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.

“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.

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.