised by one or two people. The grandmother who knows what his silences mean. The auntie who taught her to braid and to be patient while it happens. The uncle who shows up to everything. The elder at church who has watched three generations of your family grow. This is not extra. This is the tested tradition of communal child-raising that families like ours have carried through every hard thing this country has asked of them, and it belongs at the school as much as it belongs at the table.
Write the one-pager as a circle, not a chore. Everyone who loves this child adds a line to "My Child, in Verbs," in whatever language the line comes in. A page carrying five voices tells the teacher something no single parent can: this child moves through the world held. Teachers read that page differently, because it is different.
The companion is a tradition, not an accommodation. When you bring your mother, your pastor, or another parent to a school meeting, you are not asking a favor of the system. You are practicing something older than the system. Say it plainly at the door: "This is my child's grandmother. She is part of how we raise him." No apology, no request. Two chairs is a fact, not a negotiation.
Offers can be collective. The fifteen-minute meeting ends with one concrete offer. It does not have to come from you alone. The grandmother who can tell stories in the home language to a classroom full of newcomer children. The uncle with a Saturday and a toolbox. The parent group that can turn out ten families for the school clean-up day. A village that shows up early, on its own terms, is a village the school learns to call before it calls anyone else.
And let the village hold you, too. The parent who has already sat at the IEP table can sit beside you at your first one. The circle that prays or cooks or texts at ten o'clock is the reason you can be calm in a room built of paperwork. None of this packet is meant to be done alone. It never was.
The heart of it: One child, many hands. The school sees a student. Your village sees a whole person becoming, and when the village walks in the door, the school starts to see it too.
The Other School Supplies · To Leave With the Team
The Partnership Page
One page, two promises, for the teacher, the case manager, and the family
This page is an invitation, not a contract. It says out loud what both sides usually wish for and rarely name. Leave it with the teacher and the support team after your fifteen minutes, and keep a copy on your own refrigerator.
What our family will bring. We will tell you what we see at home: the context behind the behavior, the things that work, the changes before you'd otherwise know. We will come to you early and kindly when something small comes up, instead of arriving at conference season with a stored-up list. We will treat your notes home as information, not indictment, and we will assume, always, that you and we are on the same side of the table, which is our child's side.
What we ask of you. Tell us one thing you see in our child that no assessment measures. Once a season is plenty; it will carry us for months. Reach us early and plainly when something small comes up, in the way we've noted on our introduction page. Borrow what works at home before building something new at school. And when the formal meetings come, help us keep the child at the center of the table, not just the plan.
What we both know. You see this child in a room we never see; we see them in every room you never will. Neither view is the whole child. Read together, they come close. That is the partnership: two sets of eyes, one child, co-reading, all year long.
Family signature(s):
Teacher / team member, one thing I already notice about this child:
This page is meant to be given away. Who needs it next?
The full letters, sixteen of them, live on the Open Shelf at goodprotocols.org