Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Lessons From the CADRE Symposium - Part I #CADRE

I was able to attend the CADRE Symposium in Eugene, Oregon late last month.  This is the first of a series of posts on lessons learned at the Symposium.

This outstanding conference brings together practitioners in special education dispute resolution and thinkers, academics, advocates, lawyers and public agency representatives. The CADRE staff does a truly amazing job of putting together a conference. To paraphrase the great Yogi Berra: the conference was 90% inspiration and half great education about new ideas, promising practices and successful strategies.

The best thing about any CADRE conference is the people. I got a chance to catch up with old friends, network with new friends and to interact with a number of fun people. As always the CADRE staff were the true highlights of the conference- ensuring that all participants had a great experience. They are amazing people. It is also noteworthy that OSEP sent three very knowledgeable staff people who attended the entire conference and participated actively in many sessions. A fourth representative of OSEP was one of the keynote speakers.  The fact that the federal agency charged with administering IDEA participated so actively greatly enhanced the conference for most participants.

My sessions went very well. I want to thank all who attended the Professional Development Institute session on writing and the concurrent session providing a legal update. There was a lot of helpful participation  and insightful comments in both sessions. Thank you.

The posts to follow in this series will pertain to some of the lessons that I learned while at this Symposium. It may not be a substitute for actually attending the conference, but I can share some of the most significant information that I learned. Stay tuned.

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