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5 Top Parental Special Education Advocacy Tips to Benefit Your Child!

My top 5 advocacy tips:

1. Trust your instincts. If you think, your child has disabilities in certain areas trust yourself. No one knows your child like you do, and you are the best judge of what will help your child learn. It is my experience that special education personnel may try and tell you that your instincts are wrong, but only accept this, if there is concrete evidence to back it up. You are the only advocate that your child has, and they are depending on you to advocate for needed related and special education services.

2. Important educational issues need to be handled by letters not telephone calls or e mails, so that you can begin developing a paper trail for documentation, you may need in the future, to help you in a dispute with special education personnel. As far as sending e-mails to special education personnel, I do not like to use e-mail, as e-mails are kept in an electronic record, and not in the child’s written educational record.

If you have a verbal conversation with school personnel and want to document the conversation, you can always write a short letter to the person that you had the conversations with. Try and keep the letter to one page, date it, and give a summary of the conversation. Also, keep a copy for yourself.

3. If special education personnel say something that does not sound right to you, ask them: “Please show me in writing where in Federal or State law it states you have the right to do what you want to do or not do what I asked you to do to benefit my child’s education.” In my opinion, this is one of the most important advocacy skills that parents need to learn, because of the amount of misinformation that is given to parents. If school personnel cannot show you in writing from Federal or State law where it states they have the right to do something or do not have to do something you asked them to do, you know that they are not being truthful.

Use the same procedure if school personnel state that they have to do something, or cannot do something because it is school policy-ask to see the policy in writing, and also ask for a transcript of the board meeting where the policy was passed.

4. If your school district evaluates your child for disabilities and states that your child does not have any disabilities (even though you believe they do), and is not eligible for special education services, you have the right to an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) at public expense (which means that the school district pays for it). You must disagree with the school’s evaluation, (could be over the actual testing, the areas tested, the interpretation of the testing, the findings and conclusion of the testing, etc) to be able to receive and obtain an IEE at public expense.

5. Educate yourself on all laws related to special education and disabilities and requirements so that when your school district tries to say things that are not truthful, you have the information to stand up to them, for the benefit of your child. Learn about State Complaints, Mediation and Due Process to help you resolve any disputes that you have with special education personnel.

By following my top five tips you will well be on your way to successfully advocating for needed services for your child!

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How Do I Start A Home Based Business?

There are probably thousands of home businesses you could choose, but how do you choose the right one? Well this article should help, you see I have already done all the investigations into finding a successful home business for you, so take note as I reveal the different types, which are scams? and whether there is a business model out there for YOU!So What Suits YOU? During your research you should really ask yourself what type of business would suit your lifestyle? I mean, lets say that you have children still at school, that could certainly rule out Forex or Commodity trading, as you must be able to monitor your trading screen pretty much ALL the time, AND THIS IS OBVIOUSLY NOT SUITABLE OR CONGUSIVE to the school run is it? So start by writing down EXACTLY what it is you want from your home business, what you enjoy and how much time you can commit to it, especially in the early days.Make sure that your business of choice is in an area which is of interest to you, working with something that you are passionate about will help you to discipline yourself to do whatever is necessary to succeed, and will help you soldier on when the inevitable roadblocks appear (and they WILL).Make sure the home based business you are thinking of starting is a legitimate one. Many MLM’s for example, in my opinion are bordering on the illegal, so do your due diligence, check out the owners, find out what their motives are, talk to the users of the systems and find out what the success ratio is.There are a lots of reviews posted around the Internet these days on just about everything you could think of, so utilise this resource and gather as much info as you can BEFORE making your decision.How Do I Start A Home Based Business?What about Support? One of the fastest ways to shorten the home business learning curve is to have access to, and the support of, a mentor. There are many home business systems out there which will promise you support and mentoring, but will dramatically fall short on this very important aspect, so another positive to look for is to ensure that any home business you are looking at starting gives you all of the support and training you will need to succeed, but more importantly provides you with the proof that they do, BEFORE you commit.What about cost? Even though running a home based business can be considerably cheaper to start than a traditional bricks and mortar business, there will still be costs, and anyone who tells you otherwise is talking nonsense.For example, you will need a Website and hosting, and you will probably need a marketing budget, as the fastest way for you to get results and start making money, will be to do some paid advertising. But this will really be a decision only you can make based on how quickly you need to see a return on your investment. There are many FREE marketing strategies you can use as well, but these tend to be more long-term, and WILL NOT produce big results quickly. I recommend implementing both free and paid marketing personally.How Do I Start A Home Based Business?Finally, you simply MUST Create a business plan. You know the old adage “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, and this is very true. I have seen many businesses fail simply because they did not have a strategy to work with and therefore could not measure how they were doing. So set-up a plan for your home based business and follow through with it. Again when deciding what business system to invest in, check out the advice you are given on this subject and use this as part of your criteria when making your decision. Any legitimate home based business system SHOULD have within their support program, ALL the advice you would need to help you to create a good business plan to suit YOU.I would like to leave you now with a final piece of advice. Follow your plan through and take consistent daily action. Many people have the right idea and start out with the right intent, but fail to take the necessary actions. And remember that a business, whether it’s a home based business or not cannot succeed overnight.Nothing about running your own home based business will be easy, but if you take my advice and stick to it YOU WILL improve your chances of success a hundredfold.All the best.
-Jon

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A Simple Product Creation and Product Launching Formula

If you tried to think of people involved in product creation, who would come to mind? You may think of Edison, Franklin, or maybe Henry Ford. Would you ever think of yourself as someone who can create a quality product? Product creation is actually relatively easy and product launching is not that tough either! If you follow a few easy to understand steps, you could be starting the product creation and product launching process sooner than you think.

The first step in creating your information product is to know and understand your market. This can be very time-consuming, especially if you are unsure of what to do or where to look to know your market. Studying your niche market and understanding the buzz words and buying patterns can ease the process dramatically. Personally, I would recommend networking with someone who has had success in the niche market you are considering and learn from their results. If they are into product creation and not very business savvy expect some hesitation. If they only sell products and have nothing to do with product launching or product creation you may your first affiliate (sales person)! Something else you can use to find hot trends is with the Google Trends tool.

The second step is the product creation process. Take your niche market and brainstorm ideas and topics relating to it. There are a lot of product launching contests going on recently relating to a newly created internet marketing tool. There are so many aspects to the mentioned niche that literally, and unfortunately, anything can be considered an Internet Marketing tool. The reason that anyone can basically create an Internet Marketing tool is because of something called Private Label Rights products.

What I use private label rights products for, and highly recommend them in this specific manner, is to cure writer’s block especially when it is lingering. Many people base their entire product creation and product launching on a private label rights product. This is where you can start to shine and build a strong brand for yourself. If you set goals for yourself, short-term goals to be exact, you can see your product creation come into being much faster and there is a good chance with less revision needed. If you keep hitting time restraint road blocks; however there is nothing wrong with a slow and steady approach, you can consider outsourcing portions of your project. Outsourcing can be an extremely huge benefit or just as great of a disaster.

You can find someone to outsource work to at a freelance site such as Guru.com or eLance.com. When reviewing proposals it is almost mandatory you perform a background check on them as you are in essence hiring them. Doing a background check on freelancers is as easy as asking for samples of their work and reviewing feedback on the freelance site from previous customers. Depending on the size and requirements of your project this can add up to a decent sized investment, so caution is very important. One tip I always recommend to people looking to hire an individual is to ask them what they can provide you that no one else can. This simple question gives them a chance to “toot their own horn” and acknowledge where they feel most competent as far as their skill set.

The final portion of the product creation and product launching formula is the launch. This can literally make or break the effort, time, and maybe (if you invested) money you put in to your project. There are numerous aspects to product launching and although their relevance is debated in terms to their effect, experts agree all must be followed. The person in your field who you asked for product advice from can help you substantially if you have kept in touch. If not, the first thing you need to do is to create a visually appealing website with flawless design work.

I also mentioned outsourcing before, this is one aspect of product launching I have little strength in and I always outsource this portion. The website does not have to be large however the content (ad copy in Internet Marketing) must be stellar and as perfect as possible. This is where advertising knowledge or experience is beneficial. When the site is set up you now put a lead capture form on your website.

I put two lead capture pages on all products I create on the internet and is one of the best methods of getting a solid start when you are in the product launching stage. When you gain information from a prospect or someone looking to get paid for referring sales you are able to provide them updates or specials. Many people abuse their prospect or affiliate lists by in turn emailing them with a new product daily and I find the recommendations to be totally unrelated to their original need, problem, or interest.

Another stage in the product launching stage is creating a free report or demo version of your product to entice the product to sign up to your email list. Using proper follow up with this can help generate numerous sales for you. One thing you need to ensure is that your free product completely relates to your main product that you are looking to sell.

You are now ready to advertise your product launching to customers as well as the opportunity to sell for affiliates. This is the single aspect that many product creations and launches fail on. It is actually not entirely difficult. One thing you can do is write articles (and a good amount of them) on topics relating to your product. I am a huge advocate of giving a solution in forums. When you join a forum you are normally offered the opportunity to create a signature. In your signature, you should enter the link to your opt-in or lead capture page. When you respond to posts, you are advertising your opportunity.

It is not impossible to create a product and it does not have to take a long time. You need to setup a plan and stick to it. If you get stuck, look at similar and successful products to your own and try and see how they did it. When you sit down and brainstorm you will be surprised with what you can imagine.

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