2015-16_Mazel_Effective_Collaboration
SPEAKER 1: Welcome to Perkins eLearning's Webinar Series. This presentation is a conversation on effective collaboration with Ellen Mazel. Perkins eLearning webinars are presented throughout the year on a monthly basis as live events or pre-recorded presentations, such as today's discussion. Our webinar series is just one of the offerings in our professional development program, which includes publications, e-newsletters, webcasts, online and in-person classes, and self-paced study. You can see our entire listings at our website, perkinselearning.org.
Today's presentation will address collaboration among educational teams, particularly for students with multiple disabilities that include blindness or visual impairment. The presentation slides are available for download, as well as a resource sheet handout of the articles and simulations mentioned in this talk.
We are recording this in December of 2015 on the Perkins campus. When viewing this recorded presentation, you will find that headphones, earbuds, or external speakers give the best sound.
Ellen Mazel works for Concord Area Special Education Collaborative, known locally as the CASE Collaborative, in Concord, Massachusetts as a teacher of students with visual impairments, deafblindness, and cortical visual impairment. She is also the founder of the website cviteacher.wordpress.com, an online resource on the growing field of cortical visual impairment.
Miss Mazel teaches Cortical Visual Impairment-- Assessment and Education in the vision studies graduate program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and is a frequent contributor to the Perkins professional development program. Welcome back to Perkins, Ellen.
ELLEN MAZEL: Thank you. Welcome, everybody. And today we're going to be talking about effective collaboration for the teacher of students with visual impairments. And as we know, collaboration is the heart and soul of the work that we do. And without that collaboration, our students with visual impairments will not have the access that's enjoyed by their typical peers.
So what is effective collaboration for TVIs? Collaborating is to work jointly together for a common goal. And of course, that goal, as we said, was access. And then to provide education so that we could create a full understanding from the whole team of how visual impairment affects a child's learning and development.
So who are we collaborating with? We're certainly collaborating with the parents. The parents have the history of the child. They have an investment in the future of the child. They see that child in all different kinds of environments, all different times of day. They're a goldmine of information. They're the lifelong advocates for their children.
We're also collaborating with students themselves. Certainly as the child gets older, middle school, they have their own ideas about what they will and will not use for tools. So without effectively collaborating with them, again, we cannot provide them with the access that they need.
Certainly the educational teams. We're collaborating with everybody on the team-- the classroom teachers, whether it be a small classroom or a large, inclusive classroom, the paraprofessionals that are involved with the child, occupational therapists, physical therapists, deafblind specialists. And as we know, deafblind specialists have an expertise in dual loss, but do not have that view that a teacher of the visually impaired has.
Speech and language therapists, the student's peers, medical specialists, where we're translating the medical information for the team and parents, and also bringing back to the doctor some of the functioning that we see in the classroom. The school support staff is very important. And that can include the janitor, the women and men who work in the cafeteria.
Right now I am collaborating with a woman, a lunch lady. And she is helping me to address the expanded core curriculum with one of my students. So we go down every day and we buy a yogurt with $1. And we're covering the ECC areas of math, advocacy, and using technology, and social skills, orientation and mobility. We're covering many things in my collaboration with the lunch lady.
So where are we collaborating? We're collaborating all the time. We're collaborating in the schools, in the community, and in the home. Community and home, certainly for the expanded core curriculum. We're collaborating by example also. People are watching our work with children.
So when are we collaborating? We're collaborating all day, really, constantly from the time we arrive in the school, during our direct service, and during our consult service. We're really modeling the appropriate techniques to use with student, best practice for the teams and the parents. We're modeling our expectations of independence. And we're giving people permission to hold students to the same standards as the typical peers in the classroom.
So why are we educating and collaborating? Again, we're trying to give children the appropriate access for that classroom, and to form good relationships and acceptance of ideas. We're only assigned to a very small portion of a child's day. And without that solid relationship and acceptance of our ideas, there won't be carry over. There won't be understanding. And there'll be limited access.
The American Foundation for the Blind in Educating Students with Visual Impairments for Inclusion, in their position paper, state that, "Students with visual impairments have unique educational needs which are most effectively met with a team approach of professionals, parents, and students. In order to meet the unique needs, students must have specialized services, books and materials in appropriate media-- including braille-- as well as specialized equipment and technology to ensure equal access to the core and specialized curricula, and to enable them to most effectively compete with their peers in school, and ultimately in society."
And that's an important concept to remember, that we're working to provide information and skills for lifelong.
So what are these unique needs? The typical public, which are the people that we are collaborating with, do not understand what unique needs a child with a visual impairment has. They don't understand specialized services, appropriate media, specialized equipment, or what kinds of technology are specific for a child with a visual impairment.
They need to understand that equal access does not mean just sitting in a classroom and listening. They need to understand that we are interested in supporting the children around the core curriculum, which they're very familiar with, but that there's a specialized curriculum, the expanded core curriculum, that we're very concerned about when we think about a child with a visual impairment.
So some of the components of a TVI collaboration, certainly, is building a relationship. And that relationship is built on mutual respect. No one person on the team has more power or more information than another. We are equal in that.
We have to communicate effectively. I go into do assessments for children. And I might get a snapshot of a child's day. But without careful questioning and observation of the team, I can't really get a good sense of what that child's skills are across the day, across the month, across the year. So that listening and communicating effectively is very, very important.
Building trust is very important. I have to do what I say I'm going to do.
I have to be flexible. Flexibility is a hallmark of collaboration. We have to make changes based on the feedback that we get.
In one situation I recently had, I went into a preschool and created a calendar system for about six children in the preschool classroom. Set up a nice calendar system on one side of the room so that each child had a system that they could understand what was going to happen during their day.
About two weeks later, I went back and found out because the teacher was willing and able to communicate with me to find out that this was not working for the classroom. They couldn't cross the classroom the amount of times they needed to during transitions. And they just weren't using it because of that.
I had to scrap that total system. We had to sit down together and talk very, very collaboratively about what was a better solution to a calendar system for the children in the classroom. And that was really an important thing to let go of what I thought was a good idea and embrace some other ideas.
We have to learn about other people's goals with students. If I understand what someone else's goal is with a student, then I can adapt and put the functioning in the context of a visual impairment. And also, educating people about what my goals are.
People don't understand what a TVI is. What's the role of a TVI? This might be the first child with a visual impairment that they have in their classroom. And I might be the first TVI that they've ever met. So I have to really educate them about what my role is.
One aspect of my role is to assess students. And I like to let people know what kinds of assessments that I'm using with children. I feel that if I'm using assessments, it takes away that idea that I feel something is a good idea or this is what I want, and puts it in a very concrete category. If I've assessed them, these are the results and these are where we need to go next with the child.
As a TVI I'm, of course, instructing students. I'm providing consultation to make the general ed curriculum accessible so that the child has full and complete concepts, not just partial concepts about what's being learned in the classroom. And then also, I'm preparing learning materials in formats that are accessible.
Laurie Hudson has some wonderful articles and information that you can Google about language use by teachers in the classroom and how inaccessible that is to students with visual impairments. She spends a lot of time talking about how many times a teacher will say, this over here, or that, or there. And that is language that's used with kids who can access the visual environment.
It's not very helpful for a child with a visual impairment. So it's nice to have her articles concerning that. Listening is just not enough. That's not access for a child.
As a TVI, we want to present information to the team about the visual impairment itself. We want to provide instruction around compensatory skills. Because as a TVI, I'm not only concerned with residual vision, but I'm concerned with the sense of smell and taste and touch and hearing, and how that develops, and how a child might use it most effectively. All of that is my job as a TVI.
With the expanded core curriculum, we're looking at those compensatory skills. We're looking in orientation and mobility skills. Orientation and mobility professionals are yet another visual professional that people don't understand their role. So helping people understand why it's important for an orientation and mobility specialist to be involved in a child's life.
Even some of those children that have multiple disabilities that don't move independently, orientation and mobility means understanding where you are in the room, not only traveling through the room. So it's important for people to help people understand that.
The very, very important area of social interaction skills-- and Sharon Sacks has a wonderful book and an assessment that she's created about social skills for children with visual impairments. Social skills are probably the most important skill when you get out in the world, whether it's to live or to work.
To interact with others effectively is a very important lifelong skill for all of us. And some of the unique ideas she has in her materials that are specifically towards the child with visual impairment are very helpful. And that assessment, I think you'll find, will be helpful for other kinds of kids as well. It's very, very complete.
I think before I took her class here at Perkins, I thought I had a firm idea about what some social skills areas I needed to work on. But through the assessment and through the class, I really understood that there are many more aspects that I needed to consider when I think about children with visual impairments and the full range of social interactions.
Independent living skills and personal management, recreation and leisure skills, career and vocational skills, assistive technology skills. All of those are very specific to a child with a visual impairment.
For visual efficiency skills, we certainly want to think about a child with an ocular impairment that really needs to use their vision to the utmost in an environment that's adapted. But we also want to think about the child with cortical visual impairment, the brain-based visual impairment, because we want to be concerned about helping that vision improve. So those visual efficiency skills are very important.
Self determination skills are really something that needs to start when the child is very young. Advocating for themselves, making choices, making decisions, fostering independence-- those must be taught early. They must be taught often. Those are the skills for adulthood.
So I want to explain my goals also as a member of the team. I want that student to be a full participant in the class-- not separate, not with an over reliance on a paraprofessional in the class, but really a full, total number of that class. I want the staff to have as high an expectation of my student as they do of the other children in the class, both in behavior and in their work quality. It does them no service to give them an A if they don't deserve it.
The student has to have access to all the information. I have to help people understand what that accesses is and how to best provide it. The student will need accommodations and the team must understand why each one is needed. If I just tell them what to do, they might do it. But they need a full understanding of why they're doing it. Because I found that if they have a full understanding of why they're doing it, people can come up with some very creative ideas.
There needs to be a constant conversation. The whole team needs be saying to themselves, how can I do less for this child and to support them in their journey to full independence.
My goals are for the day to run smoothly. I want people to see me as a collaborator, a helper, an advocate. I don't want to just be saying, this should be the way this is done. I want to facilitate that. I want to actively be a part of creating those changes.
I want to help sort out the visual issues from the cognitive issues. And this is especially seen when we look at assessments. So many assessments used on children have a very, very strong bias towards the child with vision. So we have to help people understand how important vision is, not only in cognitive development, but how it might manifest itself in different kinds of assessments. You have to understand vision's impact on all kinds of development and on full concept formation.
Improve the child's visual functioning. Again, back to CVI. We want kids' vision to improve.
To provide students with skills for independence. Sometimes paraprofessionals do a little bit too much helping. And again, Laurie Hudson has a wonderful poster you can get if you go online. It's called 19 Ways to Step Back. And that's a wonderful poster to help paraprofessionals learn to not help as much, to always look for ways for children to become more independent, to focus questions to their peers rather than to a paraprofessional, focus the questions to the classroom teacher rather than an over dependence on a paraprofessional.
And again, to build those social relationships-- the appropriate behavior, age-appropriate behaviors in dress, appropriate language, how do you join a group, how do you contribute to a group.
When we think about teams that have a child with a visual impairment that have just come into the classroom, the very basic knowledge about what a visual impairment is is the place where we really need to start. These teams represent the general public. They have all the misconceptions of everyone else in the general public about a child with visual impairments.
You'll hear, being visually impaired is terrible. Now, that kind of an attitude really can foster pity. And it can also foster a lack of independence. So we really want to make sure that people understand that people with visual impairment are as happy or as unhappy as any other group of people.
I want people to understand that they don't need your pity. That's a handicapping condition far worse than any visual impairment.
When they meet you-- when a child with a visual impairment meets you, they'll want to feel your face. And this is really a media myth that you see over and over again. And really, in 38 years of teaching I've never had any adult or child ask to feel my face.
Another misconception is that people with visual impairment see black, empty darkness. And we have to help people understand that there are various levels of visual impairments, various types of visual impairments. I see this often. There'll be a child with a visual impairment. And then he comes into the classroom. He avoids walking into things and he grabs his bottle off the top of the table.
And people look at me like, what do you mean he's visually impaired? He can't be visually impaired. He just completed all those tasks. So the various levels of visual impairment, it's very important for people to understand.
For kids with cortical visual impairment who tend to see things that they have a firm idea of, a firm visual memory of-- so I'll hear the term, they see when they want to. And seeing is not a choice. These children are not choosing to see one thing and not another thing. So helping people understand those levels of visual impairment.
You might hear that people with visual impairment have sensory skills that are different from others. And again, I think it's just attention. When you take vision away, they have a higher attention on sensory skills.
All people with visual impairments use canes, braille, guide dogs. Again, back to that basic misunderstanding of what a visual impairment is. And we have to really explore that in in-services.
That concept of legal blindness often throws people off. And I will often bring simulators to IEP meetings so that people can get a chance to put on a set of goggles and experience what legal blindness means. And they're always surprised how much vision a person with a legal blindness has.
And I have to put that then into context of, yes, they do see a lot. But what's accessible to them in a classroom? What do they need support around?
People with a visual impairment, you'll hear the misconception that they can't work or go to college. And again, that's lack of understanding. And that's a lack of role models. So as much as I can, I try to make sure that I bring stories about competent visually impaired people into the conversation, or that I send articles, that I give people as much information as I can.
People with visual impairment cannot live by themselves. I find this to be a great place to open up the conversation about the expanded core curriculum. But because without the expanded core curriculum, it is true a person with a visual impairment could not live by themselves because they don't have those skills.
I worked with a high school student who was about a year away from graduating. And he wanted to go off to college. He was an all A student. And when I became a member of the team, I suggested that we start looking at the expanded core curriculum. The student, the parents, and the team really were not interested in speaking about the expanded core curriculum. They thought he was accessing the core curriculum just fine and didn't need it.
So during a math class, I brought in a can of tuna, and a bowl, and a can opener, a spoon, some mayonnaise, and some bread. And I asked him to make a sandwich. It was clear right from the start that he didn't know that tuna fish came in a can, that he didn't know how to use the can opener, that he didn't know how to get it out of the can and into the bowl. And even the mayonnaise, he finally did get the cap unscrewed. And then he held the jar over waiting for that mayonnaise to plop out.
So clearly, this boy had no access to the information about how to make a tuna fish sandwich. A sighted child who has never made a tuna fish sandwich can make one because they've seen one being made over and over and over again.
Other misconceptions are that someone might need stronger glasses. You'll often hear that. So just educating the team about what glasses can and cannot do. And just that understanding that legal blindness means that a child's vision is already corrected, and the legal blindness is the level they're still at with the glasses on. So helping people understand what glasses can and cannot do.
Visual impairment means that there's something wrong with your eyes. That's a misconception. It does mean that there is something wrong with your eyes. But the largest population today in the United States are people with cortical visual impairment, which is a brain-based visual impairment. It has different causes, different assessments, different strategies. And it has a totally new focus on improvement.
So what is inaccessible? Inaccessible is all that incidental learning that happens. And I think that tuna fish sandwich example is a very, very good one that just highlights that if a child with vision had never made a tuna fish sandwich before, they could fumble through and make themselves a tuna fish sandwich with a wealth of knowledge they've gained just by watching. So we have to always say to ourselves with children with visual impairments, do they have this background information. Have they experienced this? Do they know this?
In a first grade, I was observing, and they were reading a book about icicles. And I started to think, does my child have access to that information? And in fact, how would a child with a visual impairment have access to the idea of an icicle?
Do they know that they form on roofs? Do they know what time of the years they form? Or do they think they're around in the summertime? Do they know where they form, how long they are, what they're made of? So it's very important to give everybody that, all the kids with visual impairments, that background information to fill in those huge gaps that come from not having that vision of that icicle at distance.
In a fourth grade, there was a book being read about a giraffe. Now, a typical child may never have seen a giraffe before, except maybe at the zoo at a distance. But they've seen pictures, they've seen videos, they've seen real giraffes and cartoon giraffes. They know what giraffes look like, how they move, what they eat, where they live.
They have this vast amount of information just from living in and viewing all of those things in the world. That would be a hole for a child with a visual impairment. We'd have to go back and teach all those kinds of concepts about what a giraffe is.
What else is inaccessible? Certainly facial expressions and body language. And Sharon Sacks, again, in her social skills assessment really takes a look at how to fill in the holes there-- word walls, blackboards.
Those social opportunities. What are the choices in a class? What are the choices of kids to join in with or activities to join in a class? Or kids at a dance? What are my choices for kids to join at a dance?
Environmental choices. What things are there for me to do in this environment? And what places can I go?
How do I make this information accessible? I'm going to make this information accessible by providing physical assistance, sometimes, verbal explanations, and being aware of teachers' language. And again, that whole idea that Laurie Hudson has of teachers using this and that and those. And if you take a look at the Gibney Foundation's Welcoming Students with Visual Impairments into the Class, they have a lot of great activities to help people understand, to be in the shoes of a child with a visual impairment in a typical classroom, certainly around language being used.
We want to give children that extended exploration time. Individual preview of concepts and materials. Think back again to that idea of the icicle or the idea of the giraffe-- that preview of all those kinds of concepts. Providing instructions for independent travel and transitions-- that pre-teaching, again.
How do I make that accessible using braille or large print? Spatial concept facilitation. Using assistive technology. Supporting the understanding of sounds in the environment. And again, it's that full understanding.
Not just, here, you get to hold the icicle. But then, where does that icicle grow, what time of the year does it grow. It's not just holding that icicle. It's not just using a toy giraffe to show a child what a giraffe might look like with long legs, but that discussion about how they move, where they live, what they eat. A full idea.
Teaching organizational skills is so, so important for a child with a visual impairment, that things just don't appear in their lives and disappear in their lives. Organization is really going to be very important for any kind of independent living, any kind of independent work. Again, those social skills are so top high on that list.
And connecting information gained from all the compensatory skills. So even though a child can hear something in the environment, I have to support that with touch. I have to support that concept of what's making the sound, how to turn that sound on and off. So in the IEP, I would put information like, that you want to bring that child to the sound, bring the sound to them, and then let them make the sound.
A typical child in the classroom will hear a sound, look over, make a judgment whether it's something they can dismiss or something that they have to pay attention to, and then get back to work. A child with a visual impairment will hear, wonder what it is, perhaps be afraid. But they'll be a little bit on alert. And they can't dismiss it because they don't know what it is. They have a lack of understanding and, again, a lack of access.
When we go in to work with teams and collaborate, we have to understand that we are on their turf. From a teacher's perspective, what is it like having people come in throughout the day giving you advice about what you should do and with a variety of kids that you have, how you can pull off all that.
You're one of many people giving advice. So to help and facilitate those concepts for people can be very, very helpful in your consult time, and to actually use that in your consult time. If it's in your consult time to provide braille materials, it's also in your consult time to make materials to help in the classroom.
They may not have experience with children with visual impairments, but you don't have experience as a classroom teacher. So again, we really need this open dialogue with one another to just really be honest about how we're working together.
When I was a preschool teacher, I remember that often specialists would come in and say, oh, I have to cancel because I'm going to write some reports. Well, I had reports to write too. Or they'd say, well, I'm going to go to a meeting. Well, I can't be at that meeting because I'm in the classroom. I'm working as a classroom teacher.
Or they'd come in and say, I need to change my schedule. Now you've made a hole for me in my schedule that I need to accommodate the student that I thought you were going to have. So trying to be as respectful of the classroom teacher's experience as you possibly can.
Some of our collaboration methods are to do inservices. And those can be around visual impairments, around the assessments that we use, how different kinds of learning in visual impairment affect a child, helping people understand what it's like to walk in the shoes of a child with a visual impairment. Video examples are great. I can take real quick 30 second videos of a child's functioning or the child's behavior that I can share very easily.
Simulations of different visual skills, like why is that child using a head tilt like that. And I think if we can put people in those children's shoes again, put simulators on that they need to tilt their head, they'll have a much better idea of why that child is functioning the way that they are.
Simulations of the ideas of things that are inaccessible. Again, the Gibney Foundation has a lot of nice videos about what it's like to be visually impaired in the classroom just sitting and listening.
Service narratives are another tool that I use. So I take the last five minutes of my consult session with children. And I take the time just to write down what I observed from the child, what I worked with with the child to help people understand why I'm there-- what kinds of things I'm looking for when I'm working with a child.
If you can do flexible consult times, that is such a gift. I always keep my direct service at the same time because I'm on that teacher schedule. But with my consult times, I try to see if I can come at different times of the day so that I can see the child in a variety of environments at different times in the schedule, and also crossover with other professionals. So that flexible consult times can be a great tool.
With your regular meetings, if you are able to steal those very, very precious times before school, lunch times, or after school where you can meet with teams, make sure that those meeting times are very targeted and very, very well thought out so that you've planned, really, for a year what you might talk about with a team over the course of your inservices. Prioritize the goals for your own inservices for the team.
And then of course there'll be issues that come up that you need to infuse into that. But having a yearly plan, I think, will be very helpful when we're trying to, in a very systematically way, help people move along and understand visual impairment.
Planning together can be a great tool. And I'll show you a couple of tools that I've used. If people help with the planning around strategies for a child with a visual impairment, I feel that they come up with really good ideas, and that they actually use those ideas in a much more flexible and a much more consistent way. I do visual summaries so that everybody understands what a visual synopsis of what a child's skills are. And I'll show you one of those.
I try to email articles or tell stories about competent visually impaired adults just, again, so that they understand what the possibilities are. And I'll often highlight how these successful adults will often talk about their interactions with people that held them to a high standard and had high expectations for them.
I share the workshops and webinars and webcasts ideas that come along. And Perkins has a wide variety of those. And many, many people that I work with, that I collaborate with, have taken advantage of those great learning opportunities.
I create visual schedules around thematic teaching. Building that idea are what things do I need to pre-teach. What things do I need to preview? And again, back to the idea of the icicle and the giraffe. I had to know that those topics were going to come up so that we could plan together, around helping the child understand fully what those concepts meant.
I want to be a person, not just a role. I want to share a little bit about myself-- maybe a little bit about my life, my personal life, my family life. Ask after other people's families. Join celebrations. If they're going to go out after work, join them after work.
Be a human being in the team. Be a part of the team. And this can be difficult because you're sometimes in there for a short period of time. But I think it goes a long way to really fostering your relationships with people, feeling like you're really part of that team.
The videos that I talked about before in capturing a little bit of a child's visual functioning can be so important. If I can't get that meeting time, I want to capture a little bit of a child's functioning on my iPhone, for instance. The picture speaks a thousand words. I can capture something in 30 seconds that might take an hour to explain in a meeting.
It's very non confrontational to catch a little example on film. I can capture a salient moment. I can share it with one person. I can share it with a group of people. I can share it multiple times. And I can also email it home. And vice versa. I can get some really nice videos shared with me from home. I think that's, again, part of the collaboration, is that whole idea that I am interested in seeing what the function is at home.
I have a child that I work with who, during a cognitive assessment, she lost points for not turning to her name. The parents said, no, she can't do that. I don't think she knows what her name is. The team was not convinced that she knew what her name was.
So I was able to capture on video just a little bit of a 40 second clip, where I called her name and then gave her the wait time that she needed to locate me in the environment. This was a child with cortical visual impairment. I could then show it to the team to prove that she indeed did know what her name was, but she needed the wait time in order to turn and look at me.
I could talk about what distance I could be away from her when she had that skill. And I could talk about what her best visual field was for that skills so that when people were asking her to turn to her name, that they were in an accessible field.
The result was that people on the team started to give the child the time she needed to locate them. Because they gave her that extra time, her skills improved. And currently, it takes her just five seconds in order to find you.
The inservices that help people understand what it's like to walk in the shoes of a child with a visual impairment are very, very important-- the idea of what kinds of vision loss that there are. And we'll will talk about some great tools to help people understand and live that visual impairment, especially in the classroom environment.
That idea of selfbody play. Why is a child engaged in some of these, what they call blindisms, or these stereotypic kinds of behaviors? And I want people to begin to see that selfbody play as a child's efforts to stimulate their own brains, rather than a maladaptive behavior. And it helps me really drive home the idea of active learning, that children with visual impairment should always have a material and something to either look at or hear or to keep that brain stimulated.
I did an inservice where I had half of the people in the inservice blindfolded. And then nobody else in the group talked for about five minutes. And in that five minutes, without the benefit of any visual stimulation and with nothing to look at, nothing to hear, those people started to play with the edges of their clothes, they played with their fingernails, they began to engage in selfbody play with only five minutes being deprived of vision and hearing anything.
I like to give people an idea of what it's like to eat as a person with a visual impairment and be fed as a person with a visual impairment. When I was in graduate school, one of the tasks we had to do was be blindfolded for several hours. And during that time we had to choose something to eat.
So I decided it would be a great idea to get an ice cream cone. And it was quickly clear to me that that was not a great idea since I didn't know where the top of that ice cream cone was. So I had it pretty much all over my face. It would've been a much better choice for me to have had something with a bowl and a spoon. But I had to live that myself in order to really understand what that was like.
I try to do an in service where you're feeding each other, maybe applesauce. And then maybe we'll switch and we'll put a couple of Cheerios in that apple sauce and feed somebody. And again, if I can see that you've put Cheerios in my applesauce, my brain gets ready for that texture change.
For a child with a visual impairment that you've changed the texture of their food, it's a shock. It's a shock to their brain. So you end up with kids who are very fearful of any changes past that pureed food. So it's important for people to understand how vision helps so much in both eating and feeding.
Food prep is another area I like to work with in inservices. Walking around the environment-- sighted guide. Identification of environmental sounds. I have a wonderful sound bingo game that we can blindfold staff and then play this bingo game where they have to identify what the sound is. And without the visual context of what a sound might be, people really struggle to identify what the sound is.
If I don't give people enough tactile or visual exploration time, but quickly pass things around the room, they understand very quickly that they didn't have enough time to really get a look at it. They really didn't have enough time to feel it to understand what that was before someone took it away.
And then some specifics. If your child has problems with glare, then just giving the people an idea, what does glare really mean. What causes glare? That whole idea of trying to look through a really dirty windshield really helps people, again, live in the shoes of a child with a visual impairment.
For simulations there's different kinds of apps that people can use. There's one great one for an iPad-- that's VisionSim by Braille Institute. This allows you to hold your iPad up and take a look at the environment. What's it look like to have a visual field loss on the left hand side? And again, this really helps people understand why am I suggesting that a child needs to sit at one side of the room or another side of the room? And this gets such a clear indication. This is such a live-in-their-shoes moment.
There's websites for simulations. I find that those are not as good as the iPad because they are simulations of another environment and not the child's environment. But they're certainly worth looking at when you're trying to explain a type of loss. Perkins has a great list of resources through their eLearning and Scout. You can look up all different kinds of simulators there.
There's some directions on how to make your own simulators. If you want to purchase simulators, there's the Fork in the Road website there that you can take a look at.
We talked before about planning together and how important that idea of planning together across the day for daily activities or across a specific kind of activity is so important so people will really own the information. And helping parents and team members understand how important it is for a child to understand the entire day.
So a typical child can come into a classroom and see art supplies being set up and understand that they're going to have art later. Whereas a child with a visual impairment-- that review of the day, that meeting in the morning that you have with the child that lays the day out for them so they have access to all the information that their typical peers get through that just watching, through that incidental information.
Those planning sheets are so important, again, because people will own the information. So the first planning sheet that we'll take a look at is from the work of Dr. Roman-Lantzy around CVI. And what we're doing is we're really taking a look at the characteristics of cortical visual impairment, which are listed on the left hand side of the page. And then taking a look at each of the learning areas that will happen in the day, and infusing the information about that particular CVI characteristic into the day.
So during that first switch talk, where that's the activity, in color we're going to want to use a red switch on a black background. We're going to want to give that child wait time. We're going to want to place that switch in left peripheral viewing. We're going to block out the other visual clutter. We're going to use hand-under-hand to activate the red switch. So taking a look at that one point in learning, and then all through taking a look at all the different characteristics and how we need to support the child's vision within that one period of the day.
The next one we want to take a look at is for the child with an ocular impairment. And again, down the left you have a list of all the kinds of problems that a child might have, whether it's the need for controlling light, a particular kind of peripheral field, the need for contrast, whether glare is important or not, or is impacting them or not, what distance do we need to have that.
And then within all that, we see at circle time that we're going to want to have that child under the concept of light, we want their back to the windows. Under the concept of peripheral field, we want them on the left of the semi circle. When we talk about contrast, we want to use the dark backgrounds for displaying materials. So again, in circle time we're going to look at what the child's needs are and infuse those into that one kind of activity.
And this kind of planning can be so valuable. You start out really walking people through this in a real hand holding kind of way. And as the year goes on, what you find is you can sit down and do this in no time flat because everybody gets it. Everybody understands what you're talking about when you're talking about controlling light, what you're talking about with glare.
The next idea we had talked about was visual skills posters. And here's an example of a visual skills poster for a student that I have that I'm calling KO. And KO has certain needs under cortical visual impairment. So I am just listing the highlights.
This visual skills poster will appear in three or four places around the classroom so that that teacher can quickly look up, reference that information, so that it's always there, always able to be accessed. It's very hard to remember for a classroom teacher what's a child's best visual field. And this, again, will just very easily lay it right out for people.
Alternating eye use. So if the child has alternating eye use, I want them to give him a longer period of time. And in his case, he locates and then he switches to use the other eye.
I want to talk about his preferred color, his best visual field, that I have to only use 3D materials with this child, that I want black backgrounds, that I will move things when I want him to take a look at it, where he sees best and at what distance, the backlighting that might be helpful to him, how many things I can show him at one point, how I need to position him to control the light, and how that solid needs to be very much in place whenever he's doing a visual task.
So those visual skill posters are very important. And again, I'm using just initials because for privacy. They're going to be hung around the classroom.
The service narratives that I talk about, I have an example here of a service narrative for a child. This boy's name is Adam. And this was an observation, a class in October. And the first thing that I did was to observe in a science class.
And it's very weird to go into a classroom and say to a teacher, I'm going to watch for a half an hour while you're doing science. It's very intimidating. I find the service narratives, that if I have watched a teacher and I can jot down what things I am looking for during that science class, it shows her that I'm not judging her class-- that I'm looking at the child's access, the child's [INAUDIBLE] behaviors during that.
I always try to reinforce some of the good things that I saw during that period. So in science, for instance, in this period I saw that he was positioned about four feet away, which was a good distance for him, and that his back was to the light. That may have been a complete accident that he was seated there. But again, it gives me that opportunity to reinforce the distance and the avoidance of a glare and light.
During that session I noticed he was getting up several times to look at things. And the teacher was getting a little irritated. So I wanted to just talk about, I saw him getting up and I want that to be able to happen. I want him to be able to get up and go look at something if he needs to. But what's a more appropriate way for the classroom teacher to allow that child to have access? So to sit down and really brainstorm how he might access that without getting up and what she considered to be, perhaps, interrupting the session.
I took him to the bathroom. Again, as a person who's on the team, I take kids to the bathroom just like everyone else in the classroom. And I think it's just a very small thing, but it's a message that says I'm willing to do everything that everyone else is. I think it's a small, but very, very important message that we're all working together.
Some of the things I saw in the bathroom, I could talk about orientation and mobility, to highlight certain places that that child was having trouble, and then talk about the lack of being able to get paper towels out of the paper towel dispenser and how we might brainstorm about that.
The next slide is also about that same service narrative. A speech and language therapist was asking me which direction should the iPad be held, either vertically or horizontally-- for a child with visual impairment who is nonverbal, so he was going to be accessing his communication device. So I wanted to take a careful look at that. And what I found is that it took longer for that child to find icons that were held when it was held vertically and that he had to get closer.
So I want to make sure that the team understands that horizontal presentation is much better. When they rotate the iPad, not only were the icons smaller, but it repositioned some of the icons. And I found that this child had very much motor memory for where things were, and when it was rotated it threw him completely off. So again, it was a good session to evaluate and then share my results in the service narrative.
Later that day, we were able to preview a book that was going to be used in the circle time. So we previewed that book together. That child and I previewed that book. We were able to go to the library and get a copy to send home. So that child navigated to the library, used social skills to talk to the librarian, checked out this book, and then brought it home.
But instead of saying, that child needs another copy of this book to go home, I was able to facilitate that for that classroom teacher. And in my service narrative make her aware that that had already happened.
The child was having trouble turning the pages of the book. So I was able to use fluffers. And I said to the teacher, I want to just include some fluffers on the corner of that book. Is it OK if I do that-- so the child could turn the pages in a much more effective way? Again, not going to the teacher and say, you need to put some fluffers between the pages, but really, in my consult time, doing that myself or instructing the paraprofessional in how to do that. I think it's very important.
I want to talk about the iPad and how important the backlighting was for this particular child. And I was able to reach out to the technology team. Again, not asking the classroom teacher to reach out to the technology team, but taking that issue on myself so that I could bring that information back to team and get that ball rolling.
We talked a little bit about social skills as well. And then what I realized is that social skills needed to be talked about at our Thursday meeting. The last part of my service plan was just an action plan. So in my action plan I say, I'm going to see on Thursday and I need about 10 minutes to talk about the social skills and some literacy ideas that I have. I want to talk to them a little bit about the technology team and their suggestions around backlighting.
Then I was able to say, I'm going to bring a plate of brownies. And again, a simple plate of brownies can be a great connector to a team. It tells people that I'm connected to you, I thought about you, I care about you, and I took the time to do this for you. And I think it's very much a part of our culture to bring food and to join in and be part of the group with just a plate of brownies. It goes a long way.
So collaboration. When we talk about collaboration we always have to talk about what it's like to work with difficult teams. We all have had difficult teams, and we all have difficult teams in the future. So how do we deal with that? And I find that the most important way to deal with difficult team is to make an ironclad IEP that really lists out my service time, the details of when those inservices need to happen, the dates that they happen.
For instance, I tried to really make sure that September is a time where I'm into classrooms and giving inservices to new teams in September. And I put that right in the IEP, what length those inservices will be and who should attend. Then I feel that I don't get into a battle about I want you to do something-- you don't want to do something.
I can just refer back to the IEP that's so strong. It has all those inservices listed. It has all those supports listed. It has all those accommodations and methodologies. Very, very planned out and very, very concretely listed.
It prioritizes the needs and helps teams understand that I wish this didn't have to happen, but it has to happen. This is the child's needs. This is the legal document that we all signed that we have to adhere to. It takes that little tussle away and puts it onto the legal documents with the IEP.
I think with a difficult team I get that strong IEP, but then I just really try to help people try to understand how much I'm willing to help, and how much I'm willing to support them, how much of an open dialogue I'm willing to have. If that doesn't happen, I can sometimes-- again, because I have a nice, strong IEP-- talk about some parent involvement. And sort of as a last step, to really use that IEP, not as this teacher won't do XY and Z, but it's difficult for us to pull off all the parts of this very strong IEP that I've created. Can we brainstorm some ways to improve that?
So what are the results of this collaboration? Our students get what they need when we're there and when we're not. And we're not there a lot of the time. There's a much deeper and fuller understanding of visual impairments. And I find with that very full understanding of visual impairments, people come up with incredibly creative ideas that I use with other classrooms that I go to.
It also has sparked several referrals for me of other kids in classrooms that are having visual difficulties. There's a deeper understanding, not only my needs, but the child's visual and learning needs. And we understand the child's full educational environment.
The results of the collaboration also is that we understand each other's goals and objectives for the students. We've created a positive and creative work environment. And we're connected. We're just connected to that team in a strong way. It's just more fun. It's more fun. It's more satisfying. It's satisfying professionally and satisfying personally.
That whole idea, and that final idea that we have today, is about independence. And this is probably the key area in the collaboration that we're trying to impart. We want that access because we want full access for full independence later on-- full understanding.
And Laurie Hudson, in her book, Classroom Collaborations, has some really important topics to discuss about how you support a child and support a team. "Tips for Classroom Teachers" is another great resource at Future Reflections. Learning independent skills starts early for children with visual impairments. And again, that's a really nice one because we want those skills to be taught very, very early and built very early for all children.
And here's some more resources-- How We See It by Dennis Lolli and Flo Peck, a Perkins publication, Reach Out and Teach from American Foundation for the Blind, "Welcoming Students With Visual Impairments to Your School" is a Perkins publication. That's through the Gibney Foundation. And they also have a tutorial that's available on teaching resources.
So collaboration really is the heart and soul of the work. And it's the only way that we provide our students with full and complete access with our work together that's equal and effective.
SPEAKER 1: We did a few questions from our community. We heard from a lot of other service providers-- teachers of the deaf, visual rehab therapists on speech language-- and it was interesting to hear them all talk about collaboration in a way they've experienced. And I'll get into some of those in some detail.
But I was interested in what you were just saying about the IEP because Demetria, who is a vision rehab counselor in North Carolina-- and she works with a lot of transition-age students. And she really wanted to get the comment out there that it's essential for her to be in the IEP as well because she needs to be able to know what that student's current skill level is and the skills that person's going to need, depending on what their transition plan.
She notes that the TVIs have the ability to be in the classroom, but the student can share with the counselor what their limitations are, and that the counselor can then use that information to translate it for the workplace. She says it's been a really effective collaboration thus far.
And I was just interested in what you had to say about those IEP groups and how they work together. And you've touched on a number of best practices. I'm just wondering if you have any other suggestions about the collaborative nature of those teams meetings, in particular.
ELLEN MAZEL: Just as a thought right off the bat is someone coming in as a rehab person that's thinking about the future is really doing an assessment around transition. Perkins has a nice assessment tool that can be used. And it's very much for kids with visual impairment.
And I find that, again, you have much more credibility when you base your opinions and your goals and objectives around an assessment tool. Somehow it gives you that umph that you need to be taken more seriously. And then those things appear much more actively in an IEP, I believe.
SPEAKER 1: Another thing you had advocated for was putting inservices directly into the students' IEPs so that it would be part of that plan, that stated plan everyone agrees to that the other educators would have those opportunities. Have you ever had any pushback on that?
ELLEN MAZEL: Well, I think the interesting thing is sometimes it's all style. It's all how would you say things. And if you always put things in the context of what benefits the child and you have the parent there and the classroom teacher and people that are invested in this child's future, I don't get pushback really very often. Maybe on details, but I put a lot of stuff in additional information. That's my place to add so many things about what I want to happen, as far as inservices and trainings and ideas.
SPEAKER 1: Early in your presentation you touched on an idea that I think we've heard from many teachers. We've heard it ourselves. And that's sort of like, my area is more important than yours.
Rose wrote in. She's from central Illinois. She is a TVI and a COMS. And she's had that difficulty, particularly between TVIs and teachers of the deaf or hard of hearing. And it kind of seemed to be that as you were talking about expanded core, you were finding ways to find those goals that can work together instead of feeling like, well, if we can't do 10 goals in this period, then mine are going to have to be more important than yours.
Do you have some examples, particularly for working in those sensory areas, that might be suggestions you've used before?
ELLEN MAZEL: Again, I think it's sometimes delivery. I think you could see in my service narrative, I try to always reference if I've got a goal that I'm working on that has, in any way related to the speech and language person, that I'm going to reach out and ask them-- here's what I think from a visual point of view. Here's what I'm seeing and what I think and what my lens is. What do you think about that? Can you give me your opinion?
And I think that's just the core of what collaboration is is respecting one another's point of view. And to me, it's half the fun. I learned so much from an occupational therapist. That's not my area of expertise. And I only know the visual piece. And they help me understand my child's functioning. That's much more than just vision. It's multilayered. That's what makes it fun to collaborate.
SPEAKER 1: When you go into an environment where these kinds of role releases are not being practiced for whatever reason-- let's not even say they're hostile to it-- it's just not in practice, what are some ways that you've introduced that concept to the teachers that you work with?
ELLEN MAZEL: Sometimes it's just sharing articles if I come up with an article that might talk about a certain area that is under controversy. That might be helpful. Again, I think it's just trying not to make it about the fight. Try to make it about the child. And I think some of that turf stuff is a power struggle about the adults and not about the kid. And if we can just keep focusing back on the child, I think that's where it belongs, really.
SPEAKER 1: Let's talk a little more about the service narrative examples. We got an interesting question from Trish. She's an itinerant teacher of the deaf. And she told us this story about a student that she works with who has learned some basic ASL. She has some specific signs that she uses that have served her purpose.
And she seems to have reached a point where she doesn't feel the need to communicate it any further. She knows how to ask for the things that she wants and to state the things that she wants to do. And it's been sort of difficult to get her to that next level. And Trish notices that
It seems to be the team seems to have accepted that this is about as far they're going to go. She says they tried using a voice input device, a voice output device. And Trish is trying to determine what this student's social communications are, but it's becoming difficult because she seems to not feel any interest in interacting with other people.
I bring up Trish's story around service narratives because I wondered if this was the type of situation where a narrative might really serve that student, because everyone's observing her in these different ways. I just wondered what you thought about Trish's story.
ELLEN MAZEL: I think in a service narrative you could certainly deal with that. If I saw a child whose language was limited to what they needed at that particular time, I think a conversation about how do we sabotage the environment in such a way that the child needs to ask for more things, ask for things with longer utterances, ask of things from multiple people. I think that could be a whole conversation that you have with the team. And bring in the speech and language person, and the OT, and the PT, and certainly the parent.
And just sabotaging-- how can we sabotage the environment in a safe way so that language is seen as a more useful tool? I mean, clearly this is working for that child. Why would you do anything more? So how can we look at our own behavior around providing her with too much and sabotage that environment so that the language needs are greater?
SPEAKER 1: That's an Interesting use of that term because, you know, in sort of the design world we talk about disrupting the status quo. And so I like that idea of, I might have to tear down some of these scaffolds we're never going to get this window open.
ELLEN MAZEL: And it's often looking at our behavior as adults. Is someone just grabbing the spoon and the fork and putting her chair there and then saying, it's time for a snack? Or is there no chair there? Is there no spoon there? Is there the wrong kind of food? I mean, all those ways we could just really-- I think as a team that would be a fun collaboration to shake this little child's world up a little bit, in a safe way.
SPEAKER 1: Just a few minutes that we have remaining, I wanted to ask you-- we did hear from a few parents. And I thought their questions were really interesting. Rosa asks about just your personal feelings about social media and being on social media with the parents of your students.
ELLEN MAZEL: I think there's not a yes, no to that one. I think it's about being professional. And I think you can be professional in many, many ways. I don't personally share a lot of things on my social media site. I might post pictures of a vacation or whatnot. And I have no problem with people seeing that. But it's about being professional and being seen as a professional. So I think you just have to be careful that your site is as professional as you are.
SPEAKER 1: I think that's a great piece of advice. And I would even add to that. Again, you can have a separate account for your Pinterest, for example, that's really just your teaching materials. And that way you can be sure that what you're sharing there is something that you would want parents to see.
Susan is a homeschooler. And I know a lot of us interact with a lot of homeschooling families. She had more of a comment than a question, but I thought it was a good thing to leave on. She talked about increased collaboration with parents. And she says, we don't bite. We actually have something to offer. And I felt like you addressed that in your talk in talking about understanding that the parents know these children probably better than anyone ever will.
So she just says that we'd like to be considered collaborative professionals. Things improve for everyone when there is a team effort.
ELLEN MAZEL: I totally agree. And I feel as if parents have all the information that I need. They have it all. They don't maybe have the context for the information. So I help with the context. But they have a goldmine of information for me. And unless I can tap into that, I'll not effectively ever work with that child in the way that they should be.
One example is I every September I send out a likes list to parents like, tell me what your child likes for movies, and what people they like, what rough house games they like. And I get back the most incredible answers like, one parent said, my child likes Irish step dancing. That would never in a million years ever enter my mind to use Irish step dancing to motivate this child to do something in my classroom. But yet, it's a great motivator that I could get from the parent who knew their child so well.
SPEAKER 1: And remember that a child's tastes change as they grow, and that can be really easy to forget. So we have all these lessons about Jim's interested in is Hot Wheels. And then suddenly one year he's not interested in that anymore. He's on to something else. And that like list can really help say, this is what he's about right now. Why don't you start trying talking to him about those things?
ELLEN MAZEL: And children are going to learn faster when you use things they like. We're all like that.
SPEAKER 1: Our thanks to Ellen Mazel for her time with us and for her thoughts on effective collaboration. This recording, the presentation, and list of resources mentioned are all available on the Perkins eLearning website in our Watch and Learn Library. Visit www.perkinselearning.org/videos, and search for the title TVI: Effective Collaboration.
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