Deciding to do one thing, is also deciding to not do something else. Likewise, to believe one thing, is simultaneously to not believe something else. This almost certainly seems like a simplistic statement...one that is nearly self-evident. Yet, when one begins to contemplate daily decisions, even routine or minor ones, from this virtually-transposed perspective, things can start to be inspected differently.  

I had a friend once, whom I haven't spoken to in many years. Like most people I have had any length of contact with, he said a lot of things, most of which I do not remember even the notion of. However, one particular statement he verbalized to me nearly 20 years ago, has remained with me, word for word.  

He said, "You are always going down one road or the other with every single decision you make, but never the middle." He continued, "Any time you think you're in the middle, you're actually on one path, but thinking about the other path." He concluded with, "Every decision and every action is either moving you in one direction or the other, but never both directions at the same time." 

He wasn't a really great friend, but I've always remembered these particular words from him. I try to meaningfully and regularly ruminate on the deep implications of their meaning. I was also recently prompted to think of this ever-protruding philosophy in my life in a slightly different way, which I anticipated to be worth discussing here.  

There's a question that tends to get posed consistently, whether I'm providing a training, sitting with my office computer, checking emails from my phone on-the-go, or participating in a meeting. That question has to do with two separate, but very related concepts: ALL students' ability to work toward grade-level standards and which accommodations are/are not permitted on high stakes testing. Conclusively, questions that indicate one belief...one path, which is simultaneously not believing something else, according to this philosophy at hand. 

I pose that these questions represent beliefs, rather than simple factual inquiries. Asking me which shoes I put on this morning, could be a simple factual inquiry. In contrast, asking about allowable accommodations on a high stakes test or how it could be possible for ALL students to work toward grade-level standards, proposes that the inquiry comes from someone who is traveling down the path to the left, while thinking about the path to the right. 

While I cannot fault this, and much could be said at this juncture about the value of reflection while on one path or the other, the actuality of the path that is underway (decisions and beliefs), is that the student who is figuratively walking with the facilitator, is actively traveling on ONE path, but not both at the same time and not the middle. When accounting for the relatively limited time our students have with us, each step taken in one direction, potentially sacrifices steps that could be taken in the other direction.  

By deciding that what ultimately matters, is the allowable accommodations on a high stakes test, one is also deciding that the tools that could engage a student meaningfully for "the other 175 days" of school are of secondary importance. Traveling down this particular path seems to be rather common and also understandable given the gravity of these tests! Yet, allowing this anticipation of the end of the year to decide the path to get there, seems quite counter-intuitive to our ultimate goal.  

We know that the more actively engaged our students are in a curriculum that is accessible to them, the more accurately we can predict their success on that high stakes test (with or without the tools) and more importantly, their success toward independence as uniquely awesome and creative humans in society.  

When we slow down to think before we take that next step or make that next decision, it is of significant consequence to ponder what we are also deciding not to do... not to believe... not to expect.  

Decide to expect greatness from ALL of your students in ways that you can't even envision yet. Take steps that demonstrate your travel down this path decisively. Seek support, training, and trials of tools, from PATINS. Be aware of what your steps, your decisions, your beliefs also mean that you are not choosing, not traveling toward, not believing in. Deciding to do one thing, is also deciding to not do something else. To believe one thing, is simultaneously to not believe something else.

For many educators, it’s about the time of year when the adrenaline of the school-start may begin to wane, the fatigue of many early mornings/late nights is no longer remedied with six cups of coffee, and the compassion poured into every single learner each day has left the drain plug pulled and the tank nearly depleted. 

By this time, you’ve solved many “puzzles,” endeavored WITH kids through all kinds of issues not related to the curriculum, maneuvered strategically to improve access to materials and instruction, skipped lunches, stayed late with struggling learners, and work-dreamt repeatedly about the one or two you just cannot seem to reach YET! 

You’ve probably also noticed that this is the time of year in Indiana when the summer foliage of teeming green has started to convert to vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges! Have you wondered why this happens? In parts of the country, like Indiana, where trees are to withstand rigorous and grueling freezing temperatures over winter, they cleverly reduce themselves to their strongest parts!  

The leaves of a deciduous or broadleaf tree contain thin fluids that are susceptible to freezing, making them relatively delicate, weak, and unprotected by the coating of wax that evergreen trees exhibit. These shrewd trees conserve energy, thus preserving themselves, by shedding their leaves! This begins to occur when their chemical light receptors start to detect the change in daylight hours, which can happen with as little as a 30 minute reduction in daily sunshine!

As downcast as the long winters here can tend to be at times, I do find a genuine appeal in how and why our trees transform themselves in order to focus on their strongest parts! Trees slowly let go of their leaves through the magnificent display of Fall color that we are beginning to see, in order to direct their energy to their trunks, stems, branches, and bark to weather the cold winter! Brilliant! 

I wonder if we might take a lesson from our Indiana trees? I wonder about my own “toughest parts” and which parts of myself I might be able to temporarily let go of in order to conserve the energy that is available and focus on my foundational structures. What parts of yourself are your strongest and most resilient? What might you be able to let go of, in order to grow those strongest parts of yourself? What about your students…what could be set aside temporarily, in order to focus time, energy, and resources on the strengths of each student? 

As educators, we tend to also be perfectionists and we strive to address so many things with our students all at once, that we sometimes create our own greatest barriers. Perhaps, letting some "leaves" fall off that continually distract from the more important tasks at hand could lead to more of the outcomes we seek. What if we let go of a student’s phonetic decoding skills temporarily in order to feed his intense interest in science or history and we let the student drop his phonics “leaves” temporarily in order to focus on his strength of reading with his ears? What if we permitted a student to drop her handwriting “leaves” and begin to use text to speech or a keyboard, instead of continuously losing points on writing assignments? When we introduce a new piece of assistive technology or a new format of specialized educational materials; what if we allowed the student to temporarily drop the “leaves” of the content itself, while familiarization occurred with the tool? Focusing on learning the tool at the same time as learning the content is often just too much! 

Sometimes, it’s simply too much! There’s just too much that requires ours and our students’ finite energy and in order to continue to thrive (or begin to thrive) we have to let go of some “leaves” and focus our resources on strengths and we have to facilitate a means for our students to do the same! What are your “leaves” that you can drop temporarily? What are the things in your classroom, your school building, your district, that might add beauty, but could be dropped for a little while in the interest of refocusing your resources? 

Recently, the PATINS staff made a little time to focus on our creativity through some mindful breathing, stretching, and purposeful discussion around the concept of “sacred rituals” in our daily lives. I dropped the leaf of feeling like I never have a spare 5 minutes in the mornings, regardless of what time I got up. I decided I’d spend 3-5 minutes every morning, making coffee by hand…from grinding the beans, to heating water, and pouring it slowly in a four-step process over the delicious and aromatic ground up beans. That “leaf” of feeling like I needed to get to my emails 5 minutes earlier each morning was a seemingly small one to drop, but it allowed me five minutes to focus on deliberately being slow, intentional, aware, and creative. It was a small but important "leaf" to let go of.  

Perhaps, when you identify a “leaf” of your own to let go of, you can feed more energy into finding some colleagues who share your passions, frustrations, and struggles… your personal learning network! While there are so many ways to go about this, I want to make sure you’re aware of two great ones!

Tuesday evenings, at 8:30pm EST, PATINS hosts a Twitter chat where we post questions and have a discussion around them for a half-hour! In fact, last week’s chat was all about “Preventing Teacher Burnout!” Join us this next Tuesday evening, we’d love to have you. Simply search Twitter for the hashtag, #PatinsIcam! You can also reach out to any of us and we’d love to help you get set up to participate! 

I also want to make sure you’re aware of the rapidly approaching PATINS Access to Education 2018 State Conference! This is a GREAT opportunity to connect with others! We have over 40 concurrent sessions and two great keynotes! The full schedule is posted and registration is open! Drop a few “leaves” and allow yourself the time and opportunity to focus your energy into growth with us on November 28 and 29!

At a recent training I was providing, I began to discuss the concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and proceeded through the notion of a framework full of choice and options as well as the necessity of providing multiple and flexible means of engagement, presentation, and interaction/responses. Participants had a lot of great examples of what each of those UDL bullet points might look like in a classroom setting and there was ample head nodding and note taking occuring. I valued these indications of a group of educators looking forward to teaching differently, rather than just with different tools. As I was demonstrating the PATINS Universal Design for Learning Lesson Creator, walking through each of it's sections, I was met with a sense of agreement and excitement! 

“I wish I still had to use my wheelchair.” This was a quiet statement made by one of my students.

While this particular student had made immense progress physically following a stroke, he was continuing to struggle academically and a bit socially to keep up with the ever changing landscape of middle school.

When asked why he wanted to have his wheelchair back, he said “So people would remember I had a stroke.” He felt without an external symbol of his disability, his teachers and friends treated him like he had recovered 100%. They had assumed he was “being lazy” or “being a teenager” when he did not complete his school work. 

I know some days he enjoyed being able to “blend” back into the classroom environment, especially when he was up to some pre-teen trickery. Although he worked hard to cover up his struggles, he needed support. For instance, I noticed he had a particularly hard time editing his writing on the computer. He said looking at the screen would give him a headache and he had trouble reading back what he typed.

Only after the fact did I find out our district had the AEMing for Achievement grant at the time I worked with this student. I had heard rumblings about Snap&Read and Co:Writer from my speech-language pathologist counterparts at other levels. So I asked about the tools but was told “Oh we are trying it out in elementary and high school right now. This will come to the middle school soon.” 

So I waited.

And that was my mistake.

The tools that could have supported my student (and subsequently benefitted his classmates) were literally sitting right in front of him on his Chromebook everyday. District administration never brought us more information about the AEMing for Achievement grant processes and tools that year.

Here is where I wish I had a happy ending to wrap in a big shiny bow to share with you. The truth is we never found a great strategy to help him in middle school and I am not sure what happened once he moved on to high school.

My hope is that you can take away a couple of lessons from my experience.

First of all, my student is an example of many students in our schools who are passed over year in and year out because they do not “look” disabled. Having mobility aids or other assistive devices is not a prerequisite to receiving academic support. We must create a learning environment without barriers. By designing lessons with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in mind, we can remove barriers to full participation and progress for all students in the classroom.

Second, if you hear of a tool that you feel will help a student, go after it tenaciously. There is always someone willing to help train you, lend it out, or in some cases pay for it. PATINS Assistive Technology Lending Library has many devices, software, and educational items to trial with your students for six weeks for free - shipping included!

Third, access to the curriculum is a district wide initiative. In other words - access for all students! This especially applies to students with disabilities who must receive their accessible materials in a “timely manner” (IDEA, 2004). 

It can feel overwhelming to make systemic changes and to get everyone on board. The PATINS Project is here to help you in your efforts to create and sustain an accessible learning environment. PATINS AEMing for Achievement grant teams receive intensive support to set up accessibility policies, procedures, and practices district wide. Additionally, our specialists can help you get the ball rolling if you have questions about designing accessible lessons or would like training in this area. Furthermore, the Indiana Center for Accessible Materials (ICAM) provides Accessible Educational Materials (AEM) to qualifying students. All of these services come at no cost to employees of Indiana Local Education Agencies (i.e. public/charter schools). 

Our students do not have time to wait for access to their education. They need it now and the PATINS Project is here to support you in achieving this in 2022 and beyond.

Before I was a PATINS Staff member, I was a middle school Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) and introduced to the Assistive Technology Lending Library by a colleague. I knew exactly what I wanted to borrow first. An iPad loaded with LAMP Words for Life for a student with a lot to say and in need of a better tool to tell us about all the amazing ideas he had to share with the world.

I started using the loaned device with the student and saw his language and his personality blossom. Once I had a good amount of data to share with his family and school team, I packed up the iPad, completed the loan request evaluation, and it was on its way for another Indiana student to use.

The last time I borrowed from the Lending Library as a SLP with my own caseload was in 2018. To create the infographic below, I spent some one on one time with the AT Lending Library catalog. I discovered ingenious tools that could have been *life changers for many of my former students, like bone conduction headphones, reader pens, and Cling! ARM.

But why hadn't I seen these items before or thought about different ways to use them? I did some research and it turns out there are two reasons, *time and stress. (Learn more in the article "The Science of Creativity"). Being a new SLP, I was low on time, placed plenty of stress on myself, and therefore did not allow much room for creativity.

*I wish I had set aside a little time to search through the catalog to boost my creativity, stretch my professional skills, and be an even better educator. I would follow only two criteria:

• Learn more about any item which piqued my interest.
• Brainstorm how I could use the item to benefit the skill development of students at my school.

*Finding creative solutions is one of the most enjoyable parts of being an educator (and in life). Think of the last time you discovered a new tool that made a big impact. How did you feel? Hopeful? Proud? A little relieved?

Right now, uninterrupted time is a luxury, so tuck this idea away for when you need a burst of inspiration. This would be an engaging activity to begin a staff meeting or even for your students to partake in. Who better to know what we need to succeed in school than ourselves right?

The Assistive Technology Lending Library loans out a variety of educational items, even when we’re facing a pandemic. One of the best parts is that the AT Lending Library is a no-cost service. (The PATINS Lending Library is following the strictest protocol for cleaning and disinfecting all loan requests before shipping to Indiana schools.) Here’s a breakdown from the previous school year:

Types of Assistive Technology Lending Library Items Requested 2019-2020 School Year.

Toys - 23%

AAC - 15%

AT Hardware - 15%

Hearing/Vision - 14%

iPads - 12%

Switches - 10%

Print/Software - 6%

Mounting - 5%



Toys - Educational toys to support academic skills.

AAC - Augmentative and Alternative Communication devices.

AT Hardware - Hardware to facilitate access to Assistive Technology tools.

Hearing/Vision - Devices to support hearing and vision needs.

iPads - iPads for academic and communication apps.

Switches - For environmental and communication control.

Print/Software - Reference guides for theoretical methods, assessment/intervention techniques, and practical tips.

Mounting - Adjustable arms and connectors for improved access to devices.

Peruse the Assistive Technology Lending Library when you have a chance. To view the most results, use a *simple keyword and *always capitalize the first letter. This will return all the items with that word present in the title or description.



Another way to learn more about the AT Lending Library is to join us at the virtual Access to Education conference in November 2020. You have the opportunity to view new and popular AT Lending Library items paired with practical ideas for your students at the *AT Exploratorium and the UDL Classroom Experience.

How has the Lending Library helped your students recently? Let us know in the comments below.

At the end of October, I start to see gift guides for anyone and everyone in our lives such as “The Ultimutt Holiday Gift Guide” or “Your Dad Doesn’t Need Another Tie - 20 Unique Ideas.” While I love exchanging thoughtful gifts with family and friends, there is one gift I am valuing more each year - time. Specifically, time to engage in hobbies, time to learn a new skill, time to learn a language, and even time to be bored once in a while. 

As educators, we know time is a critical resource. It is always at the top of my speech-language pathologist (SLP) wish list. Alas, we cannot wrap up time and top it with a bow to give to colleagues, but we can gain more of it. This year, more than others, time has been at a premium encouraging me to find creative ways to get everything done. I’ve compiled five reflection questions which have proven helpful to me in gathering up more time. I hope you find these helpful too. 

• Am I inventing things to do? I heard this on a podcast and it stopped me in my tracks. (I wish I could remember which one to give credit!) As educators, we may think “Of course, everything I am doing directly benefits my students.” While I have no doubt we all have the best intention of doing right by our students, there may be a more efficient way to approach certain tasks. For example, as a SLP, did I really need to laminate every speech therapy material? Absolutely not! I could create or find digital materials, print one time use visuals, or use a page protector. I saved hours each week by freeing myself from the unreliable laminating machine and directed this new found time into analyzing data for better educational reports as well as leading to a better work life balance. A major win for me and for my students!

• Can I “outsource” part of my work? The students on my caseload very much preferred receiving a pass from the office rather than having me picking them up from their classroom. Nothing hurts your “cool” factor more than a random lady breaking up gym time with your buddies. This left me creating hundreds of paper passes each year until I outsourced this work. In lieu of a study hall, some students were “pass runners” for the office staff during a class period. These helpful students were more than happy to cut the passes for me and one of them even offered to laminate a bunch for me so I could reuse them, saving me even more time!

• What can I automate? Automation is huge in the business world right now. It is one of the main reasons Amazon can get items to your doorstep in two days. Educators can reap the benefits of automation right now with technology readily available on your devices. Do you need to send reminder emails for IEP meetings? Do you need to collect data and send daily/weekly communications to parents? Do you need to speed up the calculation process for progress reports? Automate it all! If you’re not sure where to start, reach out to PATINS Specialists for ideas on how to optimize your work day.

• How often do I need to check my email/phone? Did you know it is estimated that every time we stop a task to check our email or phone, it can take us roughly 25 minutes to refocus on the task? (View the study “No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work.”) That’s why a seemingly simple task can end up taking us three times longer than originally planned. Also consider this scenario, if you check your work email from bed, on your way out the door, or in the car and then decide you need to be at work to focus on answering it, you are devoting twice as much time to the email reply. To combat these pernicious time wasting habits, dedicate a few times a day when you check your email and voicemail. It’s important this is not the first thing you check though. You want to get your most important tasks on your to do list completed at the beginning of the work day. This new habit has been a game changer for me!

• How many things can I actually get done in a day? Two. I have averaged it out, and I can get two major tasks done in one day. If I try to do 3 or more tasks, usually I am working overtime or it’s not done well. This realization has been both shocking and empowering. Shocking since I originally estimated I could get five to ten tasks done each day. Two sounds like a low number yet, think about if you completed an entire language evaluation, reported all grades, or developed lessons for the entire week or month in one sitting. Those all require major time commitments and are often completed in smaller chunks throughout time. This information was also empowering because the knowledge of this causes me to be “choosier” about the tasks I agree to and reminds me to reflect again on question one above. Plus, when I happen to get more than two things done, I feel super accomplished!

I believe it goes without saying that the demands placed on educators this year has stretched our time thin. However, we are the only ones who can give ourselves more time. I hope the reflection questions posed help you gather up chunks of time by eliminating, “outsourcing”, and automating tasks to do what you do best - teach Indiana students!

I would love to hear your thoughts on how you might approach your work after reflecting on the five questions above. Is there anything you plan to do differently? Are there any other ways you give yourself the gift of time that I did not mention?

Suggested time management focused reading:

40 Hour Teacher Workweek by Angela Watson

Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkam

Recently, while traveling, I found myself engaged in conversation with another traveling educator about the stresses of air travel. The recount of the travel experience that this other traveler shared, made all of mine call back to memory as if they were lazy Sunday morning cups of black coffee and required me to hold back tears for her. I listened. I confirmed, beyond doubt, that her experience was terribly frustrating, sad, hurtful and that it was exceedingly important to share it with as many people as possible. I told her I knew of a great forum for doing just this. A place where I knew that some of the most passionate educators and warriors against injustice frequented with hungry eyes and ears. After a short and gentle persuasion, this fellow traveling educator graciously agreed to contribute her painful story as my guest-blogger this week.  

I had just finished speaking to others about the importance of inclusionary practices and had even shared stories of several students I personally know, who struggle daily with being treated unfairly for a variety of reasons. I was traveling from one national educational conference to another with a colleague of mine and needed to board an airplane to my next destination. I speak to others often, about disabilities and about including all kids in all aspects of the educational experience. What I don’t always tell people, is that I have a disability myself. One cannot really see my disability by looking at me and sometimes I choose to not share. However, I sometimes struggle with numbers, letters, direction, verbal instructions, and word recall. My colleague helps out with this stuff, but this time was unfortunately, a little different. As a frequent traveler, I have documentation that allows me to skip the security lines at airports…not only a nice convenience, but truly an accommodation for me. My colleague does not have this documentation and proceeded through the typical security cattle chute, as I smiled my way toward TSA Pre-Check.

I immediately noticed two other people also preparing for Pre-Check. These travelers also had a disability; ones that were visible. I was asked by TSA workers to allow these travelers in front of me.  Of course, I immediately complied with a smile and offered well-wishes to them on their travels. A few moments after stepping aside, I apparently had ended up standing in a restricted area and was hastily noticed by TSA, who advanced toward me with great urgency! Yes, these were the same TSA staff who had just asked me to step aside. They questioned why I was there, what I was doing, who I was, if I had Pre-Check credentials, where my identification was, where was my bag, if I knew that I was standing in a restricted space, why I was still standing there, what was in my purse.

Like lightning had struck, I instantly found myself shocked and without my own speech. This frequently happens to me when I feel like things are falling apart around me. My words all fall into a downward spiraling drain like a toilet flushing and I cannot retrieve them! To the TSA agent in my face, my silence was perceived as non-compliance. I was physically pulled to the side, my purse taken from me and searched as demanding words continued to flood my brain. As I was trying to decide if I’d done something wrong or if this was the result of my different brain, my boarding pass was being commanded. It was on my phone, of course, and I couldn’t recall the numbers of my passcode in the correct order. My hands were sweating by this time, so my thumb also wouldn’t open my phone. My identification and Pre-Check documentation was in my purse, which was not in my possession. I couldn’t speak, even to get my name out and certainly not to state why I was standing where I was. There was no way I could even say, “I have a disability, I’m not being contentious.” My colleague was already through regular security and unable to help me. I was on my own, with people who didn’t know I had a disability, thought I was being oppositional, and I’d actually done nothing wrong. I was crying by this point and was actually asked by the TSA staff, “what’s your problem, lady?”

The reason I was standing in the restricted area was because the TSA agents took special care to accommodate the other travelers who had a visible disability, which I was more than agreeable to me! However, to then be treated as a potential threat when my own disability was not outwardly visible, was devastating.  


Most of us have probably heard the old adage, “never judge a book by it’s cover.” Upon hearing this story, and holding back most of my own liquid emotion, I reminded myself that many people probably carry more in the bag within the bag, than the bag we actually see. A lot of people are quite good at putting the old tattered bag inside the shiny new bag and it’s easy to see that shiny bag without another thought about what might actually be inside of it. Your students, your colleagues, your students’ families, all have two or three other bags. It may not always be easier, but it’s always worth it, kinder, more productive, more efficient long-term, and more effective to presume that there’s another bag.  “What’s your problem, lady,” “what’s your problem kid,” is rarely productive and not the question that will get to the answers we actually seek. It is of utmost importance, that we seek to accommodate both the things we can see, hear, touch AND those we might not perceive immediately.  

There’s an amazing man by the name of Nicola Dutto. Nicola is an off-road motorcycle racer, and a very good one! In 2008 and 2009, he was a European Baja champion. Then in the 2010 Italy Baja race, he experienced a disastrous high-speed crash, leaving him paralyzed. 

Anyone who knows a racer, knows that racing is a powerful thing running through his or her veins…a drive and passion that cannot easily be dropped. Nicola was no different and set his sights on racing again. After 9 months of intensive therapy, he entered the 2011 Baja 1000 in a 4-wheeled vehicle. Mechanical failure kept him from completing this race, but he also learned that 4 wheels just didn’t do it for him. He greatly missed having the command of a 2-wheeled machine. The subsequent steps of this story are the pieces that really grabbed my attention.


Noteworthy, is the fact that Nicola admits to being terrified to ride again! He knew that his soul needed to ride again. Nevertheless, he wasn’t shy about the fact that it seriously frightened him! As an off-road rider myself, I know that I’m slightly terrified every time I grab the throttle. I also know that the majority of the time I'm riding off-road, I’m actually standing up on the foot pegs, not seated! A lot of steering, control, and weight distribution happens with your legs. They also act as additional shock absorbers and, of course, rear brake control and shifting all happens with the feet! To even begin to comprehend racing at the level of Nicola Dutto while remaining seated the entire time, with no use of my legs, is beyond intimidating!

Nonetheless, Nicola did it. He placed 24^th in Spain’s Baja Aragon race to become the world’s first paraplegic pro racer just 4 months later and then…he set his sights on becoming the first paraplegic to race the world-legendary, white knuckling, and grueling Dakar race! While I love riding and racing, what truly excites me about this is the passion, determination, skill, creativity, and support of Nicola and his team tackling this together! He needed all handlebar mounted controls, a special seat from a wheelchair cushion specialist, a roll-cage for his lower extremities, and a 3-point harness to hold his legs within the cage, and this was just the necessary hardware ingenuity!


Nicola also needed “ghost riders.” People to ride ahead and scan the terrain, helping him choose racing lines, since he would be unable to stop his motorcycle. He also needed two riders behind him to right his bike in case of a fall (which happens a lot to me). In short, Nicola truly relied on his team in many ways. The Dakar race would simply not be possible without his team’s collective brain power, physical dedication, and willpower. He needed them and they quickly rallied around his determination to make his dream a reality. Nicola states that it's difficult to even describe how he now has to ride and that it required a lot of practice for him to become proficient with the changes. 

While I could read and write about motorcycling for days, what I love even more about this story is the camaraderie, the support, the teamwork, the passion, and the determination of the team! The PATINS Team embodies all of this in my eyes! This PATINS team of incredible people bring their respective expertise together to accomplish seemingly impossible feats for so many Indiana students every week! This team pulls together to get students physical and cognitive access to their curriculum, to put communication systems in place for students who are non-verbal, to create emotionally secure learning environments, to support teachers who feel like they have a "Dakar" race to complete without the use of their legs, to convey information to students who cannot hear it, see it, or organize it. …and this inspiring teamwork happens every single week, all year long! 

Many of you are also likely part of a team who rallies around student’s strengths, desires, and goals. Frequently, you invite the PATINS staff into your team for further support and we are so grateful for those opportunities to help assist your kids! When we consider all of these things that our teams work to accomplish, one word presents itself prominently; accommodations!

Nicola didn’t want to compete in a different race, he wanted to face the same demanding Dakar experience as other racers who were not paraplegic and he needed some creative accommodations and hard-core resolve to make it happen! We have so many students in Indiana who are fully capable of and desiring to take part in the “Dakar” of their educational experience…to meaningfully participate in the general curriculum and obtain a high school diploma, with appropriate accommodations both in the daily classroom and on assessment! The race is the same race, the content is the same content, the diploma is the same diploma, but the ways in which it is approached, interacted with, and responded to could vary! Taking away any one of Nicola’s accommodations would almost certainly guarantee his non-participation. Similarly, taking away any one appropriate student accommodation will almost certainly exclude them from the most meaningful participation in the general curriculum, and effectively, from a diploma.

As Case Conference Committees (CCC) come together to build effective Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for students, they must rally together as a focused, insistent, creative, and purposeful team! Each student’s strengths and barriers must be analyzed. Potential software, hardware, and strategy-based solutions must be trialed! Remember you can always borrow from the PATINS Lending Library and seek support, training, and development from the PATINS Team! Data from these trials must be used to determine appropriate and effective accommodations in each and every IEP! These accommodations must then be implemented with fidelity on a daily basis (the extensive practice necessary to become proficient), and on assessment (the Dakar)!

I don’t anticipate losing the use of my legs, or my arms, but if I ever do, I’d certainly be grateful for and reliant upon a team of passionate, hopeful, creative people around me, figuring out how to get me back on a motorcycle as quickly as possible! Figuratively speaking, unfortunate things happen all the time which, on the surface, appear insurmountable, and take our "legs" out from under us. The riding of the “motorcycle” seems like a lost cause many times. These are the times when we need our teams, and students need their teams, to match our/their determination, to be the most creative, and to be brave enough to believe with all their heart that the impossible only seems as such because no one else has done it yet. It’s hope that these dream teams construct! Before Nicola Dutto and his team made racing in the Dakar as a paraplegic a reality, many thousands of people likely didn’t even possess a construct for hope in this regard. 

Be a constructor of hope in your team! Be the determination who thinks and tries things for 10 minutes longer! Be the creativity that encourages possibility. Be the strength that “picks the bike up” for a teammate every time it falls!

*Via: by way of (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

After the long ICAM/Learning Ally partnership was dissolved, many DRMs and educators expressed the same disappointment that PATINS/ICAM felt, and we began the quest for a new solution. By now many Indiana educators know that the ICAM has chosen Mackin, as a source of audiobooks and eBooks for students with documented print disabilities.

Patrons will place a Special Order through the ICAM Web Ordering System for fiction and non-fiction titles, textbooks are not available through Mackin. While Mackin does not provide actual textbooks, it does feature a broad range of content-related titles. The ICAM team has created a training video, Getting Started with Mackin that describes the ICAM ordering process for Mackin titles. Patrons will place a Special Order and the ICAM staff will search for the title.  Patrons can create a free Mackin account so they can log in and search for titles that are available in these formats before they place an order. You can browse by different categories including grade level, interest level, and subject. 

Related content titles can notably enhance a struggling reader’s learning experience. For example, say you are starting a 4th grade Science Unit on our solar system, and you are working from the class textbook. You have a student who is Chafee-qualified to use audiobooks and text to speech. From his IEP we know that this student has an SLD in the area of reading, and as his teacher, you know that he struggles to decode from print. However, this book is not available from the ICAM. If only you could get an accessible textbook! Yesterday! He needs a solution, fast.

You can choose a Mackin title on the Solar System, in an eBook or audiobook platform, at the 4th-grade level, to supplement the textbook. You search available selections and find SOLAR SYSTEM: BY THE NUMBERS by Steve Jenkins. By reading the summary and reviews you determine this to be a near-perfect match for the textbook’s approach. And, it is available as a MackinVIA eBook. Your student can have access for a checkout period or throughout the school year, depending on publisher permissions.

This will help the student in several crucial ways. By 4th grade, sentences are longer and more complex, and multi-syllable words are frequent. Often, students who struggle to decode also experience a working memory deficit; by the time this student has worked through the sound and symbol of each word, recalling the content seems hopeless.

With this Mackin eBook, he will learn the same important vocabulary as his classmates. When he returns to the textbook in class and encounters words like “meteorite” and “asteroid” he will have seen and heard the words before. This will help alleviate his anxiety associated with printed words: They are just words, and he knows them! With the Mackin audio support, highlighting, and note-taking features he will begin to build background knowledge. Then, with teacher support such as guided context cues, repeated reading, and class discussion, his fluency and comprehension will show improvement. Imagine how he will feel, keeping up with the class. This is a powerful confidence builder! 

Next week, November 18-19, is the PATINS/ICAM Access to Education 2020, our annual fall conference. If you are registered, Great! Please stop by the ICAM/IERC Room to learn more about Mackin, and register for an Echo Dot! Registration has formally ended, but if you are just now deciding to attend, please contact Jen Conti at jconti@patinsproject.org. She will set you up, and we hope to “see” you there!

Thanks so much!

 

When the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) Regulations were added to the IDEA in 2004, three categories of print disabilities were indicated, which deemed a student qualified to receive accessible formats: Visual Impairment, Physical Disability, and the poorly understood Reading Disability resulting from organic dysfunction. 

Say goodbye to all that. Or at least say goodbye to some very archaic-sounding language and its pairing with perplexing policy.

Finally, after seventeen years this language has been rescinded by the Library of Congress, in keeping with new amendments in the Marrakesh Treaty Implementation Act (MTIA). The changes in this policy are something to celebrate. One of the main tenets of PATINS/ICAM/IERC is the removal of barriers to learning. Now we can demonstrate that without concession. The MTIA has updated terms of who may benefit from section 121; instead of "blind or other persons with disabilities, the term is "eligible person." Then, "eligible person" is defined:

"as someone who is either blind, has a “visual impairment or perceptual or reading disability” rendering them unable to read printed works “to substantially the same degree as a person without an impairment or disability,” or has a physical disability making them unable to hold or manipulate a book or focus or move their eyes to read.   

So, as you can see, the term "organic dysfunction" has been removed from the language.

Furthermore, the requirement for a medical doctor to be the only recognized competent authority for confirming a reading disability has also been changed, or you might say, expanded.

"Eligibility must be certified by one of the following: doctor of medicine, doctor of osteopathy, ophthalmologist, optometrist, psychologist, registered nurse, therapist, and professional staff of hospitals, institutions, and public or welfare agencies (such as an educator, a social worker, caseworker, counselor, rehabilitation teacher, certified reading specialist, school psychologist, superintendent, or librarian)."

Let me repeat: now, the competent authority for print disabilities is the same for all, including the addition of educators, school psychologists, certified reading specialists, and certified psychologists. So, a teacher or other named school personnel, in conjunction with the case conference, is able to confirm that a student presents any type of print disability. 

Write this in big letters and post it somewhere prominent: 

IF THEY HAVE (1) AN IEP, (2) A DETERMINATION OF A PRINT DISABILITY, AND (3) CONFIRMATION BY A TEACHER AS THE RECOGNIZED COMPETENT AUTHORITY, A STUDENT IS ELIGIBLE FOR AEM FROM THE ICAM.

Please don't be wary of this gift from the powers that be. When you see that a student is struggling to read, pay attention. Perform informal and research-based assessments. Screen for dyslexia. Confer with all classroom teachers who are with the student daily, and the special services providers who work with them. Document every assessment, every intervention, and every result. As stated in the IDOE 2021-22 Accessibility and Accommodations Information for Statewide Assessments (p.51), "Determining the nature of the student’s reading challenges can help determine the appropriate intervention approaches, as well as needed accommodations during classroom instruction and during assessments."

The ICAM team has created the AEM Instructional Guide and ICAM/IERC NIMAS Forms Guide for the Case Conference; see p. 6 for instructions on how to include related information in the IEP, and p.9 for AEM and AT Considerations. For another resource, consult Accessible Educational Materials in the IEP, from the Center for Applied Special Technologies (CAST).

Based on scientific, replicated research, it is widely reported that at least twenty percent of the population presents some degree or level of dyslexia. However, only about four percent of school-age students receive special education services for reading disabilities. Some students will respond to Response to Intervention (RTI) that is required by Indiana's SB 217, the state's dyslexia law, without the need for special education services. Some will not. Now we can close this gap, and open the door to literacy.

"By not recognizing shades of gray represented by struggling children who haven't yet failed enough to meet a particular criterion, schools may be under-identifying many children who will go on to experience significant reading problems." This is from Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz, a book all teachers should have in their toolkit. Also, it is available from the PATINS Lending Library.

If you would like to discuss these significant changes and how they may impact students, and the AEM decision-making process, or information on a tool found in one of these resources,  please feel free to contact me or one of the PATINS/ICAM specialists.

Thanks so much!

“Try one thing. If it works, great, keep using it, If it doesn’t, move on to something new.” 

I have said this to myself many times as a speech-language pathologist to help me avoid falling into the “sunk-cost fallacy.”

I first learned about the “sunk-cost fallacy” from my husband who enjoys listening to economics podcasts in his free time. This article from Time Magazine has examples of this concept. They define the sunk-cost fallacy as “…the general tendency for people to continue an endeavor, or continue consuming or pursuing an option, if they’ve invested time or money or some resource in it…”

This may come up in education when a team has spent ample time and money on a certain tool. Team members may be hesitant to abandon a device or strategy, even when the data shows it is not working for a student.

We must remember to keep what works for the student at the forefront. There is a tool or strategy out there that will work for every student. However, there seems to be a never-ending supply of educational tools out there. It can be overwhelming to find a place to start digging into them all. There are many ways the PATINS Project can help you narrow down what works for your students. 

PATINS offers bi-monthly Featured Solution and Specialist Feature resource videos on the PATINS Project YouTube Channel. These videos are released August through May and typically go over a new assistive technology tool, app, extension, or accessible educational strategy. You can view over 180 resource videos on the PATINS TV Playlist. To be the first to know when a new video is released on Assistive Technology (AT), Accessible Educational Materials (AEM), and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), join the more than 2,000 PATINS Project YouTube subscribers and hit the bell for notifications.

See a tool or implementation technique that could benefit a student or your classroom in one of the resource videos? Most devices and apps are available for 6-week loans in the PATINS Assistive Technology Lending Library catalog for school personnel at Indiana's Local Education Agencies (i.e. Indiana public and charter school employees) to trial with their students for no-cost.

Finding a tool is the first step, then you have to figure out how to use it with your students effectively. PATINS Project staff can help! Submit a Technical Assistance Request for training and/or a consultation to accompany any of the items available for loan. This service also comes at no-cost! 

I hope you are able to take advantage of your winter break to rest and reinvigorate yourself. When the new year begins in January 2023, the PATINS Project will be here to help you try effective tools and strategies with your students.

Summer has come and gone for many students around the state, and it’s back to school. New experiences, new friends, and new teachers. One must think of what each one of those students brings to the classroom.

That thought struck me this summer when we were on our family vacation. As with one of my blogs last year, I got to thinking about interactions with my grandkids as inspiration. This summer was no different.

My wife and I, joined by my two daughters and their families, have made it a tradition of going to the Outer Bank of North Carolina. It’s warm, relaxing and a nice way to finish the past school year and begin the summer.

Each morning we like to pack up the kids and head to the beach for the day to play in the sand and surf. We encourage all five of the grandkids to play hard but take time out to rest when they get hot, tired or hungry.

This year, my oldest grandson, Dean, who is 7, took time to sit and rest next to his mom and chat. The sun came and went from behind the clouds and Dean started watching them. “Look, Mom, that one looks like a dog,” I heard him say. Back and forth they went trying to figure out every cloud that passed by.

It wasn’t long before Logan, my 5-year-old grandson, joined them. Logan listened to them describing what they were seeing. He would glance at the sky and squint searching for what they were observing.

After a couple of minutes, Logan whined, “I don’t see it.”

“Right there. It looks like a Pokémon,” Dean said.

“Where? I don’t see it,” Logan replied.

After listening to a couple more descriptions by Dean and his mom, Logan was on the verge of tears. “I don’t see it,” he said.

Dean tried to help and came closer to Logan and pointed to the cloud he had described. “See that cloud right there?” pointing to a large billowing one, “Doesn’t that look like a dragon?”

Logan looked hard and said, “In the clouds? I see it now, I thought you were looking at the blue part.”

It wasn’t communicated to Logan that they were looking at the clouds. Logan had missed critical information as to how to play the game.

We have all experienced that situation at one time or another when that one key tidbit of information was missing and those around us just assumed we understood.

When we get that missing piece, it’s been called that “Aha!” or lightbulb moment. Whatever you call it, it’s that realization of understanding what was missing. For Logan, it was simply the clouds.

I have to wonder how many students come to school with just a few missing pieces here or there. It’s our place to help them find them through listening, encouraging questions and watching facial expressions.

The reward is the smile one sees when that missing piece is found, and we’ve made a difference. I enjoyed watching my grandsons, Logan and Dean, that day as they sat for a while longer both having fun comparing clouds.

I walk our Golden Retriever, Cooper, by her house and stop when she is sitting inside her screened-in porch. She enjoys petting Cooper, and he shows her a lot of attention and affection. It also gives her the opportunity to “pick my brain” about technology.

I have spent time with Nancy making sure that her technology was accessible with minimal effort and knowledge on her part. She is very interested in current verbiage she hears from her radio or television.

Last week it was, “What is streaming about?” I explained it was a way of getting content, video and audio over the Internet. Some of it is free and some has to be purchased through subscriptions like HULU, Netflix, Sling and others.

I was asked to explain those as well, because she has an endless curiosity of how technology has evolved from just a radio or a television with a pair of rabbit ears*.

Just this week she greeted Cooper and me with much excitement. “Let me show you my new best friend,” she said. She pulled out a handheld digital magnifier. She was so thrilled.

We had talked about devices in the past, but she was reluctant. At a recent eye doctor’s appointment, it was suggested she visit a specialty store on the southside of Indianapolis. Nancy decided to give it a try and visited a vendor that has been serving PATINS Stakeholders for years.

Long story short, she can now read the newspaper and her mail and does crosswords puzzles. She’s like a kid at Christmas.

*Rabbit ears were an adjustable television antenna that could be re-positioned to get the best picture reception. Sometimes placing aluminum foil on them would “amplify” the reception.

Books, yes, real books!

If anyone has viewed my blogs, you know that my subject matter is family, primarily my grandchildren. Oh, sure I mix relevant content to school and the like, but I have shared a lot on the subject of reading.

My very first blog was “Mimi, would you read me this book?”. That was in April 2018 and it has been almost three years ago since my grandchildren sat on Mimi’s lap as she read to them.

Fast forward and over the past three years my school-age grandchildren have been reading to Mimi. The three oldest grandchildren, Dean, Logan, and Kenzie have found reading to be a window of information, anticipation, and excitement.

Interestingly, all three have access to technology provided by their school and what is available at home. All three however have found that their mode of choice is books, yes, real books! The ones that you hold in your hands.

Technology is amazing when you think that you can have hundreds, if not thousands of books available almost instantaneously. eBooks are readily available at your fingertips, just waiting to be pulled up.

We can change an eBook font, text size, background. We can highlight, bookmark, take notes, and even have it read aloud to us. Can a real book do all that? Or do we want it to?

This blog was inspired by a Facebook post I saw recently. It was an image. The more I looked at it, the more I thought about my grandkids and their choice for a book, yes, a real book!

There are arguments for and against either mode, but in the end, it is a personal choice or preference, call it what you like.

It fills Mimi and me with delight and satisfaction (particularly Mimi) that the simple “Mimi, would you read me this book?” would open a world of information, anticipation, and excitement for three inspired grandchildren.

It is my blog time again. Not moving too far from what I have blogged in the past regarding my grandchildren, I am keeping it in the family. Today, I am going to share a tidbit about myself.

I LOVE listening to music. I find comfort in the sounds, the melodies, and instruments used, but really enjoy the lyrics and the stories told.

I have an abundance of song lyrics memorized to a wide variety of tunes. There are a lot of lyrics that have special meanings that conjures up memories of a time or place or event. This is not unique to me; we all experience those moments when a song starts.

Over and over, I sing along, word for word…. or though I thought! Let me give you a couple examples.

I was late in arriving to listening to AC/DC. I found them of value when I wanted some upbeat music to listen to while working out. “Thunderstruck” is quite motivating. I began listening to AC/DC a little more. I had listened to their song “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” several times. It was not until I came across the written lyrics, that I realized I had missed a couple words.

The refrain is “Dirty deeds done dirt cheap”, but I heard “Dirty deeds and the Dunder Chief.” That is what I head. I knew what the song was about, and I even knew the title of the song. BUT I heard “Dirty deeds and the Dunder Chief.”

If I had been that wrong with an AC/DC song, what other songs could I have been mis-lyricing? Probably plenty. Was I the only one that thought Dunder Chief was the lyric? It turns out, I am not. In polling several others, they shared a similar Dunder Chief experience with this popular song. How could others have had such a similar version of a song, when the lyrics are in the title, but be so misguided by what they heard?

When you listen to a lot of music, this type of thing must happen all the time. My wife shared with me that she and some friends came to Indianapolis for an Eagles concert in high school. The question was asked, “What is your favorite Eagles song?” “Hotel California”, “Desperado”, “Flies in the Vaseline”? Yep, someone thought “Life in the Fast Lane” was “Flies in the Vaseline”. Makes Dunder Chief sound mild.

I have since found other songs that I had the lyrics a bit off the mark, but this old dog is not in the mood to be lyrically correct after all these years. Besides, that is the way I heard the song, and why take that away from the experience.

Here are a handful of other lyrical mistakes people have shared and how subtle they are, me included:

'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen

What people thought: “Saving his life from this warm sausage tea”
What the lyrics are: “Spare him his life from this monstrosity”

'Paradise City' by Guns N’ Roses

What people thought: “Take me down to a very nice city”
What the lyrics are: “Take me down to the Paradise City”

'Livin’ on a Prayer' by Bon Jovi

What people thought: “It doesn’t make a difference if we’re naked or not”
What the lyrics are: “It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not”

'Purple Haze' by Jimi Hendrix

What people thought:"'Scuse me while I kiss this guy,"
What the lyrics are: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky,"

What people thought: "Don't bring me down, Bruce."

What the lyrics are: "Don't bring me down, groose."

“Helen Wheels” by Paul McCartney and Wings

What people thought: “Hell on, hell on wheels”
What the lyrics are: “Helen, Helen Wheels”

What people thought: "I miss the rains down in Africa."
What the lyrics are: "I bless the rains down in Africa."

'Blinded by the Light' by Bruce Springsteen

What people thought: “Wrapped up like a douche, another rumor in the night.”
What the lyrics are: “Revved up like a Deuce, another runner in the night.”

“Money for Nothin’” by Dire Straits

What people thought: “Money for nothin’ and your chips for free.”
What the lyrics are: “Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.”

What people thought: “He just smiled and gave me a bite of my sandwich.”
What the lyrics are: “He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich.”

It is easy to chuckle at some of the things people sing, but that is just the way they heard it. I bet some folks were laughing at me!

So, think back on some lyrics you might have thought you knew, but they seem odd now that you sing them. Just keep singing!

Dirty deeds and the Dunder Chief…

I have had the pleasure of tutoring a young man in mathematics for the past 4 years which I’ll call “George.”  George is in the 7^th grade and we have been working together since he started having trouble with math in the 3^rd grade. 

We have had many challenges over the last four years.  One of our first challenges was communication with his math teachers.  We have had teachers respond very quickly and we have had teachers not respond at all.  Some teachers posted assignments and due dates online and others did not.  The lesson I learned about communication is it is a key element in helping students succeed.  It was extremely difficult for me to assist George in succeeding without communication.

We were also faced with the challenge of when to use a calculator.  George had so much homework not just in math, but in all subjects, so we decided that using a calculator would be highly beneficial.  His math homework was exceptionally repetitive and there were so many problems to complete.  I would have George complete the first few without a calculator to make sure he understood how to complete the problems.  Then I would allow him to use the calculator to save valuable time.  This also taught him calculator skills which he did not have.  In addition to we talked about the importance of being able to solve problems without a calculator, but also discussed how using a calculator could help him focus on problem- solving.  I explained to him these skills would be highly valued when he entered the workplace where using a calculator isn’t considered cheating.  The lesson I learned about calculators is the use of a calculator is a skill and we need to teach this skill.

This year we were faced with another big challenge.  George has ADHD and takes medicine to help control his symptoms.  He takes his medicine in the morning and by the afternoon it is much less effective.  Unfortunately, his math class is the last period of the day.  This makes it immensely difficult for him to concentrate in the class where he struggles the most, this is not a good combination.  This is the only math class available so there were no alternatives.  Most days I would have to re-teach the lesson as well as having to help him complete his homework.  The lesson I learned about class schedules is sometimes they are not flexible and you just have to come up with solutions!

I have had the pleasure of tutoring a young man in mathematics for the past 4 years which I’ll call “George.” George is in the 7^th grade and we have been working together since he started having trouble with math in the 3^rd grade.  

We have had many challenges over the last four years. One of our first challenges was communication with his math teachers. We have had teachers respond very quickly, and we have had teachers not respond at all. Some teachers posted assignments and due dates online, and others did not. The lesson I learned about communication is it is a key element in helping students succeed. It was extremely difficult for me to assist George in succeeding without communication. 



This year we were faced with another big challenge. George has ADHD and takes medicine to help control his symptoms. He takes his medicine in the morning and by the afternoon it is much less effective. Unfortunately, his math class is the last period of the day. This makes it immensely difficult for him to concentrate in the class where he struggles the most; this is not a good combination. This is the only math class available so there were no alternatives. Most days I would have to re-teach the lesson as well as having to help him complete his homework. The lesson I learned about class schedules is sometimes they are not flexible, and you just have to come up with solutions!



I have again started tutoring a wonderful, young man who is a 7th grader. This time I’ll call him “Alex.” Alex is similar to George in that he is struggling with math, but unlike George who had a strong, stable home life, Alex until recently has been in a very unstable home environment.  

Again, I face some of the same challenges as before. I am not only assisting Alex with math, but we work together on every subject. So, again communication with his teachers is one of the key factors in helping Alex succeed. Alex and George go to school in the same district, so grades and assignments are posted online, but as was the case with George, many of Alex’s teachers do not keep this up to date. I cannot stress how important it is for us to have this information updated. Alex is working very hard to become better organized and to use his agenda book to write down assignments, due dates, etc. He is getting better at this task. I have been working with him on the importance of these skills, but it is new for him. He was never taught these skills and the importance of being organized so we work very hard on these skills. Nevertheless, every once in awhile assignments do not get written down, and I depend on the teacher to post the assignment. If they are not posted, it usually results in an assignment being missed or late.

I would encourage all teachers to find tools that give whoever is working with their students, and in many cases, this is not the parents, a way to communicate with caregivers what the daily assignment is and when quizzes and tests are scheduled. It would be so beneficial to be able to go onto their website or to get a message. There are services such as Remind that can be used to quickly send out a message at one time. Many schools already have systems in place, but I cannot stress how important it is that they are being used and updated.

Just like George, Alex struggles with multiplication facts, so I am very grateful for the previous learning experience with George. My prior experience has been so beneficial in working with George, and he has picked up his multiplication facts so quickly.  

One of the most important factors in working with Alex has been in building his self-esteem. His self-confidence had been battered, and he did not believe that he was smart, but he is incredibly smart. His grades were mostly F’s when I started working with him, and this semester he made the B honor roll. I think about this often and wonder how many more students like Alex are failing and are being left behind and falling through the cracks. Nothing changed at school, the item that changed was the support that he is now receiving outside of school, so what can be done? I don’t have many answers just many questions; I know that teachers are working as hard as they can. I just know that there are so many smart students like Alex that do not have the tools or support that they need to succeed.

You might have heard the saying “Music heals the soul.” I have always believed this, now according to the evidence, it’s good for your health as well. Psychology Today states on their website: 

“Study after study has found that music therapy has a positive effect on a broad range of physical and psychological conditions including dementia, anxiety, depression, and cancer."

Music therapy is a service that can be delivered by psychologists, therapists, or caregivers in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and even outpatient clinics. The goal is to improve people’s health through music experiences such as free improvisation, singing, and listening to, discussing, and moving to music.”

This comes as no surprise to me that music had and continues to be a big part of my life. I have always loved a variety of music, but the musical genre of Rock has always been my favorite.

My pre-teen and teen days were spent at the roller skating rink when Disco and the beginnings of Rap kept me bouncing and dancing as I went round and round. When the skates came off, we would head to the floor and dance the night away doing the Bus Stop and other popular dances at the time. 

For Christmas one year, my parents purchased a stack music system from Sears for me as a present. I was so excited. It had a record player, an 8-track tape player, and dual cassette players. My first 8-track player title purchase was The Eagles and one of my first records was Meat Loaf, Bat out of Hell. In prior years for Christmas, I was always so excited to receive my K-Tel records which were a compilation record of the various hits at the time.

In high school I discovered Rock music and I continue to enjoy it even as I grow older. I have attended countless concerts with my best friend, my cousin and my daughter. Many of these concerts are out of town and we always have so much fun being together, listening to great music, and making great memories.

Music is also a mood changer for me. If I am feeling down, I can listen to a good dance tune and the next thing I know I am dancing around and feeling better. On the other hand, when certain songs come on they can instantly remind me of a sad time in my life. It always surprises me how hearing a song can take you back to a moment in time.

The next time you need a boost, put on your favorite song and dance around the room, trust me you won’t be sorry!

Last April, I began a journey towards finding my optimal health. Fortunately, this is a proactive and not a reactive step to becoming my best self inside and out. During this journey, I’ve embarked on lots of new experiences and thus lots of new self-reflections. 

This week I’ve been reflecting upon how I engage and respond to new activities, social situations, information, etc. Some experiences I’m exploring include learning new information about my blood sugar levels, playing on a new sports team (and playing a sport that I haven’t played in years), and meeting new people at a friend’s birthday party. 

While I’ve identified differing responses and feelings about how these activities impact my overall mental, emotional, and physical health as a human being, I’ve also noted that they all have something in common. I chose to take part in them. It was my choice to research my blood sugar; it was my choice to play on a new team and to revive my softball skills; it was my choice to attend the birthday party.

This revelation stood out to me, because our students are regularly confronted with many new experiences in which they aren’t given the opportunity to choose whether to participate; participation is mandatory. So where does this leave our students who struggle to transition into new or difficult activities throughout the school day?

I believe that the answer is that we must teach our students how to become at ease with the uneasy. 

To try this, I encourage you to consider explicitly teaching students how to appropriately request help when up against a challenge. Though it may seem that all students should naturally understand how to ask for help throughout the day, this task actually requires multiple skills. This skill set requires the ability to recognize one’s struggle and the need for help, identifying the person to ask for help, getting this person’s attention, and so on. This means that students who struggle with asking for help need time to practice the steps when they are self-regulated and in a space where they aren’t afraid of what their peers or others may think. 

In that same safe space, I recommend having conversations with your students about what it means to ask for help. These conversations can demystify the stigma around needing help, identify nonverbal or discreet ways to request help, and/or create shared language on alternative ways to ask for help such as, “I need to see another example” or “I’d like clarification on this section.” 

We can also work on improving our students’ ease with the uneasy by improving their cognitive flexibility. This is a skill that can be practiced through the use of student schedules. For example, consider creating student schedules where an unknown activity is represented by a question mark icon. When we first introduce this type of activity to a schedule, the question mark could be accompanied by two or three activities to support the student’s expectations and need for predictability. This can be seen below in the left most visual schedule in the progression.


Then over time, the number of activities could increase to improve their cognitive flexibility, helping the student to understand that during a certain time of day any number of listed activities could occur (seen in the centered visual schedule in the progression above). The list of activities could grow until it becomes difficult to list a large number of activities at which point only the question mark is used indicating that the activity is truly a surprise (indicated in the right-most visual schedule in the progression). It’s important to take behavioral and academic data on how the student is responding to these unknown and mandatory activities.

The end goal of this strategy is for the student to have collected personal data through experience and from real-time educator feedback on how they’ve been handling the new or unexpected activities. This information should then allow them to see how their ability to be at ease with the uneasy is improving, and that in fact, they can handle unexpected challenges, where there was no choice but to lean into it and ask for “help” or “clarification” or “support” when needed.

With hope, we will scaffold our students’ ability to be at ease with the uneasy and lead them into independent lives that allow them to take on challenges they once never imagined they could.

If this blog brings to mind any specific students, please email me! Together, we can investigate what is causing their unease and design strategies or find tech tools to support them. 

It is no surprise that struggling students need extra support, however adding these extra supports  often takes the place of classes where these students excel and enjoy. Think about that…Imagine that inorder for you to do your job effectively you are asked to sacrifice something that you love to do; fishing, boating, yoga, working out, no wonder students that have learning disabilities describe disliking school so much. We are in their eyes “stealing” the joy out of these fundamental times of their adolescence to account for extra class time to bridge their learning gaps while making school an even less enjoyable environment for them in the process.

Several years ago I had the privilege of catching a great documentary called “I Can’t Do This But I Can Do That: A Film for Families About Learning Differences”. This film not only had me captivated but in tears listening to the students openly talk about their struggles and opening up about what they were amazing at that had been taken away to allow time for support to help their learning struggles. The idea that stuck with me the most was listening to the children change the language around their deficits. These brilliant and resilient children were not claiming to have a “disability” they all believed that disability means I CAN’T. I have a learning difference that just means I learn differently than you do. I immediately sat back and thought about how changing this phrase alone had made these remarkable children change their outlook on their struggles and view them as a strength not a burden.

After the film concluded I knew in an instant I had to sit down and watch this with my own child, who had recently been identified with a Specific Learning disability in reading. Like the children in the documentary, Gavin had asked me similar questions. “Mom, what is wrong with me?” “Why has school gotten so hard?” Gavin was ready to throw in the towel and we had just begun to understand his learning difference and how to help him.

My family sat down one evening and watched “I Can’t Do This But I Can Do That” and I watched as Gavin smiled and shook his head while listening to the children describe their situations. After the documentary concluded, Gavin looked at me and said, “so I am not broken am I?” I immediately burst into tears and replied, “No, buddy you are not.” He said I just have to do things in a different way. This documentary changed my son's outlook on his new learning challenge. From that moment forward Gavin refused to use the word “disability” he called it a learning difference. Gavin took the information he learned from this documentary and made it his new way of looking at school. Gavin took every moment as a teachable moment to educate others about his learning difference and the learning differences of others. 

Advocating had become Gavin’s weapon to fight back against his disability and I credit showing him the film as his motivation to never give up. As Gavin continued through school like others had described he was asked to forfeit elective classes that he enjoyed so he could accommodate an extra math class or language arts class. Gavin would agree as long as he could have one class that he enjoyed. Gavin figured out early on in highschool career he wanted a career in skilled trades. Gavin pursued his dreams explaining the exact motivation he had gained from listening to the stories within the documentary. Gavin has never been happier in his career and never let his learning struggles stand in his way. 

If you would have asked me eleven years ago if I thought a documentary could change someone's life  I would have said no, but after watching “I Can’t Do This I Can Do That: A Film For Families With Learning Differences” I have changed my mind. This film played such a huge role in changing not only my perspective but my family's perspective around learning differences and I encourage anyone who has a child who is struggling to sit back and watch this film together or others like it. Learning as much as we could about Gavin's learning difference was the best tool we could have given him. Knowledge is power and teaching him about his differences made him less frustrated and more empowered. 

Many times we forget about how struggling everyday can make students feel. Find joy in learning about one thing, whether it be academic, fine arts, sports or some other area. Once students can find joy again while learning, the rest seems less overwhelming. If you would like help supporting your students Patins has specialists avaible in many different areas. It is as simple as completing a TA request. Guide them, encourage them and help them understand what their learning difference means. Knowledge is power and once the student truly understands their difficulty they are more willing to work to overcome it instead of throwing in the towel.

This morning I asked one of my boys what your teachers (general education, special education, and instructional assistants) do to make him feel safe, loved, and encouraged to try new things. My son took a second and started naming things that the teachers have said throughout the year. To my young third grader, it's the sharing of their day, an “I believe in you” and providing ways to make their accommodations seamlessly part of the classroom. In the teacher’s day, it's small acts of kind thoughtful words. To a boy who has difficulty reading and learning in the classroom, it's a huge part of why he wants to come to school. It's a teacher who does not have all of the answers but knows where to go. It's a teacher willing to learn the audiobook program, the speech-to-text and text-to-speech software, the C-pen, and the fair word spelling test. Sometimes, it's asking for assistance in understanding the why and how of the UDL (universal design for learning), AEM (accessible educational materials), and AT (assistive technology) that makes this young student eager to come to school and learn rather than run and hide in his room before the school bus comes. After my son mentioned all the ways that his teachers made him feel safe, loved, and encouraged this school year he said that he should make a card for each of his teachers and instructional assistants that help and teach him each day. 

If you or your student’s teacher would like technical assistance providing access to the curriculum in the classroom please reach out to a PATINS Specialist or fill out a TA Request. The PATINS staff are eager to help you provide that safe, loved, and encouraging setting for each and every one of your students. Consultations are provided at no cost to the teacher or school.

As teacher appreciation and the end of another year comes to a close, make sure you take time to thank your child’s teacher. Your kind thoughtful words have an impact on the teachers as well. 

1. Where are AEM and AT located in the Indiana IEP system?
   • Provisions and Services page 
2. What could be considered AEM for DHH Students?
   • Any materials used in the classroom that need to be in an accessible format for the student to access their curriculum at the same time as their peers such as closed and open captions, transcripts in (but not limited to) foreign language learning classrooms, access to print material in digital formats (This is not an exhaustive list).
3. What could be considered AT for DHH Students? 
   • Any device or technology used to provide access to the curriculum such as a tablet or Chromebook/laptop for access to live transcript applications, AAC device, FM/DM ear level transmitter/receiver, t-coil, neck loop, induction loop, remote mini microphone, Bluetooth device, built-in or stand-alone sound-field speaker and microphone, book clips, speech to text software/applications, text to speech software/applications (This is not an exhaustive list).
4. Even if the case conference committee decides that the student does not need AEM and/or AT to provide FAPE do we select “No” and leave the box blank?
   • When a case conference committee decides that the student does not need either AEM or AT to provide FAPE then select “No” in the appropriate box and comment in the box on what was considered, discussed, and the outcome.
   • Note: Leaving the box blank can suggest that the team did not consider or discuss AEM or AT during the conference.
5. How can our team determine if AEM and/or AT are appropriate for our DHH student(s)? 
   • Use SETT framework (page 40),  Functional Listening Evaluation, Your District’s AT team,  PATINS Lending Library, and/or Consult with Katie Taylor, a state-wide PATINS Specialist in deaf/hard of hearing

This past weekend I was invited to create a vision board for 2023 with a wonderful group of friends. As a newbie to this type of goal setting or planning for the year, I was looking forward to the inspiration I would find in the giant pile of magazines that we’d collected. 

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wanted to include something about books. Making my way through a stack of professional books has actually been a goal of mine since the start of the 2022-23 school year. At that time, I set a goal of reading a professional resource for at least 60 minutes a week, and while this isn’t a huge amount of time, my to-read stack is decreasing in size (as a sidebar, I found reading The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler to be thought-provoking and profound)! 

Not only am I enjoying reading these professional resources about all things education, I’ve found myself in a new book club and reading books for my own enjoyment. Before the last six months, I had never really viewed myself as an avid reader, but now I’m actively reading two books and will start a third soon. As I record these thoughts in this blog, I’m still happily shocked by this shift in my life. This is because I grew up hating to read the books assigned in school. Instead, I flew through all of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books, but at one point was told that what I was reading was essentially garbage and worthless. 

One thing that has really come into view over the last handful of months is the fact that I thoroughly enjoy reading with my eyes and with my ears; it simply depends upon the context. For example, I recently purchased the printed book, Solito; A Memoir by Javier Zamora, as this was my last book club book. However, I quickly figured out that I wanted to keep reading it even when I didn’t have access to the physical book, like when I was driving or going for a walk. That meant I needed the audio version too. So I went ahead and purchased it from the Google Play Store (I find digital books cheaper here than on Audible), since it wasn’t currently available for digital access through my local library.

Viola! The reading no longer had to wait on my access to the printed book! I could read with my eyes in bed or read with my ears in the car or on the treadmill. The ability to choose the way in which I read the text allowed me to continue my engagement in the story with less restriction. Having these options allowed me to maximize my time, which is another part of my vision for the year. 

What if we could engage our students in spending more time reading by simply offering them choices in the ways that they can access text? Recent research from the Journal of Neuroscience states that “while the representation of semantic information in the human brain is quite complex, the semantic representations evoked by listening versus reading are almost identical.” This means that when we are focused on building reading comprehension, we should feel confident in letting our students read with their eyes and their ears.

It’s in these choices that we may help our students see themselves as “avid” readers for the first time in their lives-- just like I’m experiencing for the first time in my late 30s. It’s a mixed feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I may not have realized could be fulfilled in this way, but it’s a feeling that is shaping my self-image and confidence in my intellect.

Plus, we must recognize that we will always have students with documented print disabilities that require access to digital and printed text in various formats to aid comprehension, and the Indiana Center for Accessible Materials (ICAM) is ready and waiting to help you provide these accessible materials at no cost to you. Reach out if you’d like more information on getting started!

There are ways to find accessible digital versions of text for all students, too. Firstly, you can check out audiobooks from your local library through apps like Hoopla and Libby. Other sites like Unite for Literacy and Open Library also offer audiobooks. There are paid options as well such as Epic, Books on Google Play, Audible, and more. 

I look forward to the day where school libraries operate like our public libraries offering print, digital, and audiobooks for all students! Please like or comment if you too have visions of text versions for all students!

Since I was a kid I remember my dad leaving in the early hours of the morning and returning for dinner with calloused hands and sore muscles. As he approaches 73, he still loves to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty doing “real work” as he tells me while I roll my eyes and sit in front of my computer. Most of my life, I have seen him grabbing quick bites here and there, sometimes a candy bar or a big drink of soda to sustain him throughout the day. As age crept up on him, he started to see a slump in his energy levels. He did some research and was suddenly inspired to make some dietary changes. He began by drinking more water, then reduced his caffeine intake and finally added protein-packed breakfast shakes to his daily routine. When I asked him about the changes he replied enthusiastically about how much better he felt. He reported to have more energy throughout his morning and that he even made it to lunch time without hunger pains. He admitted that he probably should have made these changes earlier but he was happy that he had discovered a way to boost his daily routine. 

When my father transitioned to another stage in his life, he realized how important generating energy was for his physical body. Powering up our transitioning students may not include a breakfast shake but embedding impactful Assistive Technology (AT) into our student’s transition plans can provide them with a boost as they merge into the workplace, higher education, and/or independent living. 

Check out the 5 Ps to Power Up Transition Planning. 

1. Preview tools that support goals: Purposefully selected tools enhance the student’s access to materials in the classroom, in social situations, and in workplace settings. What options are available? Try using the SETT framework for an AT evaluation. Tool trials are available through PATINS Lending Library.
2. Partner for consistency: Including all involved educators, family members, student, peers, vocational rehabilitation service providers, potential employers, disability office in college, community members, maintains consistency. Who can best help support students to utilize tools or strategies to reach transitional goals? PATINS provides consultations/training for implementation of AT with transitioning age youth. Also look for additional support at the Indiana Secondary Transition Resource Center (INSTRC) & In Source.
3. Plan with details: Explicitly describing how/when/where an AT feature or specific device is used increases the likelihood of smooth transitions as life changes occur. This can be included in Individual Educational Plan (IEP), 504, and/or Individual Learning Plan (ILP) or EL Plan. PATINS staff provides trainings and consultations to help with proper documentation. Also Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology Services has resources about planning. 
4. (Em)Power the student: Involvement in the process of AT selection and training on use in multiple settings leads to increased self-awareness. Providing an individualized script with a focus on equitable access when requesting accommodations prepares the student to be assertive and clear about their needs. How can the student be involved in the process? Consult the student during the SETT framework and invite them to the training provided by PATINS, have them do self-monitoring, and have them participate in planning for beyond high school.
5. Practice builds confidence: Rehearsing scripts for self-advocacy fosters independence. Additionally, use of tools and strategies consistently in the classroom, social settings, and the workplace frequently generates confidence and effectiveness. Check out how PATINS helps with implementation. 

Important Note: AT is most effective when 1) linked to a goal/purpose, 2) accompanied by strategies and training, 3) materials are accessible (AEM).

Glossary

PATINS- Promoting Achievement through Technology and INstruction for All Students. AT - Assistive Technology. Examples: Specific Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Device, Screen Reader, Built-in Text-to-Speech, Live Transcribe, etc. AEM - Accessible Educational Materials. According to Indiana’s Article 7, AEM is (1) Braille, (2) Audio, (3) Digital Text, (4) Large Type, (5) Tactile Graphics, (6) Video, (7) Captions, (8) Audio Descriptions. SETT Framework: AT evaluation strategies created by Dr. Joy Zabala (1990) to focus on assets of a Student, Environment the student is in, Tasks to achieve before identifying Tools to support student.

For several years now, I’ve felt it critical to maintain the notion that, “ I am in charge of and responsible for my own happiness.” In that vein, I’ve spent considerable time and analysis in writing a condensed list of the things that, “Truly Make Daniel Happy.” Along with this list, I have used this as an opportunity to catch myself from blaming others for any unhappiness I might be experiencing. I generally felt pretty good about all of this and would probably say that it offered a solid sense of hope and direction. It can be quite vulnerable to create a genuinely honest list like this, and I was proud of it.

More recently, however, I had someone I strongly respect pose the following question to me, which really challenged my thinking in a way I’d not dealt with before; 

“If your “happy list” were to be considered your list of goals or objectives for the year, what criteria would your Annual Performance Review consist of, and what would your overall performance rating or score for the year be? 

Whoa! What a challenging question! I was rather proud of having identified and listed the things that genuinely make me happy. I hadn’t even considered rating myself on achieving them! Then again, I have worked with educators on writing, supporting, and measuring annual student goals for the past 26 years! Indeed, what would my "happy list" annual performance review look like and how had I never even thought about measuring success on it? Further, if I knew I was going to have an honest performance review at the end of the year on my "happy list items," would it change my actions, or how I used that list as my map/compass during the rest of the year? …most definitely so! 

During that very same week, I came across a student in my evening welding class at Ivy Tech, who was talking with the instructor about the leather-work he does. This caught my attention quickly because this particular student is still in high school. He’s 17 years old, he’s taking evening welding classes, often until after 10pm, and he’s a leather-worker for fun! How cool! I often hear that work ethic, drive, and discipline are lacking in today's youth, but I've come across so many high school students and young adults lately who, quite honestly, have far more of those characteristics than I had as a high school student! I believe it's important to point these students out, support them, and learn from them anytime we can!


About a week before meeting this welding peer of mine, my wife had let me know that the wallet I’d previous gotten her as a gift, was starting to fall apart. Here, I found myself with a young, driven, focused leather-working high school student! It was like a perfect storm of events coming together, so I asked him if he’d consider making a new wallet for my wife. Long story a little bit shorter, Jack produced, with progress pictures and questions about customization during the process, an incredible piece of leather art that I excitedly presented to my wife for Christmas as her new wallet.




As if I wasn't already sure, it was now confirmed that this young leather-working, welding, high school student wasn't quite the same as a lot of other high school students and it was about this time that I asked if he'd consider being a part of my next turn to blog; I was interested in what motivates him, what makes him happy, what drives him to be more, better, different, and satisfied. Specifically, I asked him what he thought about school up through his 17 years and what advice he might offer to other younger students. Jack's somewhat quiet and, in my opinion, very humble, so it took a little bit of convincing... and it is my pleasure and honor to welcome Jack, who is wise beyond his years, to the PATINS Ponders Blog! 



Let's consider picking up a new skill, activity, or hobby. I was drawn to and decided to pursue creating items from leather. To be able to do that, I needed material and I needed equipment, so I needed money. Entering the workforce is something that has filled my time, allows me important connections with others, and is a motivation to strive for excellence in something aside from school. When time is filled throughout the day and evening with meaningful tasks, school work can begin to take on new importance as one may start to see and truly value the limited hours in a day. It can help keep you aware of minutes and on your toes about how you're spending your time. Spending a significant amount of money on something, like your hobby or other passion, is going to keep the motivation cycle going, growing, and evolving into even more dedication, discipline, and eventual pay-off! Another activity that helped me a significant amount was finding a book I liked, that I didn't have to write about or relate to school at all. Once I started reading my book it made me want to finish my schoolwork as soon as possible so that I could, instead, read my book. Establishing a personal bedtime for yourself is another valuable time management and motivation strategy. Even if the established bedtime hinders schoolwork progression, making that routine a priority proved better, for me, in the long run. With all this being said, one of the worst ways to waste your time in early life is to be negligent about and around school. There are very important opportunities that present themselves at school, but they aren't always obvious. There is bound to be someone in or out of the school system to help you if you present yourself as willing to work and open to help and as someone eager to do well and achieve what is expected from school, even when it's not easy or the most preferred activity.

Clearly not all young adults these days are lacking in discipline, strategies, work ethic, or motivation! In fact, the humans like Jack that I've been fortunate enough to cross paths with over the years have always taught me important lessons, because I always try to remain as open as possible to "not letting education get in the way of allowing others to teach me!" In fact, I'll be completely honest, I've peeked around my welding booth more than once to ask Jack what settings or techniques he's using on the night's assignment!

Often, the best teachers are continually learning as much from their students, as their students are hoping to learn from the teacher. It's this sort of 2-way street, mutual respect, and shared learning that can truly lead to the most inclusive of learning environments. It's an aspect of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) that is sometimes easily missed because it's abstract. It's not something we can concretely feel, see, or hear, and it takes a definite vulnerability to embrace. It is, however, very much related to the first and most critical element of UDL... engagement. Remember that without engagement, the other two critical elements of UDL (presentation and expression) are rather irrelevant!

AND... those elements of happiness, success, focus, and engagement that you've identified and deemed critical to your learning spaces; hold yourselves and your students accountable for them! Hold Annual Performance Reviews on them! What data or evidence will be needed to support the annual review of them?

Allow, request, and even fully rely on the PATINS teams to support you in that very way, so that you can support the students you are sharing learning within your daily world. Call on the PATINS Specialists. Utilize our Lending Library. Request Accessible Educational Materials. Implement and support a student reading with their ears, for pleasure as Jack describes, to increase motivation and engagement in academics! Consider coming to our annual Tech Expo on April 20! Registration is open! Register for any/all of our scheduled trainings! Our services to Indiana public educators is always at no cost to you! We're here to help! 

The PATINS Project Tech Expo has been a banner event for Indiana educators and families eager to learn about assistive and accessible technologies and services to promote inclusion in the classroom for all students. This coming April 2023 will be our sixth year in partnership with IN*SOURCE!

You can expect 50 exhibitors in the Exhibit Hall which will be available for attendees to chat with from 9 am to 3 pm. View the Preliminary Exhibitor List to help you plan out your day. The final list will be available the week of March 27! 

In addition to the Exhibit Hall, attendees have the opportunity for in depth learning from a choice of 20 presentations held throughout the day. You can see the Schedule at a Glance now. Enjoy sessions from Apple Education, Microsoft and Texthelp, plus many more awesome products, services, and organizations!

For resources for blind/low vision, there are presentations hosted by CViConnect, EYE can see, Inc, HIMS, Inc, Mountain View Low Vision

For Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) resources, plan to attend sessions by Forbes AAC, Tobii Dynavox, PRC-Saltillo. 

If you are looking for disability resources for families, head to the MassMutual, AWS Foundation, Inc, and IEP Technical Assistance Resource Center offerings.

These are only a handful of the awesome presentations on the schedule!

I know it can be difficult for educators to leave the school for a day. Your time at the expo will be well spent. Not only will you gain valuable resource connections and ideas for creating an accessible environment for your students, it is also a no-cost way to earn up to 4 Professional Growth Points (PGPs)!

PATINS Tech Expo 2023 with IN*SOURCE will be entirely in person in Carmel, Indiana. There is free parking onsite!

Be sure to act fast! Registration for a no-cost closes March 29, 2023 at midnight. We hope to see you there!

I recently had a discussion in a user group I belong to regarding the use of the NIMAS (National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standards) file set established by the federal government for instructional textbook publication for the print disabled. The main question was how do I or our organization use the files.

Let me step back, in 2004 provisions were added to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to help improve the quality and delivery of accessible formats to students with disabilities who need such materials. Among these provisions, states were required to adopt NIMAS.

The NIMAC (National Instructional Materials Access Center) is a federally funded, online file repository of the source files provided by publishers in the NIMAS format. The NIMAC acts as the conduit through which the files are made available to authorized users to convert the files into fully accessible textbooks for students.

NIMAS is a technical standard used by publishers to prepare electronic or digital files that are used to convert instructional materials into accessible formats. The files are known as NIMAS source files. The purpose of NIMAS is to help increase the availability and timely delivery of instructional materials in accessible formats for qualifying students in K-12 and secondary schools.

The key word in the paragraph above is “accessible” format. NIMAS files are used in the production of a range of accessible formats, including braille, large print, digital audio, and a variety of accessible digital text formats, including DAISY and EPUB.

Inherently, there were only a few software programs that were able to use the raw NIMAS files. There are a couple programs that will convert NIMAS files to usable Braille format, but for the ICAM (Indiana Center for Accessible Materials), we use the digital components for student use, primarily EPUB and PDF after NIMAS conversion.

I explained to the group that software for converting NIMAS files to an EPUB and/or PDF is limited, but the support for the software is all but evaporated. The other challenge is that the software is so far removed from support that the hardware used is antiquated by today’s standards.

For example, I am using a NIMAS conversion software from Don Johnston called DaisytoEPUB. It came out in 2010 and ran on both WINDOWS and MAC. My primary use was on a WINDOWS 7 system. As Microsoft moved from Windows 7 to Windows 8, 10 and 11, the operating systems’ architecture changed and would not support DaisytoEPUB, nor would Don Johnston modify the program for the new Windows architecture.

Unfortunately, Microsoft’s end of support for Windows 7 was January 2020. I am still using the Windows 7 system daily and cross my fingers every time I boot it up. Likewise with an iMac I have that has had a similar fate. An old program and old operating system and a daily mantra on booting it as well.

All this to convert a NIMAS file to an EPUB, which has gained the most popularity for student access that is supported by apps and extensions. However, PDFs have also made a significant showing in adding more versatility to what devices and apps/extension support them.

NIMAS files can’t be converted directly to PDFs or at least I haven’t found a program that can, which means EPUBs conversion is needed. I use an open-source program called Calibre which is a multi-file conversion program that converts about anything (except NIMAS files). The ICAM uses Calibre to convert the NIMAS file that was converted using DaisytoEPUB to convert it to a PDF.

I rely on all components to work, OR I need to find an alternative. There are times when DaisytoEPUB fails, and I struggled with how to fix it. One such alternative was an older version of Dolphin’s EasyCreator V.7.0 which converted a NIMAS file to a Daisy format. Once in a Daisy format, it can be converted with Calibre to an EPUB and then a PDF.

Let me be clear that the process from beginning to end is tedious and time consuming. The results are files that are used by students that can access the files in their preferred format, in as timely a manner as possible with content that is the same as their peers.

As long as I have the tools to keep old systems and software usable, the process will continue and if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. However, I know all good things come to an eventual end, and my ongoing search for an updated conversion solution continues. Technology, please don’t fail me now…

Content warning: this blog contains toilet humor, bodily function discussion, and the power and potential of every child.

It’s not too early to call, but my favorite story of the semester came from an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) workshop I did in February. We were learning about all the greatest hits in AAC: modeling without expectation, ways to support literacy and comprehension, and being good communication partners. Someone always has a story to share, that day was:

“One of my students told us with his AAC device he had ‘wet poop!’”

The entire room gasped in appreciation. I love these AAC workshops. It’s phenomenal to be in a room of people who get it. None of us get that warm, enthusiastic reception over dinner at home when we talk about bathroom things.

For those of you who are a little lost, let’s paint the picture, which is an increasingly common one:

This is a student who was introduced to a robust way to communicate this year after years of having very little access, just a few words in a limited way. This is a child who never had a way to make a choice that wasn’t already curated for him by adults who couldn’t possibly anticipate all his wants and needs. This is a child who someone might have described as having a “behavior problem” when he was just using whatever he could in absence of communication access.

“Wet poop” wasn’t a term he’d heard anyone use before. He didn’t know how to find the word “diarrhea” and wasn’t sure how to spell it. Because he knew what was going on with his body and could describe it, he was able to get prompt health care. This is easily one of the biggest concerns parents have in consultations with PATINS.

“When they cry, I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know if they’re hurt or sick or sad, they can’t tell me and the doctor doesn’t believe me. I’d give anything for them to just tell me what’s wrong.”

His team knew that despite giving him an excellent robust tool for language there was more to be done. I had the pleasure of sitting down with the team recently to review all the great things they’d done thus far and what to plan for next:

1. They introduced core and fringe words, and now plan to focus on grammar and syntax to create interesting and meaningful messages
2. They introduced the alphabet, phonics, and literacy instruction and planned to introduce word prediction to support spelling and communication strategies
3. They had great visual and language supports for literacy and planned to tweak their presentation to promote engagement.

The future cannot be any brighter for a student when they have a team of adults who are willing to try new things and really listen to the student in all the ways they tell you something.

If you have your own “wet poop” moment, fart sound you want to program into an AAC tool, or need a new idea to try, we’re here to help!

Are you an expert? You may not believe it, but you most likely are at least in some area of your profession.

From Merriam-Webster:

Sometimes we sell ourselves short on our skills or experience remarking, "I'm no expert." However, I bet you are. Educators are experienced teaching, helping struggling learners, observing nuances in behaviors, managing classrooms, and more.

You don't have to know everything, and it's ok to share your knowledge, experience, and opinions especially when it comes to providing support and making choices that affect students. However, there will be a time when you need additional support specifically around Assistive Technology (AT). It's constantly changing and none of us can know every facet.

AT teams are great resources that typically include many experts from several disciplines (e.g., occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, special education, psychology and more). Having teams enables each member to share the load of knowing at least some fo the solutions. 

You are fortunate if your district has a team but if you don't you can work towards establishing one. The PATINS Project can help you learn where to start. Reach out to us by completing the IDOE Technical Assistance request form.

Additional resources that will help you when exploring AT solutions include:

Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology Services (QIAT) and their listserv. This is a great service for posing questions and gaining access from AT experts from across the US and more.

Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative (WATI) has many resources including  the Assistive Technology Consideration to Assessment and the Assessing Students’ Needs for Assistive Technology (This includes 16 chapters and  guidance in many areas of need including; seating, positioning and mobility, communication, computer access, AT for writing including motor aspects and more)

Since 2017 I have been a proud team member of the Indiana Center for Accessible Materials (ICAM). The ICAM team shares information, provides training, and encourages stakeholders to utilize our services for their students. One of the topics we frequently discuss is the NIMAC (National National Instructional Materials Access Center). 

Established by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 2004, the NIMAC is a federally funded, online file repository of source files in the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) format. Here, authorized users (the ICAM is an authorized user) can access more than 52,000 K-12 NIMAS files for use in the production of accessible formats for students with disabilities. Digital Rights Managers (DRMs) are trained on the process of ordering materials, many of which we obtain from the NIMAC. The NIMAC provides a digital file to the ICAM/IERC (Indiana Educational Resource Center) which allows us to provide accessible formats such as braille, large print, ePubs, and accessible PDFs. All files that are sent by the ICAM to the end user are accessible.

Recently, I was notified that the ICAM is the 4th highest downloader of NIMAS files in the country! Our total unique downloads were surpassed only by Bookshare, American Printing House (APH), and the California Dept of Education. 

I am so proud of this achievement and the ICAM team which includes Jeff Bond, Martha Hammond, and myself. I also want to include the very talented group of Specialists and all of the staff members from the PATINS Project. I also want to thank the entire staff at the Indiana Educational Resource Center (IERC). This accomplishment could not have been achieved without the hard work of our entire staff.  

The students of Indiana are the benefactors of everyone’s hard work. K–12 students with qualifying print disabilities are receiving their accessible formats of textbooks, core curriculum instructional materials, and popular fiction titles in a timely manner.

The benefits for students are explained on the CAST website: “The use of accessible digital materials and technologies strengthens opportunities for all learners to experience independence, participation and progress. Accessible versions of educational materials may mean the difference between learning barriers and learning opportunities.

Increasingly, students with disabilities are spending most or all of the school day in general education classes (NCES, 2019). When students have difficulty using their materials and technologies due to a disability, they are at risk of falling behind their peers. Timely access to accessible digital materials and technologies for students with disabilities results in the same opportunities to fully and independently participate and make progress in the curriculum as students without disabilities.” 

How can we help your qualifying students get started? Please let us know!

Many states, including Indiana, now have passed state-regulated dyslexia laws. When I speak with educators from around the state sometimes our ICAM/AEM conversations lead to Indiana SB 217 which is our state's dyslexia law. Some schools have embraced the law, provide training for teachers, and have rigorous, appropriate support in place for students. Some teachers talk about their district's well-designed procedures for MTSS (Multi-Tiered-System-of-Supports) and have expressed excitement about the OG (Orton-Gillingham) Courses they are completing.

On the other hand, others have told me that no one is actually monitoring progress or enforcing the tenets of the laws. Most often the reasons cited for this are a purported lack of funding for professional development for educators, and meager interest in technology and science-based reading supports for students. I've been told several times that "we are not allowed to use the word dyslexia". I've taught, and I get that school corporations have "cultures". That's a thing. But think of trying to intervene with a learning difference that you are not allowed to name. Let that sink in.

Effective educators do not need a state law mandating them to offer good instruction to all our students, as we've been taught ways to consider all their different strengths, weaknesses and needs. If you have the passion, the knowledge and the tools, you can help even the most downtrodden, self-loathing, struggling student learn to read. There are a plethora of courses, webinars, podcasts and publications that can help us provide reading instruction that is comprehensive, driven by the science of reading, and based on over 100 years of research that has been replicated and published.  

By engaging in your own professional development you can learn how to identify students who have dyslexia, even if for whatever reason they have not been universally screened, such as students who had passed 3rd grade when Indiana SB 217 was enacted in 2018.   After you have identified the signs of dyslexia correctly a few times, you get really good at it. This repeated practice puts your dyslexia antenna in the alert position, and you know to watch for more signals. You learn how to effectively help your students meet their challenges and move on to the next. Because dyslexia never ends.  

The first best practice of an educator is to know your students. Why does this student come in with a hostile demeanor every morning? Why does that student always look like she's been crying? Why does this one and that one exhibit inappropriate and puzzling behaviors, or act out in ways disproportionate to the situation? As a teacher, you may need to admonish sometimes for the sake of everyone's right to learn, but don't let that be the end of the interaction. Explore the "why". Try to develop trust between you and the students you are with during the day. Then it's easier to notice the learning differences that emerge, understand them, and accommodate them.

We must take matters into our own hands, regardless of what the powers that be are or are not enforcing, because of the following (this is not an exhaustive list, but a list of the types of things that keep me up at night:

• 2/3 of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of 4th grade will end up in jail or on welfare. Over 70% of America’s inmates cannot read above a 4th-grade level.  
• 1 in 4 children in America grows up without learning how to read.  
• Students who don't read proficiently by the 3rd grade are 4 times likelier to drop out of school.  
• Nearly 85% of the juveniles who face trial in the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, proving that there is a close relationship between illiteracy and crime. More than 60% of all inmates are functionally illiterate.  
• 53% of 4th graders admitted to reading recreationally “almost every day,” while only 20% of 8th graders could say the same.  
• Reports show that the rate of low literacy in the United States directly costs the healthcare industry over $70 million every year.

This information came from the DoSomething.org website and is similar to other sites I compared. This one happens to be a global movement of millions of young people who see the literacy problem and want to fix it.

Contact a PATINS Specialist for information on technology, tools and classroom strategies to help your struggling readers. Contact the ICAM if you have struggling readers being served under the IDEA and have an IEP. Contact the IERC if your struggling readers have blindness/low vision. Together, for Indiana, we can change the statistics.

Thanks so much!

1. Where are AEM and AT located in the Indiana IEP system?
   • Provisions and Services page 
2. What could be considered AEM for DHH Students?
   • Any materials used in the classroom that need to be in an accessible format for the student to access their curriculum at the same time as their peers such as closed and open captions, transcripts in (but not limited to) foreign language learning classrooms, access to print material in digital formats (This is not an exhaustive list).
3. What could be considered AT for DHH Students? 
   • Any device or technology used to provide access to the curriculum such as a tablet or Chromebook/laptop for access to live transcript applications, AAC device, FM/DM ear level transmitter/receiver, t-coil, neck loop, induction loop, remote mini microphone, Bluetooth device, built-in or stand-alone sound-field speaker and microphone, book clips, speech to text software/applications, text to speech software/applications (This is not an exhaustive list).
4. Even if the case conference committee decides that the student does not need AEM and/or AT to provide FAPE do we select “No” and leave the box blank?
   • When a case conference committee decides that the student does not need either AEM or AT to provide FAPE then select “No” in the appropriate box and comment in the box on what was considered, discussed, and the outcome.
   • Note: Leaving the box blank can suggest that the team did not consider or discuss AEM or AT during the conference.
5. How can our team determine if AEM and/or AT are appropriate for our DHH student(s)? 
   • Use SETT framework (page 40),  Functional Listening Evaluation, Your District’s AT team,  PATINS Lending Library, and/or Consult with Katie Taylor, a state-wide PATINS Specialist in deaf/hard of hearing

As the end of the year nears, holidays run together and family and friends come in and out of our doors. Sometimes the wrapping paper, meal preparations, and travel plans take up most of our time.

 

For me the holiday checklist is at the forefront of my mind. Those that know me are familiar with my love of checklists. Boxed bullet points give more order, help me stay on-track, and give me a sense of control of the things going on around me. Unlike in the past, this year my checklist became a source of anxiety about the holiday season. But I could not figure out why. I was doing all the suggested holiday traditions that are supposed to bring more joy during this time of year. Yet joy just did not seem to be inside those multiple squares. On the other hand frustration and anxiety showed up checkmark after checkmark. 

So I applied a recently discovered method of the “5 whys.” 

The first why?: Why were these activities bringing me frustration and anxiety? Answer: I didn’t enjoy the activities that we were doing. Now I could have stopped there and just changed the activities but I would not have gotten to the root of the cause.

So I asked a second why?: Why wasn’t I enjoying these activities? Answer: They felt rushed. 

Third why?: Why were the activities rushed? Answer: I felt like I needed to get to the next checkbox quickly. 

Fourth, why? Why did I need to get to the next checkbox? Answer: Checking the box became more important than the  actual activity. 

Fifth why?: Why was marking the squares the priority? Answer: The satisfaction of marking the square became the focus of the activity. Utilizing the 5 “whys” helped me to have a deeper understanding of the root cause. 

Now I can look back at my checklist with a different perspective. I have to be honest, giving up the checklist probably isn’t going to happen. But what I can do instead is make it a priority to sit inside my checkbox and enjoy those four walls before quickly moving on to the next thing.

As educators we have a lot of checkboxes and sometimes we can lose sight of the joys of seeing students grow and learn. Checklists serve valuable purposes in guiding, documenting, tracking, and prioritizing but we have the choice of how they guide our actions as we complete those necessary items. PATINS Project staff often talk about a few checkboxes including the Assistive Technology (AT) box and Accessible Educational Materials (AEM) boxes on the Individualized Education Plan (IEP). These boxes are vital for documenting student’s accommodations and gaining equitable access to materials. Although it is important to mark these boxes, we also need to sit inside these boxes to make sure we are getting to know our students and their needs. One way to do this is to utilize the SETT model, designed by Joy Zabala, in the AT evaluation. Utilizing the SETT model results in Student centered, Environmentally useful, and Task focused system of selecting supportive Tools. 

So when faced with these checkboxes, make sure to check them and take time to incorporate the SETT model into the evaluation process. If you do need more support on AT in the IEP, register for this no-cost 5-part series on AT in the IEP:

Part 1 - Getting the Money(Register): Friday, Feb. 10, 1:00 pm EST
Discussing funding sources for devices, training, and how to utilize PATINS for support.

Part 2 - Boots on the Ground(Register): Friday, Feb 10, 1:30 pm EST
Examine working with Information Technology (IT) and creating a system/plan for daily use.

Part 3 - What Happens at the Table(Register):Friday, March 3, 12:30 pm EST
Look at case conference practices and the actual documentation of assistive technology in the Individualized Educational Plan (IEP).

Part 4 - Bringing Them In(Register): Friday, March 3, 1:00 pm EST
Addresses implementation of assistive technology with the student, family, and school team.

Part 5 - Making It Stick(Register): Friday, March 3, 1:30 pm EST
Addresses transitioning to the post-secondary setting with assistive technology.

Remember to sit inside the checkbox with the intention of seeing past those four lines to visualize clearly who your students are and what they need for success.

In the last 25 years, during which I have worked for the PATINS Project, assistive technology has grown by leaps and bounds. Today I am specifically considering one technology and how it has advanced greatly.

It is interesting and somewhat exciting to see where it was, and where it is going. My early involvement with text to speech (TTS) was with the software program Kurzweil 1000.

The software, when fitted to an appropriate computer configuration, would take scanned text and through the programs optical character recognition (OCR) would convert the text output to speech.

Kurzweil 1000 was primarily used by individuals who were blind or had low vision. Although others began using it for students who had a reading disability. From that enlightening came the Kurzweil 3000 program which addressed the other needs of not just reading but writing and study skills.

There have been many other text to speech programs developed. Some being Natural Reader, W.Y.N.N., Word Q, TextHelp Read and Write, Microsoft Narrator, Snap and Read to name a few.

These programs have had a major impact on struggling readers and those individuals who can’t access text in the traditional way.

For many users of TTS, one complaint that crossed programs were the robotic voices which were synthesized and lacked inflection and other natural nuances of human speech.

Not only was TTS used in software programs, but it was and still is a vital component in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices, software and applications.

Although TTS was/is an integral part of assistive technology for individuals to communicate and interact, it was just a matter of time before it became mainstream.

Very few people would know the background of TTS or its evolution of augmentative speech when using SIRI or Alexa. They have become a fixture in everyday life from young to old. Their voice sounds realistic, and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) used makes them almost lifelike.

What got me thinking about what my early years’ experience with TTS is a program my wife, Rita, came across a few weeks ago. The program is Speechify and it is TTS program and much more. Speechify is a text to speech program for desktop or mobile devices that uses computer generated voices.

This is one of many that have incorporated OCR to translate its output to speech. What is interesting about Speechify is that it doesn’t use voice files that are part of the devices operating system but generates speech using its own file sources.

You can choose voices from fourteen different countries, including Spanish, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Hindi, Dutch, Japanese, Arabic, Italian, German, Hebrew, and others. It offers male and female voices for the specific language, but it also has the voices of Gwyneth Paltrow and Snoop Dogg.

This is not an endorsement for Speechify (for which there is a cost to use). This is one view for me of where TTS started, and what is possible now. The advancement is phenomenal and Speechify is just one of many TTS programs out there.

The main reason Speechify caught my attention was Snoop Dogg’s voice, you should demo him. What a hoot!

Were you part of the generation that grew up learning the value of reading as it related to a personal pan pizza?

Me too!

Pizza Hut’s Book It! program was a cornerstone of my childhood: read so many books a month, and get a little coupon for a free pizza. In elementary school, I devoured books almost as fast as pizza. Throughout my childhood and teens, I always had a stack of novels nearby.

It didn't change until sometime in my 20s. I couldn’t find any enjoyment in reading books and at the time I couldn't pinpoint why. My free time, interests, and access to books had certainly changed. I had a job, responsibilities, and no weekly trip to the library built into my schedule. I just didn't read books anymore, so I described myself as "not much of a reader."

In actuality I was still a reader, a voracious one even. I was just reading different things for different purposes: cooking and travel blogs, news reports, professional journals, comic strips, and the Wikipedia pages on Basque whaling in the 1700s. I spent hours reading every day but if it wasn’t a book with chapters I believed it didn’t count. That frame of mind was harmful: no one way of reading or type of reading is superior to another. When we put books and novels as superior to other types of reading, we set ourselves up to an unequal and inaccessible standard. And when I took the pressure off of being “a good reader = books = pizza” and could find enjoyment in more types of reading.

So I propose a new Book It, A Grown Up Reading Program. There are a few rules:

All reading counts

Books of any length or genre? Good. Children's books? Good. Not-a-books like blogs, comic strips, technical reports, the news, and recipes? All good. Audio, digital text, print? Good, good, good!

Get the tools to help you read

Today I almost exclusively read digital materials. Audiobooks let me multitask, conserve energy, and prevent repetitive motion injuries while the digital text gives me the learning and organization tools I need. Both of these formats are necessary for me to access reading. I also use two types of headphones for audiobooks: bone conduction and noise canceling. You can borrow these types of headphones from our lending library. If I was a student with an IEP, I would insist all this information be written in that document under assistive technology and accessible educational materials.

Did you notice up at the top right corner of the screen we have a ReachDeck accessibility toolbar? If you haven’t yet, try it out. Listen to this blog or another page with the tool. Do some stretches or pace around a bit and read. Did you like it? Would you or your students use something like that again?

Share the joy

Does every student have access to reading materials in your district at the exact same moment as everyone else? 

Do they all get to have interesting reading experiences about a variety of topics? 

Do they need some tools to be successful readers, as most adults do?

If you need support with the above questions, reach out to us, we have tools and ideas to try!

Finally, buy yourself a pizza

Also, splurge on some breadsticks, because you are a grown-up with grown-up money.

Audio Version (5 Minutes)

Five years. My 26-year-old son passed away unexpectedly five years ago today. It's still difficult to believe. So many things were going well for him. He was married, raising a young baby, and beginning to excel in a career. He had so much life ahead of him. I miss him and his vigor, silliness, and passion.

Although we didn't visit face to face as often as we could have, we communicated through text messages, daily snapchats of his daughter, him singing, his dog Jet and we talked every few days. I am grateful for all those modes of communication we shared. Although these modes may not be typical for your students, it's important to discover their best modes.

How do you ensure that ALL your students are connected and communicating with their most important people, friends and classmates and not losing out on communicative opportunities?

"An 18-month-old child has been exposed to 4,380 waking hours of oral language. A typical AAC user, exposed to modeling, two times a week for 30 minutes, would take 84 years to have the same level of exposure." - source AAC Community

What can you do? - Model AAC

At PATINS, I have been privileged to work with many K-12 stakeholders throughout the entire state through video consultations, webinars, or onsite trainings. Some of these relationships have continued for several years. These are important to me because most of these interactions supported students with Complex Communication Needs (CCN) and/or Orthopedic Impairments (OI). 

What else can you do? Request Free PATINS AAC Consultation

Students with CCN (go to practicalaac.org for additional information) have the right to communicate. It may be difficult to identify their methods of communication, but we must do our best to see and validate those attempts. We have several tools available to help and a great place to start is the Communication Matrix (Free).

You can think about your student as an active participant rather than a passive observer. How can you engage your student? Consider the basic purposes of communication:

1. Refusing,
2. Getting things,
3. Socializing and
4. Sharing/Gaining information.

When your student fusses, pushes something away or throws items, do you acknowledge and identify that as a refusal ("No thanks", "Don't want", or model a refusal icon) and offer an alternative? Start with a few symbols - Project-Core and Universal Core Vocabulary Selector

Engineer the environment so your student must ask for assistance (e.g., missing part to an activity, missing/dead battery, missing color, etc.). Also, have your student with CCN block the hallway path of a general education peer in order to initiate a conversation using a Step By Step communication device (101 Ideas for Step by Step).

The Step by Step is awesome for recording multiple words, phrases, and sentences to have conversations/social interactions (program the student's half of the conversation - “My name is x. What’s your name? I have two dogs and a cat. Do you have any pets? I like watching videos. What do you like to do?), counting, singing songs, giving instructions, or following directions, and much more!

Encourage all students to greet one another, new people, provide opportunities to share information, control others (e.g., activities such as cooking, art, cleaning, PE, etc.). See link for 101 Ideas above.

Encourage families to share information about home activities and events so that staff can engage the student about those. Use a written notebook, email, shared online document, recorded messages on voice output device, tablet or dedicated communication device.

Finally, you must also ensure the following to encourage robust authentic communication. When teaching/using AAC, students can easily get bored, frustrated if it's only used for academic tasks. Additionally, the AAC system must be taught keeping these ideas in mind:

1. There must be a need to communicate
2. There must be an opportunity to communicate
3. There must be motivation
4. There must be a way to communicate
5. Give appropriate wait time and talk less!!!

Many students with CCN have already lost out on many opportunities to communicate. Please work with your team to determine the best mode of communication for your student, give them a voice and make sure everyone listens. Every student has the right to communicate (ASHA Communication Bill of Rights) and share their unique personalities.

Many of you who know me or have heard me present know that I am a very proud mother. I have been trying out Assistive Technology (AT) tools and devices on my daughter since she was in Kindergarten when I first started working for PATINS in 2001. I used her as a test student for Co:Writer, IntelliTools, and many others. After she was old enough to join me for trainings after school she would tag along. It wasn’t too long before she was assisting the participants. Soon after she was up in front and presenting. So, it is not hard to believe that she is now a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) for our local school corporation. She recently attended the Access to Education (A2E) 2022 Conference. Afterwards on the ride home she was telling me about her favorite parts of the conference and was throwing out suggestions for my blog. So I suggested why don’t you do it and she did. Enjoy!

Hello, my name is Courtney LeBarron and I am Sandy Stabenfeldt’s daughter. She is the Indiana Center for Accessible Materials (ICAM) Digital Services Specialist. Recently, I attended the Access to Education (A2E) 2022 Conference hosted by the PATINS Project. Although there were MANY great sessions over the course of the two days, my mind kept going back to one particular session:  “Teaching the Swipe Generation: Carefully Curating Apps for Young Children with Disabilities” presented by Beth Poss. Many, many times throughout my short career, I have been asked, “What is the best app? What app can I use?” Well, that question is way more complicated than it may seem. How old is the student? What are their fine motor skills like? What are your goals for them?

During her session, Beth Poss broke it down in a clear and simple way. She listed the 7 steps of what makes an effective learning app. There were two that really stood out to me. The first one was “Does it meet a developmental need?” and the second was “Does it enhance and encourage interactions with adults or peers?” As a SLP these are the two questions I most frequently ask myself: Can it promote literacy or vocabulary development? And will interacting with this app promote interactions between the communication partner and my student? 

So, the next time you find yourself thinking,"Is this app really effective?" Or you are asked, "What is the best app?", think about these criteria. If you find one that meets the criteria of an effective learning app you can borrow it to try with your student. PATINS lends iPads with apps or they can send apps to iPads that are not managed by the school corporation. If you need help in determining an app to try, please talk to a PATINS specialist. Information about the PATINS lending library is available on their website. Not all technology is bad, and not all is good. It is our job, as educators, to help our students figure it out. 

Let's pretend Parents have already been notified that you are preparing to screen your 2nd-grade classroom with a universal dyslexia screener approved and provided by the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE), see Appendix C, pp. 11-13. You know to do this because you have consulted the 2022-2023 IDOE Dyslexia Programming Guidance for Schools. You know that Indiana schools are required to screen for characteristics of dyslexia in grades K, 1 & 2 because you've had meetings with your corporation's reading specialist, who has been trained in dyslexia, see Appendix A, pp. 8-9. Not only are you required to screen your students, but you are also looking forward to the process because you understand that the results of the screening will yield important information about each of your students.

Perhaps you have noticed one student who mispronounces multisyllabic words, and you know which student struggles to identify words that rhyme. And because you are very attentive you have seen the student who asks a friend to tie their shoes a couple of times every day and you've observed the one who bumps clumsily into desks as he approaches his seat. You've also seen that he still, at age 8 cannot remember if he goes left or right down the hall to get to the cafeteria. So before you administer the universal screening, you know which of your students have traits and classroom performance that already have alerted you and others who work with them. There is data from previously administered universal screenings. You have written, kept and filed anecdotal notes. You discuss concerns with other educators and special services providers, and the reading specialist. All data is part of each child's story. You are ready to screen.

Post-screening, the parents of the students who were not flagged by the screener will be notified, and regular educational programming will resume for them*. The screener flagged six students in 2nd grade as "at risk" or "at some risk" for characteristics of dyslexia. One of the flags surprises you, the others, you expected. Immediately you notify the parents of the six who were flagged on the screening results, with information on your school's plan for Response to Instruction with a program of Multi-Tiered System of Support (RTI/MTSS) and again, a request for permission. You are prepared to begin the interventions as soon as you have the parent's signature. (So today, as you read this, check to be sure of your school's plan for RTI/MTSS. If you are unsure of who to speak with and what questions to ask, prepare yourself with some talking points. Included with parent notification is a consent request form for a Level 1 diagnostic assessment to test for characteristics of dyslexia. As soon as you receive consent, you will administer the Level 1 diagnostic assessment for characteristics of dyslexia. 

As per the requirement in the IDOE Dyslexia Guidance, the school is approaching the 90th day of instruction this year, so you are right on schedule. Buy yourself some flowers, and keep going. You should be regularly collaborating on behalf of your students with the reading specialist for your school corporation. The data you are collecting, as part of the state's Reading Plan, must be reported to the IDOE every year, and the guide tells you exactly which data to include in your report to the reading specialist, who will compile and submit data for your school corporation to the state.

If any of these 6 flagged students, or any others in your class has a current IEP for a specific learning disability (SLD), there are systems in place to help them. Work through the ICAM/IERC NIMAS CCC Forms to evidence a print disability, in this case, a reading disability. The Case Conference may need to reconvene to fill in forms 1, 2, 3a. Form 4 must be signed by the teacher, reading specialist, school psychologist or any one of the professionals named in this list. Then, determine which books the student needs in an accessible format, fill in form 3b, give the forms to the digital rights manager (DRM) and the student can begin using accessible materials from the ICAM. Very soon. 

If a student currently has an IEP indicating the presence of SLDs, they may not be required to participate in the universal screenings, although it would be helpful to create a full snapshot of the child with their strengths and weaknesses. Hopefully, you have attended some of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) trainings presented by PATINS staff, and have explored the Virtual UDL Classroom--this will help you plan whole-group instruction as you meet the learning goals of your students with specific needs related to dyslexia, as well as those of your students who were not flagged, the ones who have resumed regular educational programming. Typical students do not require extra support but it may enhance and reinforce their learning.*

It is SO important that we support our dyslexic learners in every way we can. If you are not yet familiar with the IDOE's Guide get in there. SB 217 is a state law now, and lost time never comes back. We just have to keep moving forward. Contact PATINS/ICAM staff on how to get started, or how to keep going. If we cannot answer a question, we will find out who can. Any of the PATINS Specialists can help you with technology, devices and software. Borrow from the PATINS Lending Library. You entered teaching for specific reasons and then realized that teaching is not a destination, it's a journey. Let us support you as you travel. 

My high school English teacher would scold me for using that cliché. Please forgive me.

Thanks so much!

One of my most influential teachers died this past summer. Mrs. Bales (Jane Bales Starner) taught English at Manchester high school when I attended in the early 80s. She also chaired the English Department and sponsored the school newspaper and yearbook. 

Mrs. Bales was ahead of her time with practices for universal design for learning (UDL). When I walked in for the first day of creative writing, and saw the chairs arranged in a circle, I knew I was not going to be bored in this class. Her level of engagement was high every single day, and she represented the content in a variety of ways to reach more students. One morning, she arranged for a student in a culinary class to fry an egg in our classroom so that we could use all of our senses to describe it. I connected it to what I was learning in biology class by comparing the egg to a spineless sea creature.


I remember her having us bring in photos of ourselves as children and writing about that. We read each other’s work and tried to guess who authored the piece. I felt seen and valued, and hearing others’ stories made me feel connected to my classmates. I remember she had us do peer editing before that was widely practiced. I was a strong writer and she affirmed that. But she also paid enough attention to see that I was also a good teacher and told me so. She paired me with students who were struggling. Looking back, I think it was a big factor in my choice to enter education as a profession. 

I remember a project I did for English Literature class where I wrote a ballad, as a way to express what I had learned about this oral poetic tradition. It was about my sister’s recent breakup with her boyfriend. I brought in my guitar to sing it for the class. I was nervous, but my chorus was very simple so she joined in singing which led to everyone else joining in.  

She encouraged us to send entries to writing contests at the state and national levels. I won the Purdue poetry writing contest for high schoolers my senior year, and she drove me to Lafayette for the banquet where I got to hear John Irving read the novel he was writing at the time, A Prayer for Owen Meany. As an Indiana farm girl and first-generation-headed-to-college student, I shook the hand of the Purdue president and felt like I might belong there. 

Jane was on the eccentric side in the best way. Sometimes her lectures would lapse into a stream of consciousness. It kept our 17-year-old collective attention, though, even if we made fun of her in the hallway. She did not lecture often, though, using more active practices to keep us involved.

Challenging vague, boring writing, she kept high expectations for our work. One time she wrote the comment “good” after one of my journal entries, and I challenged her back calling her out on her vagueness. She was amused and took it to heart, and then wrote me back a couple of pages with very specific praise and criticism of my work. I imagine she went to bed late that night after going through a large stack of journals. 

Mrs. Bales did the hard, effective, gratifying work of well-designed instruction. Many teachers do this perhaps without ever labeling it “universal design for learning”. I know that she was active in state teaching organizations, so much of her skill was likely gained by attending professional development, and applying new ideas to her craft. Whatever it was called in 1982, I knew that she cared deeply for her students as individuals, and made the classroom a place for all to thrive.

PATINS is here to help you discover how you’ve been doing universal design all along! We’ll also help you network with other great teachers and find your next best teaching ideas. Check out our training calendar for opportunities to garner new ways to inspire your students. Mrs. Bales continues to inspire me. She showed up in my dreams a couple of nights ago vacuuming under my furniture. Here is a poem in her honor:

My High School English Teacher, Showing Up at 2 a.m.

Why are you here, 
in a dream
after 40 years,
lifting the end of my couch
with superhuman strength?

Vacuum whirring, 
Words stirring.

Raise your hand if this has happened you.

Actually, don't, because you're probably reading this silently and you'll look silly if you do.

You walk into a classroom or community visit and find your student who uses an Alternative or Augmentative Communication (AAC) system or device doesn’t have it with them. It’s in a cubbie or backpack or drawer. Waiting. Uncharged. In pristine condition. The cellophane might still be on it.

I think if that piece AAC could talk, it would take you by the hand, give you great big puppy eyes and say mornfully, “I was designed to give your student a voice but I’m treated like an expensive paperweight.”

Did anyone care?

My greatest joy of working in education is that we work with people with hearts seven times bigger than the average person. We all care about students, well past our obligated 180 days of contractual caring. We care about their feelings, wants, and needs. We care about them being able to talk.

The issue in this particular situation isn’t usually lack of caring or empathy, it’s a perceived lack of resources. AKA, “It’s just one more thing to remember.” We can empathize with feeling overwhelmed, but not accept that voices are left in drawers.

Here are 5 of my favorite tried-and-true ways to ensure the voice is out of the drawer and in the hands of the students who need it:

1. Do a task analysis of the student’s schedule. Take a look at each period or station of the day and find examples of when teachers and students would use communication. Communication should happen in the bathroom, at math, and in the pool, just like for non-AAC users. Find ways to make those opportunities to communicate accessible through modeling, rich and thoughtful intervention, and access to evidence-based language representation. In other words: there’s no reason why words aren’t available and modeled all day, every day!

2. Provide some supports. Outline in painters tape where the device is supposed to go on a desk to remind staff if that square is empty. Set placemats and inexpensive device holders in key places around the room. Get the student strap or hands-free harness. Get a portable battery pack. Human-made problems (voice in a drawer) have human-made solutions, you just need to find it (or find someone to help you find it).

3. Low Tech with High Utility. Light tech is an easy and cheap way to make sure everyone has access to language. Tape light tech core word boards to key areas like centers, play area, vocational stations, and the bathroom. Give staff miniature core boards on their lanyards or communication supports on their key rings. Wear aprons or core word shirts. Temporary tattoos. Bonus: Hardcore permanent tattoos. Don’t believe your mom, an AAC tattoo is timeless and will look fantastic in your 80s!

4. Come to an understanding: sometimes we need to pause as a staff and deepen our knowledge about AAC best practices. We offer some great services and professional development. Perhaps you didn’t even know what PATINS offers for AAC. Send us an email, we’d love to chat about you’re wanting to do at your school.

5. Last but not least: Does your staff understand WHY we want to design 500+ opportunities to communicate a day? This is my favorite video that captures my why: that our students need words, many words, and words all the time. What is your why? Does your staff know their why?

AAC isn’t another thing to do. It’s the thing we do. We are all responsible for developing communication skills in our students, it’s the bedrock of learning, connection and being human. It is the best work we will ever do, and it does not belong in a drawer.

Do you remember your first year in education? I think on it often lately because I just started with PATINS, my rookie year*. Looking back, my letter to myself on that first day after college would be something like this:

Dear Jessica,

You can still cry every day during the first two weeks of school and it won’t be a reflection of your skill, value, or how much you will love your job. Be gentle on yourself, everyone starts here.

p.s. Stop buying everything in the Target dollar section.

My first year I introduced iPads to my students. One little girl wanted to know how to share her beautiful “I Love Mommy” themed cookie she made on an app and send it to mom. I told her I didn’t know, so she told me I wasn’t good at my job and her mother enrolled her in another school. I never touched another iPad again.

Haha, just kidding! Kids don’t care if we are rookies (being rookies themselves) and I learned to embrace my rookie-ness. We played on the app a little and decided to snap a picture of it on my phone and email it. Later I learned I could have done a screenshot, but I didn’t know that yet, this was all brand new to me. Multiply that moment by hundreds or thousands and you’ll see a typical educator’s year. Not a semester will go by that we aren’t handed something new: new policy, new responsibilities, new kids, and new chances to be true rookies in something we have never tried. Which new challenges makes us decide to suit up? Which ones do we avoid and sit on the bench, and how will that impact our students?

Andi Stevenson talks about how important it is we embrace being terrible at something new, from her own experience as executive director and rookie ballroom dancer. Rookies, she explains, turn off internal criticism and don’t fall prey to perfectionism. They are supremely empathetic towards others on their own learning curves. Being a rookie stretches mental muscles, making us approach the new and the difficult in different ways.

Sounds like an awesome educator or administrator, doesn’t it? We call those people expert learners, and these are the skills that make successful students.

Andi also speaks to something that has probably haunted all of us at one point: burn out. Being a rookie gives you the opportunity to discover what makes you happy, and that the happiness can’t come from just one source. Staff who pigeonhole themselves into one area, personally or professionally, are staff who don’t stay long in the field. I struggled with major burnout my third year, so I started some rookie tasks in my personal life. I had a milestone birthday this summer, and leading up to that day I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish, a bucket list of sorts. There were about 25 things, including:

Bake bread from scratch
Vacation somewhere new in each cardinal direction
Learn how to repair my car
Go back to school
Host Thanksgiving dinner

Some of these things I still do, some not, and some activities I eventually purchased technology to assist me.

You can watch me complete the very last thing on my list, the day before my birthday: basic carpentry. This is the beginning of my budding role as a carpenter. I'm not bad carpenter, or just a woman just playing around with some power tools, but a real carpenter. Just like our students are readers, writers, artists, and citizens. We're all just rookies right now, and given the right tools and instructions, we'll blossom.



My favorite part about education (and PATINS in particular) is that we are big fans of rookies. We have to be rookies every school year in something. Welcome to the team!  PATINS and ICAM have the coaches, the training, and the equipment to help you and ALL your students be rookies of the year. You might say we’re your number one fans.

What rookie adventure are you starting this year? How will you model your rookie mentality to your staff or students?

*warning: overuse of sports cliches

It’s one of most universal pieces of employment advice: don’t dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want.

So, of course, I occasionally dress up as superheros. I own several superhero costumes: Superman, Batman, Pajama Day Girl (I made her up, she’s awesome on weekends). I have a super hero costume in the trunk of my car, nestled alongside my first aid kit, in case of emergencies. Maybe you won’t be surprised to know I’ve used my Batman mask more than those bandaids.

Sometimes I dress up as my favorite superhero in broad daylight, at case conferences and staff meetings: the field-trip taking, magic bus driving teacher who introduced generations to physics, anthropology, ecology, and more. That redheaded wonder woman took eight students and the class chameleon to places near and far in search of knowledge. She also has the best motto:

“Take chances! Make mistakes! Get MESSY!”

What is not to love about Ms. Frizzle? I adored the books and TV show. She was amazing, I wanted to be in her class AND be her.

It begs the question: why not aspire to be Ms. Frizzle? We have the career in education, we have the vision for fantastic learning. I have several science themed dresses for any occasion, and the lizard, at least the only lizard I could be expected to keep alive. What are we missing?

The magical bus.

The magical bus of my dreams would fly around the state and help teachers in their classrooms. Any teacher, therapist, or administrator could board-- for free-- and try tools so all their students have access to an education. They pose questions like “do you have something that lets my student access her iPad if she can’t touch it?” or “can I turn my paper worksheet into text and then have that text read aloud?” and we would say “Yes we do, and we will show you how to use it too!”

Our magical bus would always be accessible. Not just physically, but digitally. We could instantly connect to administrators and therapists and teachers for training and exploration wherever they are. Or in their PJs, maybe on Tuesday nights at 8:30 EST.

We design to remove the barriers for all our students so they can take authentic chances and learn from their mistakes and get messy. We share tricks and tips from educators who have been there. We would celebrate them, cheer their successes and research and problem solve the roadblocks.

We would bring our volcano drawings to life and explore and explode brains. We would help teams create opportunities for communication where none may have existed. We would go where no educators had gone before. Students who never thought they were "smart" would find tools that would change their minds. We would change lives.

I would submit my request for a magical bus, but I know what the answer will be:

Jessica, thank you (again) for your request for a magical bus. We wanted to remind you that not only do we not have any magical buses, everything that you are asking to do with said bus, we already do at PATINS. Please stop asking.

So while we are not Ms. Frizzle (although we can try!), we do have quite a bit of friendly magic at our fingertips whenever we need it.

First: I made it out alive. You will too.

This year I messed something up in my back, and by April it was hard to sit for more than twenty minutes at a time. Every drive, conference or meeting I was engaged for a bit and then the rest of the day was spent imitating your favorite wiggly child, trying to ease the pain. I felt terrible.

Sometimes it got better, and then it got worse. I complained. I ignored it. I tried what I knew to fix it, I asked friends for ideas. Nothing really worked.

I had enough and went to a specialist, definitely not something I was looking forward to. I hate going to the doctor. But within a few sessions, my life had changed.

It was like getting glasses in the correct prescription or wearing good shoes after years of wearing Old Navy flip flops. I didn’t know how bad it was until I experienced how my spine was meant to be.

About three years into my career I had another issue that was a major pain: paperwork.

Paperwork is like back pain. Everyone gets some, some people get more than they can handle. It comes when it’s least convenient and it will not go away if you ignore it. By the end of my third-year the IEPs, evaluations, and caseload documents piled up to my ears. It was affecting my ability to do my job and my family life. I felt terrible. If death by paperwork was a thing, it felt imminent.

I complained. I ignored it. I tried what I knew to fix it, I asked friends for ideas. Nothing really worked.

An administrator gently suggested I see some “specialists.” I did not want to admit that I was struggling to anyone, but after meeting with others who were amazing at keeping on top of it all, they gave me some ideas. They pointed out some of my mistakes, the weight that was causing the paperwork pain, and they helped me develop my paperwork treatment plan.

In less than two months, I started to feel better. My files were in order and I felt in control. By the next year, I was rocking a weekly paperwork schedule and found tools to help me streamline and automate. I was spending even more time working with kids than I was before! It was career changing. I didn’t know how good it could be.

You, dear reader, might be dealing with some pain in your career. Maybe it’s paperwork or a student on your mind who you don’t know how to reach. Maybe it’s a new tool or expectation that’s pain in your neck, and doing your job effectively seems out of reach. Maybe you complained or ignored it. You tried what you knew to fix it, you asked friends for ideas. Nothing may have worked.

If it’s related to supporting student’s access to education, we’ve got a team of specialists here to help.

It might just change your life.

My father once lightheartedly referred to me as a “geek” when I was eleven. I burst out crying in shame. Through my tears, I was able to defend myself:

“I’m not a geek. I’m an imaginative nerd!”

And I am.

The Merriam-Webster still defines nerds as "an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially : one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits."

Ouch. I'd challenge anyone to see the positive and powerful side of that definition.

I’ve watched every episode of Star Trek that’s ever aired. Even the cartoon series. I attempted for a week to live and cook as if in the 1880’s (not any other decade, I researched). I love computer games, paper crafts, tabletop gaming, and the construction and design of roller coasters. I tried to code my own breed of digital dog to live on my computer before my parents relented and got us a real dog. My dad will list this as one of his proudest moments as a parent, although my digital frankendog only had a body and a strange floppy nose. There was not a single person in most of my childhood that liked anything that I liked, so I learned the life lesson of needing to a) expand my interests if I wanted to keep friends or b) be an ambassador of my favorite things. Thanks to my nerdiness, I have made a career out of it: have you and I talked about how AAC can change a child's life? Many of you have nerded with me about language and access!

I haven’t always wanted to be a nerd. Teenage years were rough, and there were some awkward moments, even as a self-assured adult, when colleagues would voice grievances such as:

“He’s fourteen years old, he needs to gain interests in age-appropriate things. No one’s going to want to talk about Disney princesses when he’s an adult!”

I was silent and embarrassed, because, well…






If this student lived at my house, that’s all we would talk about! My husband and I make annual pilgrimages to the Cinderella’s castle. We make costumes. We watch Disney movies at least once a week. We’ve rated our favorite princesses and villains and dare you to try to beat us at Disney Scene-It.

Why? Because we’re nerds! We love it; it’s fun. It’s also powerful.

Whenever I felt a little burnt out in my job, I just infused a little of my nerdiness into it and I felt renewed. Dressing like Batman or decorating with Star Wars or making a Pokemon literacy activity: they were talismans in my work and the source of my power to get through a tough day. If I could find the source of my student’s superpower, it was like striking oil. I still have tubs of Thomas the Tank Engine and Indianapolis Colts and country music star, Travis Tritt (that one was hard), materials. They were my magic wands of engagement.

In my old school internship journal, I have about 50 pages of me angsting over one student, “Mike.” To sum up those 50 pages: Mike hates coming to speech therapy and ignores me, head on the table. He doesn’t make any progress. I think he hates me.

One day his teacher mentioned he was making imaginary phone calls to someone named Gary, and the puzzle pieces clicked in my mind. I had found his talisman, the kryptonite to my engagement problem: SpongeBob.

Therapy took a detour to the pineapple under the sea and we were in business. Armed with his nerd power and friends, SpongeBob and Gary the Snail, we were conquering phrases with multiple words! Adjectives! Appropriate turn taking! The entire day (and my opinion about staying in the schools after graduation) had turned around.

Our superpowers come from places unseen: the love of our family, our memories of exceptional experiences or talents, a cartoon that makes us feel happy. In these last few days of school, I hope you don’t lose sight of where your superpower comes from and how you’ve used them for good for so many around you. Wave that nerd flag high.

Five years ago I was excited to sit at a table with a young Black student and her mother to show her all the things her child using a new robust augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device could do.

She could tell us what she wanted to play with.

She could tell us her favorite color.

When one of her classmates was bothering her, she could tell them “stop.”

She loved it. The school loved it. Mom wasn’t sold.

“It doesn’t sound like her,” she objected.

Both of us knew this student’s mouth sounds were mostly squeals and cries. I opened the settings and showed her the choices: “Ella,” “Heather,” and “Tracy.” We listened to little clips of the computerized voices.

“They don’t sound like her.”

And she was right. There wasn’t a voice that sounded like someone that came from her family or community. Not a single voice that sounded like a young Black person, not on any system I could find. I could program a voice for her talker that sounded just like Yoda from Star Wars right then and there, but a Black American was too far fetched for assistive technology.

Because technology is programmed by people, who all have biases, our assistive technology has biases. And those biases are a danger to the UDL framework we use and in some cases, life threatening.

The speech-to-text software doesn’t work equally across all voices and varieties of English, especially Black voices.

The grammar checker flags non-white varieties of English.

The AAC lacks language from other dialects, cultures, and communities, and if it is there it is labeled as fringe. You want another language? It's available, but no one downloaded the file or attempted a translation.

The visual support makers are absent of vocabulary that is developmentally appropriate for all school aged children, such as words for sexual health, identity, and justice or they are locked behind a wall of “adult only.”

Indiana’s Article 7 Special Education law is explicit on how to figure out if a student can take home their AT:  “On a case-by-case basis, the use of school-purchased assistive technology devices in a student's home or in other settings is required if the student's CCC determines that the student needs access to those devices in order to receive a free appropriate public education” (my emphasis added). 

If your staff refer to a “school policy” or a hoop for families to jump through, such as an after-school training, you’re inviting bias into determining which kids get to talk, read and learn when the school bell rings at the end of the day.

Your word prediction program guesses the words that could follow “He is ___” are: good, smart, and mean, but “She is ___”: crazy, married, and pretty.

As we scrutinize our own biases, inherent tools and instruction we are welcoming into our classrooms and families:

1. Listen to the people using the technology.
2. Question your own biases.
3. Take action. Engage your colleagues in what you’ve learned. Dialogue with the people creating the technology. Good developers are open to constructive criticism from consumers. My word prediction example was immediately discussed and corrected by the company. If they aren’t responsive to your concern about bias within their product, why would you want that in your room?

Our assistive technology has some problems created by humans. Humans can fix it.

Resources and Further Reading

PATINS Lending Library and no-cost training for supporting all students

Critical Practices for Anti-bias Education for K-12 Educators, Teaching Tolerance

Vocabulary for Socially Valued Adult Roles, Institute on Disabilities at Temple University

Ableism, National Conference for Community and Justice

AI is coming to schools, and if we’re not careful, so will its biases, Brookings

Don’t Get It Twisted- Hear My Voice, ASHA Leader

8 Influential Black Women with Disabilities To Follow, Disability Horizons

My husband and I have an inside joke for measuring things that can’t quite be measured: the potato.

How much do I love you? 12 potato.

How cute is our dog? 9.5 potato.

How much do we hate fireworks after midnight? 14,000 potato.

It’s silly nonsense but easy to use.

A couple of years ago I was talking to a team about a young student who had complex communication needs. They had tried the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) but the student wasn’t making much progress. I asked why they had started with PECS.

“We use best practice. First, we start with low tech.”

Exactly zero potato of that is best practice.

How does one progress on this imaginary spectrum of technology? Is it when you perform really well or really badly? Did the number of batteries used in the tool correlate with her skills or her needs?

No one could say, but there was an unwritten rule: something had to be proven before you got something “fancy.”

It’s a hard paradigm to change for all us folks born in the late 1900s (ouch): it’s 2020, there is no such thing as a low-high assistive technology spectrum.

Consider this model I adapted from my old notes on aided AAC and other AT:

Low tech:
Cheap, easy to learn, no batteries, minimal vocabulary

Mid tech:
Moderately expensive, needs some training, more vocabulary

High tech:
Expensive, extensive training needed, relies on touch screens technology or other newer technology, lots of vocabulary

The more you learn, the more the above is proven wrong. A PODD book comes in paper with tons of vocabulary and in my experience requires lots of training, a minimum investment of several hundred dollars. We have a library of very limited and inexpensive communication apps we could teach you to use in 10 minutes or less.

We have apps and extensions that are free or built into any cheap smartphone that can read text aloud, is this “high tech” AT better or worse than the "mid-tech" text scanning pen or the "low tech" sheet overlay? The number of batteries it has will inform you about as well as my potatoes.

What do we do instead of relying on the imaginary technology spectrum?

PATINS Specialists can help you discover several frameworks and assessment tools that help teams keep the focus on what is important: your student receiving an equitable and accessible education. Our no-cost consultation services are always available for our Indiana public PreK-12 schools with a focus on best practice, sound evidence base, and effective ideas. We'll even loan you tools to try from our no-cost Lending Library and be available every step of your student's trial.

When we focus on our student’s needs and the features of the tools, our IEPs and supports become better. We are able to figure out which things our students have outgrown, we are quicker to identify what isn’t working and why. When we use a common language of tool features, our students learn to advocate for themselves more effectively and our conversations with other team members become more productive.

Do not throw out your "low tech" stuff. Throw out the low/high technology spectrum labels and embrace tool features so your students can address the barriers in their world. You’ll be a better professional for it.

I’m 400 potato certain.

I had a student we’ll call Todd. Todd’s favorite things were the zoo, reading animal books, and quizzing people on their animal knowledge. One of my favorite days working with him started with a very rough morning with a writing assignment.

“It’s a letter to anyone,” his teacher explained. “We’ve been at this all morning and he only has one word written.”

Todd looked crestfallen. After animals, pleasing adults was one of his favorite things. His teacher knew that if Todd hadn’t started something, it wasn’t because he was “stubborn” but he struggled to get started with new tasks and needed another way to approach it.

We went back to my "speech room" and looked at the blank paper. I had lots of tools at my disposal: adapted pencils, keyboards, voice dictation software, wiggle seats, kits and binders of visual supports for writing, and of course I had free access as an Indiana public school employee to the PATINS Lending Library to borrow whatever I thought might help Todd. I thought of my tools, I thought of Todd and what he needed and remembered his special nerd power.

“Do you want to write a letter to a dog?”

Todd nodded, still a little hesitant after an hour of trying to write and nothing coming out.

“You could write to my dog, if you wanted. She would write you back.”

“You have a dog?!”

So I told him about my chihuahua, Winnipeg. Winnie was abandoned on the street in Indianapolis and we adopted her. She loves blankets, snuggles, and sandwiches. I had a hunch she loved reading and writing letters.

Todd immediately scribed five sentences (one of his accommodations, since tools like speech-to-text software were not accessible for him), and put the periods and capitalization in himself:

Dear Winnie,

Don’t eat all the treats. Why are you a little dog? You are a good loving dog. Play tug of war with Mrs. Conrad. Don’t wake your dad Winnie.

Love,

Todd

It may never make it into a library or be critically acclaimed, but it is one of my favorite written works a student has ever produced. I felt like Winnie earned Employee of the Year that day. Relationships paired with the best ways for access wins every time.

Some of our pets have put in more hours and done more service to humanity in general and Indiana students specifically than they’ll ever understand. They’ve been especially treasured and faithful companions this past year, while we spent way more time on “their” home. They are therapeutic little creatures who remind us to enjoy simple pleasures, take care of ourselves, maybe take a nap in the sun sometimes.

If you’d like to see some of our PATINS pets, I created a short quiz. See if you can guess what pet belongs to which staff member!

Todd got his letter from Winnie the next week, and he was rightly suspicious:

“Did she write this by herself?”

“Good question, what do you think?”

“She can’t use a pencil.”

“No, she can’t.”

“But maybe you can scribe, like how you do with me.”

“I think that’s a great idea.”

I'd love to hear about your pet and the little acts of service they do for you, your family, or students!

Somehow being an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) specialist with PATINS has put me in the position of listening to the confessions of school staff:

“I’m not good with technology.”

“They didn’t teach any of this when I was in school.”

“AAC is not my thing.”

It’s usually said in a hushed tone when they think no one else is listening.

“I have nothing but good news,” I’ll often say. “90% of what we’re talking about is just good instruction for all students that you already know, we’re just framing it in a new way to support non-speaking students. The rest I’ll put on a cheat sheet, and I find cheat sheets helpful too.”

But what I want to say is “AAC wasn’t my thing either and look at me now!” At one time, out of the things that SLPs had to learn, I would have ranked AAC dead last. Even below the paperwork.

I had “The AAC Class.” In one semester I was to learn everything I needed to know about AAC and I would be set for the rest of my career (haha!). However, there was one little snag: the professor who taught the AAC class took a sabbatical and another staff member was wrangled into covering it so we could graduate on time. This is what I learned that semester:

Nothing.

At least, nothing which was practical or helpful in the real world. I was given my first “real job” caseload with several non-speaking students, a binder for PECS, a Boardmaker CD, and released into the wilderness. My class notes were worthless.

I was in trouble and these students needed something I didn’t have: the knowledge of how to “do the AAC.”

Of course, AAC was definitely not my thing. But it had to be because there was no one else. I adopted a simple plan that has kept me afloat to this day: just keep saying “yes” to every opportunity. Every training and app I could find to practice with, every opportunity to attend or present at conferences and network. None of this came naturally or from a book or college course. Yes, I will pilot it. Yes, I will learn it. Yes, I can teach it. It was just years of chasing ideas and tools for students that made them light up inside when they found their voice. I made mistakes, forgave myself, and tried to learn and do better. Yes, yes, yes.

Exactly none of us started life as “technologically gifted” or imbued with the knowledge of AAC or any technique or educational principles. We all had to start at zero and learn.

When someone says “AAC is not my thing,” I think what they're really sharing is that they are scared.

They are scared of failing. They are embarrassed by the idea of not being enough for the task. They are traumatized and work-worn from so many evaluations and tasks, and worried that their work won’t be enough. 

And you know what every scared person wants?

A friend, a light in the darkness, and some tools.

At PATINS we have lots of those. Did you know that if you are an Indiana public PreK-12 staff member and one of our events on our training calendar isn’t at a time that works for you or your team, you can request it at another time? If you were hoping to talk about that topic but wanted 1:1 personalization or a deep dive into a special topic, we can set up that consultation at no cost to you or your district.

In particular, for those who are ready to say “yes” to trying out AAC tools and techniques, we have a process just for that. For a no-cost PATINS AAC Consultation, please fill out this referral for each student. This 2 minute video is a brief overview of our process.

The scariest thing that could happen is doing nothing.

Lately, several happenings in my life have seemed to converge on this one particular topic that I find fascinating; one cannot actively evaluate the show and be the show at the same time! 


When my oldest daughter was about 11 or 12 years old, she and I began taking voice lessons together. Our voice-coach felt it very important that her students perform for real live audiences periodically, and I recall the very first performance she required us to do. She had rented out the entire theatre on Main St., and the place was pretty full! It was a duet that we'd be performing and as it got closer, I was scared out of my mind and body sitting backstage with her! I spoke to crowds regularly for a living, for many years, I did not expect this sort of anxiety! I remember turning to my daughter and telling her, "I think I'm going to puke!" To which she responded, “Well, go out in the back alley and do it, but hurry up!” So, I tried. I was not successful and I came back in and sat next to her again. She said, "Take three slow deep breaths, you won’t be able to see anything except bright lights, you won’t see the people." "Think about the first 3 lines of the song only and then everything will be fine.” The very message she was actually conveying to me, at such a young age, was that focusing on the perception of the performance instead of the performance itself, was counter-productive! 


Finally, and most recently, I was having dinner with a couple of professors at Purdue this week, and this very topic came up, coincidentally! It was specific to finger tapping though, and the notion that one can typically tap at a much faster rate when they are not consciously aware of their tapping rate! If you are any sort of a typist using a traditional type of keyboard with your fingers starting on the home-row, etc., you may have noticed that you are able to type much more quickly when you are focused on the content, on the next idea, or on the composition as a whole, than you are when you are actively thinking about trying to type fast! This is the very same principle! One cannot usually type their fastest while they are actively focused on typing fast! Go ahead, give it a try right now! Try focusing entirely on typing quickly and then try typing and focusing on the content and compare!    

Right about now, in the school year, is when things always tended to start to become tiring for me as a teacher. And right about now, as we head into October, is often when things start to feel more burdensome as an administrator as well. I'm not entirely sure of all the reasons for that, but I know that as a state, we are in the midst of many changes, and thus as organizations, school corporations, and cooperatives, we find ourselves in the midst of change as well. Change can be difficult and scary, and sometimes very rightfully so! Regardless, the conclusion I've come to after having done this and gone through many changes for going on 17 years with the PATINS Project, and in consideration of the many other examples in my life ranging from drumming to welding, motorcycling, and singing, is that spending your time, energy, and cognitive power on trying to evaluate and/or guess at the perception of others WHILE trying to perform my best, isn't the most productive.

I can either evaluate the show or I can be the show, but I cannot do both optimally at the same time. 


So, now, regardless of what it is that I'm tackling, I try to be this much younger version of myself... head down, entirely focused on the task at hand, and trusting that any necessary feedback or evaluation will come from someone else afterward! I try hard to: 

1. Be prepared. I try to make sure that I ask as many clarifying questions as I can to help myself feel ready. 
2. Not spend so much time preparing that I'm no longer taking care of my sleep, exercise, relaxation, and nutritional needs. 
3. Conscientiously pause before beginning.
4. Take a couple of very slow and deep breaths.
5. I tell myself that it's OK to feel nervous or anxious and I welcome those feeling and I embrace the energy they can give me.  
6. Instead of dwelling on everything that MIGHT go wrong, I try to drum up positive energy and remember that my performance will almost always be a diminished version of my best if I am evaluating WHILE I'm doing! 
7. I trust that people around me will provide the necessary evaluation and then I can start all over, but I know that keeping the evaluative part and the performance part separate will ultimately be the most beneficial! 
8. I also try to expect this sort of performance from those I'm interacting with! “When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.” (Rosenthal, R., and E. Y. Babad. 1985. Pygmalion in the gymnasium. Educational Leadership 43 (1): 36–39)

In your work with Indiana students and educators; try focusing on the above 7 steps. Try this concept out with just one small task this next week or over the weekend and see what happens. When it comes to trying to problem solve for a particular student who might be struggling, for example, allow the PATINS staff to be the observers while you dedicate all of your focus on the performance, and trust that we'll provide the follow-up input! Then, you can begin the process of asking more clarifying questions, preparing, embracing anxiety, letting go of trying to evaluate while performing, and just giving it another shot, entirely focused on the performance itself! We can help, but none of us can simultaneously be the show while we're trying to evaluate the show! Make us part of your team for optimal performance! 

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