by Krista Hanson

I learned they existed just weeks before we met. I attended a meeting to create something called an Individualized Education Plan — the IEP, they called it, rolling it out like a one-syllable word. My son’s IEP detailed the minutes per week he would have with school-based therapists. I was a child who moved through schools without ever meeting these people, so I had no idea how central to my son’s experience of school they would become.