Meet Michelle Velazquez, Owner

Special Education Advocate. Master IEP Coach®.
Creator of the Stimulation Profile System.
Former special education student. Special Education Mom of two.

I bring five years of direct special education advocacy experience, grounded in real classrooms, real IEPs, and real kids. My work is backed by advanced leadership and Collaborative Special Education Leadership training, more than thirty hours of targeted professional development in that space, and behavior intervention training rooted in a brain-based lens. I am a certified facilitator for the Master IEP Coach® IEP Development Wheel™ and the author and founder of the Stimulation Profile System, a classroom-tested framework that helps school teams connect behavior, regulation, and executive functioning before crisis hits.

Districts trust me because I understand their language, their constraints, and their responsibilities.

Parents trust me because I understand what it feels like to sit at the IEP table with a lump in your throat and a stack of paperwork that does not match the child you are raising.

I work at the intersection of both worlds, helping schools refine their systems while helping families find their voice. I am not guessing. I am not just reacting. I am looking at the full picture and helping everyone else see it too.

Before I Was an Advocate

Before I was an advocate, I was a special education student who was constantly misunderstood. You know the list: Reading Comprehension, Listening Comprehension, Written Expression, Executive Functioning, etc. Those Present Levels, devastating for my mother to have had to sit there through as a Mother who knew nothing about Special Education, just hoping her daughter was getting the support she needed. I sat in those classrooms struggling to read at grade level, to get the thoughts in my head onto paper, and to actually process what my teachers were saying. I remember being that student in 8th-grade English, trying so hard to write one essay and feeling like my brain just would not cooperate, no matter how badly I wanted it to.

All through high school, I was in the resource room with the special education teacher, begging for more help and more time. I remember wondering, “Why does my teacher not understand how hard this one assignment is for me?” and “I hate coming to school; why can't I just drop out?” I spent more than a few days sitting in the principal’s office for my behavior—sometimes because of my choices, and sometimes because my struggles were showing up in ways I could not control. I was one of those kids who was mislabeled with ADHD, and that experience is a big part of why I advocate so hard now for students to be heard, understood, and supported appropriately.

But here is the other side of that story: those two teachers and that principal are the reason I am who I am today. They never gave up on me. They showed me what special education is supposed to look like—support that sees the whole child, not just the behavior or the test scores. Those kinds of staff shape student outcomes, and I know it can happen because I am living proof. My work as an advocate is a direct extension of that truth: every child in special education can build a successful life and overcome the struggles that feel overwhelming right now, when the right people are willing to stand with them and do the work.

I was also the parent sitting in meetings trying to explain Autism, anxiety, sensory overload, shutdowns, and after-school meltdowns to teams who only saw the quiet child in the classroom. I know exactly how it feels to be told “We do not see that here” or “That is medical, not educational,” as if those statements close the door on support. Those experiences shaped everything about how I practice now. I remember what it was like to walk out to the parking lot, wondering if I had said too much, not enough, or the wrong thing altogether.

As an Advocate & Master IEP Coach®

Today, I use that lived experience, along with my training and professional expertise, to serve as a bridge instead of a wedge. I help families translate what they see at home into language that school teams can understand and act on. I help schools interpret behavior as a signal rather than a character flaw, while still honoring accountability and student expectations. I am very clear about one core truth: behavior is not the crisis. It is the signal. Sometimes that signal is disability-related, sometimes it is genetic, sometimes it is environmental, and sometimes we genuinely do not know yet. But regardless of the cause, it deserves to be understood before it is judged.

With parents, my work is about turning overwhelm into clarity and emotion into a plan. We look at evaluations, diagnoses, behavior logs, and progress reports together. I help you understand what is medical-based, what educational-based, and where those lines overlap in the real world.

When behavior, anxiety, sensory overload, and “we are not sure what else to try” start to drive the school day, I am the person people call when they want clarity, not chaos. Parents come to me when their gut is saying something is still off, even though the progress report says “making adequate progress.” School teams invite me in when behavior plans are not matching what staff are seeing in the classroom, when records use words like “refusal” or “non-participation,” and everyone can feel that the documentation is missing the context. My role is not to blow up the table. My role is to slow the room down, name what is actually happening, and build a plan that makes sense for the student and the system around them.

We shape your concerns into clear talking points and written requests so you are not just “venting” at an IEP meeting but leading a focused, documented conversation. When you are thinking, “This sounds like my child, but I have no idea how to say it,” that is where I step in.

With school districts, my work is about refinement and fidelity. I help teams reframe “defiance” and “refusal” as signals that something is not working, without erasing expectations or the student code of conduct. I support leadership and staff in understanding how regulation and executive functioning show up through behavior, attendance, work completion, shutdowns, etc. Through the Stimulation Profile System and targeted coaching, I help districts implement strategies that make their documentation more accurate, their plans more responsive, and their IEP conversations more collaborative and less combative.

I believe students should not have to mask, white-knuckle, or collapse their way through the school day because adults did not have the language or framework to support them differently. I also believe staff should not be left to guess their way through complex behavior without clear systems, consistent tools, and realistic expectations. My work exists in that middle ground. I am here to make sure accountability, support, and understanding can coexist.

If you are a parent, you do not have to choose between staying silent and going to war with the school. If you are a school or district leader, you do not have to choose between protecting your staff and acknowledging that something in the system needs to shift. There is another way forward, and it starts with conversations rooted in facts, framed with care, and delivered with calm authority.

This is what I bring to the table. This is what I do every day.

I help turn insight into action and behavior into a story the whole team can finally understand—so the student at the center of all of this can actually get what they need.