Advocate With Confidence
Gain the skills, knowledge and understanding needed to become your child’s most effective school advocate.
Next Cohort Begins in January 2024
Resolve your most frustrating school advocacy problems.
Never be confused or uncertain about your next steps again.
This entire course is built around years of working with families just like you: you want to work well with the school team, you know what kind of environment your child needs in order to thrive and you pour your energy into trying to communicate effectively – yet you continually find yourself exasperated, ready to either give up or fire off yet another email.
Course Features
Weekly Modules
What if instead of another exercise in frustration, you had a clear and specific strategy for making requests, documenting communication and escalating concerns? What if you could take your advocacy to the next level and drastically increase your chances of success? Welcome to Advocate With Confidence – you are in the right place.
Welcome & Orientation
The first week of the course is all about setting you up for success and making sure you have access to all the resources and tools.
Needs Based Advocacy
Understand what needs-based support means and how to identify and advocate for your child’s needs. We’ll also explore how funding models work at the provincial and district levels.
The Human Rights Context
Exploring how the human rights code connects with provincial education policy to influence your child’s right to learn and key court decisions that impact your advocacy.
Understanding Policies & Procedures
After this module, policies and procedures will no longer elude or confuse you. Gain practical skills to find, understand and utilize policies and procedures in your advocacy.
IEPs
Dive into the purpose and structure of IEPs, how to maximize the IEP as an advocacy tool and what to do if you are struggling to get an IEP in place .
Meetings & Communication
Meetings are hard. Learn how to make the most of them while managing your stress levels. Valuable skills for requesting, preparing for, conducting and follow-up on meetings are the core of this module.
Resolving & Escalating Concerns
Along the way, there will be challenges. Whether early or not until later, it’s critical to be prepared for roadblocks by knowing your options and taking strategic action.
Managing Advocacy Exhaustion
Along the way, there will be challenges. Whether early or not until later, it’s critical to be prepared for roadblocks by knowing your options and taking strategic action.
Frequently Asked Questions
Absolutely! Advocacy skills are essential for all parents and caregivers regardless of the circumstances. In most Canadian schools, support is based on need rather than on diagnosis. This course will help you even if your child does not currently qualify for an IEP.
Yes! There is no better time to build your advocacy skills than now. The sooner you build your understanding, knowledge and skills to become the most effective advocate possible, the better. Ideally, families are able to take the course in the year prior to their child’s planned kindergarten entry.
We encourage families to submit the Advocate With Confidence course to AFU for reimbursement. Because this course is new in Fall 2023, it’s not clear yet whether they will approve the course. We will update the FAQ section once we have more information.
The weekly calls take place on Thursdays at 12 pm PST. Each call is 60 minutes and includes training on the weekly module. After the recorded call ends, there is an optional Q & A session. The Q & A session is not recorded.
The first week of the course is designed to get you oriented and up to speed on how to utilize the online tools. After that, weekly office hours sessions and the private Facebook group give you a place to solve any challenges. Be sure to double-check that you have the necessary tech tools to get the full benefit of the course, most importantly stable internet access.
