How well do you know the acronyms commonly used in discussions about your child’s education? Does it make you crazy when people use abbreviations instead of spelling out exactly what they are talking about? You are left standing there trying to put whole words to each letter while the conversation just kind of passes you by.
Whether at a BOE or PTA meeting or at a neighborhood cocktail party, if you hear that a PBL project in your child’s classroom will use STEM or STEAM, you might decide impulsively to feign that you are HI or have adult ADD! Either way, you have to walk away so as not to reveal your ignorance on the educational lingo. Don’t despair; you can avoid ED with the help of AIS. You can learn to decipher these insider terms! First, as in any sound AIP we have to assess what you already know.
Try to identify the 10 terms used in the paragraph above, as well as the 10 terms below. Score 5 points for each correct answer. If you score between 80 percent and 100 percent, you are good to go; a score between 60 percent to 75 percent will get you a remedial plan; and a score under 70 percent will get you referred for further testing.
APPR and SLO are among the hottest new acronyms being tossed about today.
CST, CSE, and IEP are compatible terms sharing a similar focus.
CIA does not refer to a government agency.
ADHD can apply to children and adults alike.
ELA and ESL have two words in common.
SED is the source of all New York State educational acronyms, and, no, it doesn’t stand for Stop Eating Doughnuts.
Here is your best defense against pretentious acronyms. When someone rattles a set of initials off the tongue, interrupt and ask for clarification before allowing the speaker to continue. Just politely say, “Excuse me but I am ACINOR Acronym Challenged In Need of Femediation.”
Here are the answers to our acronym challenge: Board of Education; Parent Teacher Association; Problem Based Learning; Science Technology Engineering Math; Science Technology Engineering Art Math; Hearing Impaired; Attention Deficit Disorder; Emotional Disturbance; Academic Intervention Services; Academic Improvement Plan; Annual Professional Performance Review; Student Learning Objective; Child Study Team; Committee of Special Education; Individual Educational Plan; Curriculum Instruction Assessment; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; English Language Arts; English as a Second Language; and State Education Department.
Now have some fun with your children making up your own coded language. Certainly we are all well-versed in the shortcut language used in texting. For your younger children who are not yet sporting cell phones in their back pockets, sit down and come up with original terms to be shared only with family members. Some can be fun and some can be serious and for safety’s sake.
Select a special code word that can be used to indicate that there is a problem and your child needs immediate attention. In our family, when our children were young (before cell phones), we decided on a particularly meaningful word to us and the word could not be shared with anyone outside the family. The idea was that if our child was some place without us and ran into a problem, the child would call home and simply say the word. Nothing else needed to be said, and we were off to pick up the child from the troublesome situation such as a sleepover going bad. Today, cell phones actually make this strategy easier, and a child could text a parent one word to indicate help is needed. This simple strategy will make your children feel you are there for them.
Felicia Bordick and her colleagues, Carol Smith and Joyce Thomas, are authors of “Kitchen Table Time: Recipes for School Success.” Please feel free to contact Felicia Bordick with comments, questions, or suggestions at [email protected].