This is B Dawson here with B Positive Media and I am blessed to be sharing time in space with Dr. Umar Johnson who just blessed Columbus, Georgia with his time and thank you for being here. Thank you, love. All right. Now he is the Prince of Pan-Afghanism and he's an educator, psychologist, multiple degrees and things of that nature. But one thing that I love about this brother is his love for education for our children. So I'm just going to ask you one quick question before you breeze out of here is that I'm a home school. And I home school because I feel that I need to have direct control of my children's education that was being fed into their systems, especially with my son being diagnosed with autism. So I want to complete control of that because the special education system is a trip. I just want you to give one quick message to the other special needs parents out here and one quick message to the home school or since they're not at school, what should we be teaching? Indeed. I'm going to give five points for home schooling parents and five points for special ed parents starting with the home school parents. Number one, make sure you have a home school calendar of instruction. You know what you're going to teach, what are days you're going to teach it and you need to stick to it. One of the biggest challenges I see with the home schooling parents is they do not have calendars. They kind of go from day to day teaching but you never really achieved the curriculum that you laid out because you're not napping out the lessons for each day at a time. So you have to know what you're going to do and when you're going to do it otherwise, a whole month ago by and you realize your child didn't learn much because you didn't stick to the calendar. So you should buy a calendar, hang it up, take your curriculum and break it down by days. Okay, and then after you break it down by days, you break it down by lessons. So that's number one. Number two, for home schooling parents, I would say make sure you have a support team. Other parents, educators, and professionals who you can call on for advice. For example, if you're home schooling high school kids, you might not necessarily have a mastery of physics or calculus or algebra two. You might not necessarily have a mastery of higher order English skills. So you need other professionals that you can call them on. Number three, create a space in the home just for home schooling. Do not let the entire home be a home school spot. Because psychologically that will overwhelm you and the child, it will seem like you're always on the job and there's no closure. There should be one room that is blessed to be the home school room. Nobody even goes in there unless it's being used for home schooling. Keep it clean, keep it organized, but that's the home schooling room. When you leave that room, when your child leaves that room, you guys are done. Okay, number four, make sure you go to home school conferences, make sure you join home school organizations. And yes, sometimes you're going to have to go to white a home school conferences because they are more organized in this area than we are to some extent. So get your information from wherever. Of course you have CB in Trenton, New Jersey, Council of Independent Black Institutions. And of course there's the African American home school network, but make sure you link up with other people don't do it all alone. Okay, I think that was four. Let me do five. Number five, know yourself. Are you the best person to teach your child? Some parents are so perfectionistic that they cannot teach their own children because they will verbally abuse them. They will ridicule them. They will expect perfection and as a result the child will psychologically shut down. So sometimes you need to know your limits. And if you are too perfectionist, if you don't have any patients, if you're going to demand too much from your child, because let's face it, we all hold our kids to a high standard. But in doing that, you can actually burn them out if you don't allow children to be children. And the last thing I would say on home schooling is make sure your child is involved in extracurricular activities. Make sure they get time to socialize with other children. Okay, but be professional. Be professional. Too many home school parents, they don't attack it with the professional urgency that they need to attack it with. So make sure you are professional. Make sure you are organized. Make sure you have the time. And make sure you engage in self care. Make sure you are a home schooling parent like any parent. Okay, it can suffer from burnout if you don't find time to take to yourself. For my special ed parents, know your child's disability. Please know your child's disability. I speak with so many special ed parents who don't even know what the child disability is. Our child is a special ed. For what? Is it autism? Is it speech and language? Is it hearing impairment? Is it a learning disability? Is it emotional disturbance? Is it ADHD? How was your child a special ed? And you don't even know the disability. That's number one. Number two, do not sign the IEP until you take it home and review it. Do not sign the IEP until you take it home and review it. When you go to an IEP meeting, you should show up with some recommendations for strategies and goals that you would like to be included on the IEP. Number three, understand that if you don't agree with the evaluation report, you have a right to a second independent educational evaluation. This is your federal right, special ed as a federal law. And you can have your child re-evaluated by a school psychologist of your choice whenever you disagree with the evaluation number four. If your child is not benefiting from special ed, you need to call an IEP meeting and demand an improvement in their education or demand and approve private school. Federal law says that if a child is not being properly educated by the school district, the parents can force the school district to pay for a private school. That's right. Every special ed child has a right to a free and appropriate public education. If the education is not appropriate, the school has to pay for an appropriate education. And the last thing that I would say, work with your child outside of school. Work with your child outside of school. Help them get up to grade level and understand that special ed is not to be for the rest of your child's academic career. When you fill your child is ready to exit special ed, you should exit them from special ed. And not only that, if you fill your child with misdiagnosed, you should get them re-evaluated to see if they ever should have been in special ed. And if you do find out that your child should have another been in special ed, or if you find out that they should have been in special ed, but never were, you're now entitled to what's known as compensatory education. The school district has to pay you money for all the years your child was in special ed or shouldn't have been, or the school has to pay you money for all the years your child should have been in special ed and never was. So let's say your kid is in the eighth grade. You've been asking for speech evaluation for years. They never gave it to you. In eighth grade you find out the child does have a speech in language impairment. And you first made your request when your son of daughter was in first grade. Now that in eighth grade, guess what? The school owes you 70 years of compensatory education money for speech. The money don't go to you. The money goes to the companies that you're going to contract with to provide your child with speech therapy for all the years that they never got it. Compensatory ed is never over to it's over. And keep in mind federal, Statue of Limitations on Special Ed Lawsuits is two years. Two years. So when you do have an issue involving your child, make sure you appeal or apply for due process before the two year window expires. And of course, if you ever need to reach me, I will still free black parent teleconference every Tuesday, more than 16, until 8 a.m. And you can reach me at doctor umarjohnson.com to get more information about that. Thank you and I so appreciate your time because this is what B positive media is all about. We don't just talk about the things. We give you the tools that you need for your own personal definition of success and peace. So you have given us some great nuggets for our parents. So we thank you so much for your time. And we look forward to continuing this conversation later by phone. Yes, man. This is Dr. Umar Johnson and this is B Dawson. I'm in Columbus, Georgia. And he just blessed us. Thank you, peace.