The Lattice Global
Orientation Program

Prepared Before Day One

Teaching special education in an American classroom is one of the most demanding professional environments in the world. The legal accountability is real. The students are complex. The systems are unfamiliar. Lattice's orientation program is built on the belief that no teacher should walk into that environment alone or underprepared.

Our program has three interlocking components: twelve weeks of online professional training, an intensive in-person workshop, and a storytelling podcast series designed to bring the content to life. Together, they give teachers the knowledge, tools, and human community they need to do this work well.

Online Modules: 12 Weeks of Professional Preparation

Before teachers set foot in a classroom, they complete twelve weeks of structured online modules designed to build the theoretical foundation for navigating U.S. special education. Each module runs roughly two to two and a half hours.

The curriculum begins with the big picture: how American schools are governed, how the K-12 system is structured, and how special education fits within it. Teachers move from federal law (IDEA, Section 504, ADA) into the mechanics of IEP development and implementation, then into the specific disability categories they are most likely to encounter: Serious Emotional Disability, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Specific Learning Disabilities. The final modules address behavior management, evidence-based interventions, progress monitoring, and the RTI/MTSS frameworks that shape school-wide support systems.

By the end of the twelve weeks, teachers understand the legal landscape they are accountable to, the documentation they are responsible for, and the evidence behind the strategies they will use.

In-Person Sessions: From Theory to Practice

The 3.5-day in-person workshop is where knowledge becomes skill. These are not lectures. They are facilitator-led practicums built around real student data, real IEP documents, and real scenarios.

Teachers spend the first full day working on PLAAFPs (Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance), learning to write SMART goals from student data, and assigning accommodations that are actually grounded in what a student needs. Day two moves into executive functioning and behavior: simulations, case studies, and an environment audit that asks teachers to look critically at the spaces they are about to enter. Day three covers academic interventions across reading, writing, and math, including the Science of Reading, the Step Up to Writing model, and the Concrete-Representational-Abstract framework for math.

The workshop closes with Tool Kit Creation: every teacher leaves with a personalized bank of academic interventions, behavior visuals, and classroom-ready resources, built by them, for their students, ready for day one.

The Podcast: Stories Behind the Frameworks

Running alongside the twelve online modules is a podcast series that does what a curriculum document cannot: put a face and a story behind each topic.

Each episode is anchored in a real conversation with someone whose life is connected to the content, a parent who navigated the evaluation process, a teacher who built his career around managing challenging behaviors in classrooms, a former police officer who became a leader in restorative practices, a mother raising an autistic daughter across two countries, a journalist who conquered dyslexia. These are not case studies. They are people.

The goal is simple: When our teachers sit down together to talk about a student in crisis, or an IEP meeting that went sideways, or a behavior they don't know how to reach, we want them thinking about real people, not just frameworks. The podcast builds that instinct.

Ready to Lead

This is not a typical onboarding. It is a twelve-week investment in the professional formation of teachers who are doing some of the most important and least credited work in American education. Lattice teachers arrive knowing the law, knowing the strategies, knowing the students they are most likely to serve, and knowing each other.

That is what preparation looks like.