Oregon Trail taught me how fun and frustrating it would be to travel in the 1800s, Floppy Disks taught me how to transfer data from computer to computer, Moon Shoes were so neat, Gak Splat was a great game that I played with my brother, Trolls were one of my favorite toys, Nintendo 64 was ultimately better than PlayStation but made our thumbs sore, I learned that Carmen Sandigo was possible to catch, Mavis Beacon taught me how to type, but my peers taught me American Sign Language. 

My peers taught me another language, although they never were in my classroom. Instead, I was a peer that had the opportunity to visit the "hearing impaired classroom" now referred to as “deaf/hard of hearing or DHH classroom”. I would spend the morning with about five other students that used ASL and/or Spoken English to communicate. They had a dedicated teacher of the deaf with a dual license in speech-language pathology and instructional assistants in the room. I was a peer model in their classroom. I would participate in their morning meeting time, practice vocabulary, etc. 

One morning I was with a peer in the class play grocery store learning about shopping and grocery item vocabulary and money. The student I was with was upset due to communication barriers, he used ASL and wore hearing aids. I remember signing with him and all of a sudden it seemed that he started yelling and running around the room. I remember thinking “oh no! I upset him today!” I jumped up to let the teacher know what was occurring and he started to tell the teacher that he was so happy and excited. I remember thinking “what? What is he saying?”  

He was shouting that I was signing to him fully in ASL. He was excited that one of his peers was signing full sentences to him. I was communicating with him in a peer setting like kids typically do. However, he hadn’t experienced that until fifth grade. 

I am not sure where he is today. But that memory is something I think of often when I talk to school districts, educators, families about universal design and the power of peers being with their peers.  My peers changed and shaped my life and my career choice. My peers belonged in my fifth-grade classroom so they could change and shape every peer's life, not just the one peer model in their room. 

What types of programs are you seeing in your school district to ensure all students are with their peers?  If you have a program, research or tools to share consider putting in a proposal for the Access to Education State Conference! We would love to hear your story! Submit your proposal by May 14th! 

PATINS can help your staff and school teams with professional development in UDL and AEM. Join over 14 school districts next year with The AEMing for Achievement Grant in building your district’s UDL and AEM policy and procedures to ensure all students have access to grade-level curriculum and their peers! The grant application is open to apply now! 

For this week's blog, I'm beyond delighted to share an incredible story of a student's communication journey to success experienced by my AEMing for Achievement grant team in Perry Township. I'd like to thank two members of the grant team, Callie Herrenbruck and Kelsey Norris, for their collaboration in sharing this story. Please enjoy!

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I have this student. You most likely have one, too. This student is what I would call a communication conundrum. It’s not that this student doesn’t communicate, because he most certainly does, but when asked if unfamiliar individuals understand what he is attempting to communicate? Probably not.


This student most often communicates to express enjoyment, request preferred objects and actions, and refuse non-preferred activities and objects. He does not (YET) verbalize but will vocalize using a variety of pitches depending upon the context. He moves his body to convey his refusals and moves others to make his requests. This student’s laugh is one of the most infectious ones I’ve ever heard, but when he is upset he has significant self-injurious behaviors.

I, along with this student’s teachers, other therapists, and paraprofessionals were constantly attempting to find the “magic tool” for communication. This is where we have all thanked our lucky stars that our school district was one of the AEMing for Achievement Grant recipients, as being a part of the grant includes a communication package!

Members of our grant team and the teacher of record (TOR) met with Jessica Conrad for an in-depth problem-solving session. Several topics were discussed during the session including behavior(s), motivators, previous trials, and goals. The best part of the session was having someone from PATINS who is extremely knowledgeable about communication and communication tools, along with having access to a variety of resources, share their knowledge with the team.

Following the problem-solving session with Jessica and members of the grant team, this student’s TOR, and the rest of his team, put the suggestions to work. One of the suggestions was to use a mid-tech device (Logan ProxTalker). The device was borrowed from the PATINS Lending Library. Almost immediately, this student “picked up” use of the device to request desired objects and actions. He had NEVER done this with any other communication tool! Absolutely amazing! This student’s family then met with the team to learn more about the Logan ProxTalker-- how the student uses it at school, and what the next steps would be in obtaining his own device. Upon seeing this student use the device, they were blown away, to say the least! Watching their reaction to him using the device was one of the best moments in my career.

This student continues to appear to prefer using the Logan ProxTalker, as opposed to other communication tools to make requests. I will be honest and say that he does not love communicating with the device every day. He may even meander away when prompted to use it, but don’t we all have our days?


So, is what you see really what you get? ...not necessarily. If you didn’t know this student, you might see him putting cards on a machine and the machine talking. What you don’t see is the progress he’s made in being able to effectively communicate his wants and his likes/dislikes. You might not see him participating in joint attention with an adult regarding his interests, and you might not see the relief his parents show when this student demonstrates growth in his communication! Thanks again to PATINS for helping our team and this student to grow in his communication capacity. As the Starfish Story says, “It made a difference to this one!”

Written By: Kelsey Norris and Callie Herrenbruck, Perry Township Schools | Pictures used with parent permission

From Ireland to Arizona

If you are reading this from Indiana, you may, like me, be looking out at tulips in the snow. It will be gone by this evening, but not soon forgotten in this year of adapting because you really have few choices over your circumstances. 

I had the pleasure of meeting our PATINS guest bloggers for this week at our Mid-Winter Online EdCamp. Ellie Sear and Nina Koeppen are juniors at Butler University studying elementary education. They participated in our sessions about assistive technology to learn about resources and shared their own pandemic story of needing to adapt when they found out that their year of studying abroad had been cancelled. Ellie and Nina met as freshman roommates and here is their pandemic adventure story: 

Late at night in our freshman year dorm, we would lay in bed dreaming about studying abroad our junior year. By sophomore year we had put together a plan to leave Butler in the fall of 2020 to continue our studies of education in Northern Ireland. We researched about what type of clothes we would need to pack, what classes we could enroll in, and even watched videos about the accents people in Northern Ireland may have. Our dream was becoming a reality. Then, COVID-19 took the world by storm. We received the heartbreaking email that our study abroad dream was no longer a reality. It was devastating. 

Rather than adventuring to Northern Ireland in the fall of 2020, we moved back onto Butler’s campus. While we were disappointed by the effects of the pandemic, we were determined to make the best of the situation. So, we started brainstorming ways we could travel and experience new things safely and responsibly. 

We reimagined what studying abroad meant and created our own experience. During this semester, Spring 2021, we have traveled across the United States. We enrolled in online classes and planned to live in Florida, Arizona, and Colorado. Since January, we have lived on the beach, in the desert, and the mountains. Along the way, we have stopped at National Parks and breathtaking cities and monuments. We have learned how to broaden our horizons despite the unforeseen circumstances 2020 would throw at us. While it is not Europe, we have come to love exploring the United States.

Unlike study abroad, where you would still have a college campus to call home, our semester-long trip has been completely remote with no “home base”. Our connection to school has been solely Zoom meetings, Canvas assignments, and our lifeline of Google Drive. 

We were somewhat used to remote learning from the unforeseen circumstances of March 2020, but fortunately, all of our classes were in person during our Fall 2020 semester so going back to remote was an adjustment. This journey has taught us a lot regarding how much technology means in the world of education and how it can be a powerful tool in building connections. 

Luckily, we have been able to keep in contact with professors to work on projects remotely, maintain relationships with classmates over Zoom and FaceTime, and still feel a part of the Butler family we have back in Indiana. We would have never been able to have these social, historical, and cultural learning experiences if we did not have this technology to connect us. 

We both are planners. We have both had a four-year plan since the first day of freshman year, with most of our classes being taken together. This trip seemed like the perfect way for us to step outside of our comfort zones with someone we felt safe with. Both of us can agree that we would not have seen this much of our own country had it not been for taking this chance. Being from Illinois, the prairie land, we have pushed ourselves to hike the Grand Canyon and Ski in Colorado. It was easy for us to accept the fate that seemed to be in front of us, no longer being able to study abroad, but we wanted to take advantage of any opportunity to grow our independence and awareness of the world.

I (Bev) hope these ladies land a teaching position in Indiana. We need great planners like them who are also willing to release the plan, face a hardship, and embrace adaptability. Ellie and Nina have become participants at our Tuesday night Twitter Chat. We hope you’ll join us too to hear more about their teaching journey.