Hi again,
First week of August. Your new caseload landed yesterday — a spreadsheet, a stack of files, fourteen names you're still learning yourself. And on your way to the copier, a gen-ed teacher catches you between bells: "Hey, I've got one of yours third period. What do I actually do for him?"
It's a fair question. She's not being lazy. The honest answer lives somewhere around page 23 of a legally binding document she is never, ever going to sit down and read. And you have about fourteen more versions of that hallway conversation coming this week.
The fix is old-school: a one-page "accommodations at a glance" sheet. One row per student, plain words, what to do and what to avoid, how to reach you. Veteran teachers have been making these forever. The idea was never the problem. Building one from scratch, in August, while you're still finding your classroom keys... that's what never quite happens.
That's the piece AI can hand you. The blank sheet and the wording. Not the students.
The loudest "don't paste this" I'll ever write
Before we build it, the warning label — because the shortcut here is so tempting. You have a stack of IEPs. The AI summarizes documents. You can feel the idea forming.
Don't. An IEP is wall-to-wall identifying information — name, birthdate, school, scores, disability category, the family's private business on every page. It is maybe the single worst document you could ever paste into an AI tool. Not even to "just pull the accommodations out." Not even with the name deleted. The whole file stays in your secure systems, full stop.
Here's the good news: the AI never needed the IEP anyway. It needs two things that have nothing to do with any specific child: a blank template, and plain-language wording for accommodations that show up on half the caseloads in America. Extended time is extended time. No student required.
The prompt
You are an experienced special education teacher creating a one-page "accommodations at a glance" sheet for general education teachers. Build me two things. First, a clean one-page template with blank fields I'll fill in by hand later: student initials, class period, key accommodations, what to do / what to avoid, and how to reach me. Second, plain-language explanations of these common accommodations, so a gen-ed teacher knows exactly what to do: [list the common accommodations across your caseload, e.g., extended time, preferential seating, chunked assignments — no student names or details]. Keep each explanation to one or two sentences, focused on the action the teacher takes. Don't invent any accommodations I didn't list.
You'll get back a clean shell and a set of translations: "chunked assignments" becomes "break the assignment into smaller pieces and hand them out one at a time," which is a sentence a gen-ed teacher can actually act on fifth period.
One heads-up: the template comes back as plain text, not a formatted page. Paste it into a doc and turn it into a table; that part takes two minutes. The wording is the part you couldn't have written between bells.
Read the wording like the professional you are. It's a draft. If an explanation doesn't match what that accommodation means in your building, fix it — you know your campus, the AI doesn't.
Then close the AI tab. The second half happens entirely in your own document, on your own secure system: fill in each student's row by hand. Initials, periods, their specific accommodations. Names and specifics never touch the tool. They never needed to.
One more check before anything goes out: your district may have rules about how accommodation information travels — some want it hand-delivered, not emailed; some have a required format. And if your district has an AI-use policy, that's the final word on the prompt side too. Ask your case-management lead first. Their rules win, every time.
The IEP is the legal document. The one-pager is what actually happens in third period.
The part nobody tells you
The forty pages protect the student on paper. The one page protects the student on a random Tuesday in October, when a teacher with 130 kids has four seconds to remember that this one gets the word bank. An accommodation only works if the adult in the room remembers it exists. This sheet is how they remember.
And when a gen-ed teacher asks you the questions the sheet can't answer — service minutes, eligibility, "does he really need this?" — that's not a sheet conversation. Route it back through your case-management process. The sheet covers the daily moves; the team covers the decisions.
Try it this week
Before the first full week of classes: as you do your first read-through of each IEP (in your secure system, where it belongs), keep a running list of the accommodations you see. No names, just the accommodations. That list is all the AI ever needs. Run the prompt, fix the wording, then fill in your students by hand. Get it into your gen-ed teachers' hands before they've formed their impressions of your kids. That timing matters more than the formatting.
Then hit reply and tell me the one accommodation you find yourself explaining over and over. I'm collecting the trickiest ones for a future plain-language list, and yours is probably on somebody else's caseload too.
Talk soon,
Shaun
P.S. — This sheet is exactly the kind of thing going into the IEP Time-Saver Pack I'm building: ready-to-use templates and prompts for the paperwork that eats your evenings. Nothing to buy yet, no link. If you'd want it when it's ready, just reply with the word "pack" so I know to keep building.
A quick but important note: this newsletter is for general educational and informational purposes only. I'm a special education teacher sharing time-saving ideas. The views here are my own and don't represent any school district or employer. I'm not a lawyer, and nothing here is legal, compliance, or professional advice. Always follow your district's and state's policies, especially on AI use and student privacy, and check with the right person in your district before acting on anything significant. You are the professional: review and finalize everything yourself. And never put student names or identifying details into any AI tool.