The Joseph Robert Shaw Foundation

Helping Children Recover from Brain Injury

When Collaboration Makes Us Stronger

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On Friday mornings a team of us meets over Zoom to plan for our inclusive pod and discuss any other concerns or pressing issues. As Thanksgiving approached we’d talked about how we wanted to do a project that dealt with thankfulness, but hadn’t found one yet.

The day before we met I spent time pursuing Pinterest for some of those beautiful crafty projects teachers post about doing for Thanksgiving. I found one from a Montessori teacher who had her children sew small hearts to give away at Thanksgiving dinner. Well, that sounded sweet and I couldn’t think of anything better. Instead of handing them out at Thanksgiving we could mail them to people we can’t be with this year.

I brought the idea to our Friday morning group. One of our members, a special education professor, immediately started planning how to adapt it for Joey. Use a bigger, plastic needle – she suggested – and maybe burlap for Joey so that the needle will go through.

And then, as we talked, we all realized – why should Joey be the only one with a large plastic needle making burlap hearts? Why should he be different?

 

We ordered a pack of plastic needles, red yarn, and a roll of burlap and changed our plan from Joey being the only one using adapted materials to everyone using the same materials. 

The project was a success- the burlap hearts came out surprisingly well (I had to beg my daughters to make some for our own house!) and Joey got into the task of pulling the needle with yarn through the burlap. With help of placing the needle back through the burlap, Joey could access the project and he ended up with the same sweet burlap hearts as everyone else.

This project was a great reminder of two important elements in inclusion – 

  1. The importance of collaboration and working together – no one special education teacher can produce and plan a project alone. The brainstorming – especially involving different disciplines – will always make a project stronger. In my quick search I honestly had not made that next step into how to adapt the project – I was just looking to find something. Thank goodness our professor stepped in immediately with adaptive suggestions!
  2. When we think about an inclusive community we need to remember to not just think about adaptations just for the child who needs it changed. Sometimes everyone benefits from the adaptations – and other times the community benefits from everyone working on the same project. Joey did not need to have a different product in this case – the supports for him were also supports for everyone. 

Collaboration as the Key

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One aspect of our Inclusive Program that makes it so strong is our collaborative approach. Although so far you are only hearing about it from my perspective on this blog, I am only one piece of this program. This multi-perspective planning is by design so that both the speech pathologist and the special education teacher’s knowledge and insights are able to work together to determine the best way to increase language and academic success. 

Collaboration to any project is key, but that does not make it easy. With any new collaborative team there is the dance of figuring out how to work best with one another, how to plan, how to ask questions in the moment, how to interrupt with questions and how to share ideas. The process takes time, and yet that time benefits students so much in the end. 

What makes a collaborative team so strong is a phrase that constantly runs through my head in the voice of a former principal. “The answer is in the room.” Although in this case, the answer is in the virtual space given to us by zoom. Thorough discussions, questions and identifying what could make us better are all elements of driving us forward to finding what is going to make these students successful. If we are willing to dive into those discussions we will find, “the answer is in the room”  in the discussion.

So far, my partner-in-crime and I (the amazing speech pathologist), along with a special education professor, and other key players, are putting our heads together to problem solve how to best match appropriate timing to the students we work with, how to best design the physical space to promote the most inclusive interactions, and just how to pace our days so that we can get everything done. 

Luckily, it is not up to just one of us to solve these problems, but to our entire team to work through and discuss. I feel so lucky to once again be working in a collaborative environment and I am excited to see where this will drive us going forward. 

Stay tuned as we dive into solving these areas of need and find ways to manage the solutions. 

Honoring Total Communication

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Before I was back in person with Joey his Occupational Therapist and I touched base. Although each person on a child’s team has a speciality, nothing in development happens in isolation – a child cannot learn to communicate without also developing their motor skills – and vice versa. Typical development occurs with systems relying on one another, and when development is disrupted each system must continue to be addressed. In truth, I think Joey’s OT and I wish we were able to collaborate more frequently. I can always tell when he has made sudden gains in OT because the gains coincide with progress in his communication and academics.

This time, his OT and I wanted to connect over his communication. Unfortunately, an eye-gaze AAC device is difficult to use during OT anytime, but it is nearly impossible during tele-health sessions. And without an ability to effectively communicate his preferences, Joey (and everyone) was becoming increasingly frustrated. 

As you can read here, she began focusing on basic signs so that he would have some way of making requests or expressing his wishes. But she wanted to know – was this disruptive to his AAC work, or was there something better to use during their OT sessions?

None of us communicate solely with one manner of communication. In a basic conversation with someone our gestures and eye gazes can communicate as much as our words do. However, as teachers and professionals we often get caught up in teaching one method of communication and forget to honor a child’s total communication. We become so focused on using certain words or a certain modality that we forget a child may be trying to tell us something in another manner. While sometimes we want to see the child use a specific communication technique – using words instead of crying – we also need to honor that there can be multiple acceptable ways to express our wants and needs. Sign language, gestures that everyone understands, eye gaze, and verbalizations can all serve to signal the message a child wants to get across – in a manner that will allow the child to stay regulated and feel safe. 

I was thrilled to hear that Joey was using the signs appropriately. The first time we were back in person I asked Joey to show me what he’d learned. With the help of his assistant he was able to quickly demonstrate each sign. Now that I know his version of each sign I am able to honor it within our group. When he is having difficulty getting his eyes to correctly line up with his device so he can make a request he fluidly goes into using the sign for please and then pointing to what he wants. Now that we have included total communication into his session I can honor what he wants, help him remain regulated and know that I am hearing him. I can always model using the device to make the request after I have fulfilled it by simply saying “Another way to ask might be” and selecting the buttons. Often, I notice that Joey knows where the words are on his device and would select them if he could, but organizing his body in order to make the correct selection can become frustrating. After a few attempts he will use another communication method. 

The flexibility Joey uses to move between communication techniques is one of his strengths. The more people Joey can effectively communicate with, the more engaged he will become and the more successful he will be.

 

AAC Theory, Practice, and Decision Making

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I was recently able to attend the Council for Exceptional Children’s National Conference in Indiana. I love being able to hear about current research, connect with educators, and learn new strategies and techniques. This year I was thrilled to see a session titled “Instructional Decision Making: Students Who Use AAC: What Do the Experts Say?”  Perfect! I thought. I’ll learn what the research says and come away with some specific, concrete ideas to apply to my work with Joey.

Interestingly enough, this is the opposite of what happened. The research team presenting shared that their original plan was to research how to support para-professionals when they are interacting with children using AAC devices. Quickly into their work they realized they couldn’t come to consensus among themselves of what to teach the para-professionals. If a group of university professors could not identify best practice for AAC devices, who could? Their research changed at this point to look more at current decision making practices in the field, and how teams are teaching and supporting students in their use of AAC.

Their findings?

There are currently few guidelines available to support the decision making process of selecting when and if to introduce a device, and how to teach or support the student’s communication. Practitioners are in conflict over which communication skills to target first, and even what assessment information to use when considering how and when to use a device.

This surprised many of us in the audience, except the findings rang true with our experiences. We could each relate to the debate of discussing with teams which device to use, whether we should use behavioral approaches to introduce new vocabulary and to teach the use of the device, or to approach the instruction from a developmental method. If you gather a team together to discuss using an AAC device, you are likely to hear the same discussions.

While it would be nice to have more concrete research into the hows and whys of using an AAC device, this was a good reminder in the importance of collaboration. In order to make the best decisions for a child we need to gather a team together, truly look at the child’s abilities and needs, and consider multiple possibilities. Without a set guideline we can do our best work by frequently communicating with parents and other practitioners, and constantly reflecting on the student’s growth.

For me, it was a good reminder to keep an open mind with all aspects of the AAC device. There isn’t one right answer out there, so let’s keep our work Joey-focused and always be asking if what we are doing is working for Joey in the moment and if it will support his future communication growth.

The Power of Collaboration

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I read the book Seals on the Bus to Joey, while he sat with his physical therapist behind him so that he could sit on a bench and not his chair. This isn’t an easy activity for Joey, and he struggled a bit to keep his head up while we read the book and played with the bus and the animal toys. A few times his head fell forward, out of a loss of control and exhaustion from working so hard. Other times he struggled to grab the toys, and his physical therapist helpfully coached me in how to assist him in making his grasp stronger and firmer. At other times, Joey threw himself backwards in the therapist’s, and I watched as she carefully held him, calmed him, and coached him into helping him sit back up. [Read more…]

Saturday Serenade

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Test post for Saturday Serenades https://www.musichealsglennjan.com/saturday-serenades

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