Learning Plans: A Shared Philosophy

by Jess Durrett-Hansher

Somewhere along the way, learning plans became documents written for compliance and keeping schools accountable instead of truly supporting a child’d development. A standard learning plan communicates what the school will do with specific, measurable goals and accommodations for a particular child. In addition to these basic elements, a learning plan should outline the roles of the adults in the child’s life.

The template I developed comes from years of finding ways to align with families. It's organized into three columns: what our assessments and observations reveal about the child, what the school can provide, and what the family can do to increase the child's access to learning. 

The goal is to align everyone involved, so the child feels consistent, coordinated support at school and at home. For example, the math section of my template doesn't just say to practice facts at home. It describes how a child still relying on counting strategies can build the flexible number sense to take larger jumps, and offers ways to support that through conversation, games, and everyday number observations, like a carton of eggs or setting the table. The family gets the reasoning, so they can apply it in contexts most curricula don’t.

Wellness teams understand the importance of developing the whole child, but many learning plans don't reflect this. Language and literacy, mathematics, sensory and motor development, social-emotional development, and executive functioning are critical to school success. Covering only academic goals and accommodations implies, even unintentionally, that learning is primarily an academic event. The template I developed is built on a different premise: learning is something a whole child does. Self-regulation, cognitive flexibility, and emotional literacy develop in a child's life at home as much as in any school-based intervention. A family reading about anxiety and perfectionism with their child, playing games that build flexible thinking, and modeling how adults plan and problem-solve is doing developmental work that a school intervention cannot replicate, and a learning plan can be the invitation to do that work intentionally.

Building and presenting a plan with this philosophy requires a genuine belief that families are partners, not recipients, and this needs to show up in how the plan is written, presented, discussed, modified, and executed. Partnership means a family's knowledge of and time with their child, deep and irreplaceable, are parts of the clinical picture.

In practice, this means the plan presentation is a conversation, not a delivery. Asking families what they've already noticed and tried at home comes first. Then, the reasoning behind each recommendation gets explained in language that's accessible without being condescending. Being honest about what the school doesn't yet know about the child, one of the most trust-building things a team can communicate, signals the plan is a living, iterative document.

Families I've worked with across many years and many schools respond to this approach with relief that someone is finally giving them a framework and an explanation of development. From there, the partnership can make a meaningful difference for the child, family, and school.

Note: AI was used to assist with copyediting and refining this post.