Our special educators at our high school have been asked to formally keep track of the services that they are giving students under their caseload next school year. My colleague, Kerri Lunn, and I sat with one of the case managers to truly understand all that they are being asked to document. We wanted to make sure that they will not spend hours each week documenting the necessary information.
Based on the conversation, we landed on creating a spreadsheet template that each case manager can make a copy of. Things we considered:
- Streamlined workflow so that they are making selections from as many drop down columns as possible – less typing the better
- Each student has its own sheet tab so that finding information later in the year can be found easily
- Use of column stats can give a quick overview of each student when meetings arise or questions are asked in an email throughout the school year
- Workflow that all special education case managers can work with – we met with the whole team to get feedback and made adjustments based on their suggestions
The Template
Below is a video (with no sound) demonstrating how a case manager would use the Google Spreadsheet. The video highlights…
- Renaming the sheet tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet to each student name
- Depending on the number of tabs opened, user can select the hamburger icon on the bottom left corner to find the student needed
- Add in the information for the particular student
- When needed to add new content, it is suggested to add a row above so that the latest information is at the top of the spreadsheet – very helpful if there are over 100 entries as the year moves forward
- When the time comes, case manager can select a column and choose column stats to find out the information that is needed
If you are interested in a copy for yourself, click HERE. Feel free to adapt as you see fit.
Really hopeful that this spreadsheet will streamline the process and the amount of time it will take to add the content on the spreadsheet. I am not an expert in the special education field. We just wanted to make sure that the task at hand didn’t seem too daunting to handle.
A couple of case managers are going to test out this process this summer during summer school and report back to the whole team to determine if what was designed will work for the school year moving forward. If not, we will make small enhancements.
If you have any questions on how you can create something similar, feel free to reach out.
And that is my Spiel…
Craig M Sheil 