Event ID: 1353766 Event Started: 6/10/2009 5:00:00 PM Welcome, Everybody Who Has Joined

Event ID: 1353766 Event Started: 6/10/2009 5:00:00 PM ------Welcome, everybody who has joined us or who has just joined us because this is the NCDB webinar on Deafblindness: Educational Service Guidelines. Does not make you brief nose before we start. Everyone is on mute. We will not be able to hear you. If, later on in the presentation you want to have something question time, you can press *6. You can ask your question. Please announce your name, where you are from and your questions. If you look on your screen there are a series of pots. The chat pod is in the left-hand corner. That is another way you can ask them question during the presentation. You can check with each other privately or chat with presenters or everybody if you would like everybody to see the question, you can do that. I have made the closed-captioned pots number little bit larger. Some people have said they had difficulty seeing it. That has impacted the size of the share pod. If it is to small, even access the printed version or if savvy enough you can toggle back and forth on your computer if you like it a little bigger. I decided to explain that. Welcome, everybody's because we have scheduled 90 minutes for it is called. that the conclusion I will ask you to complete an evaluation and post the link on the screen. You can go right back to it and if you'd be so kind to complete that, it would help us, greatly. Welcome, everybody, and, Cathy, I will takeover. > This is Kathy. I am just going to-[Audio interference]. > [ LAUGHING ]. > Jon, you heard that, Daniel? > Sorry about that. > It is okay. I am going to introduce our presenters today and make a feel opening remarks. Presenting today on the guidelines is Marianne Riggio from the Hilton Perkins project as well as Maurice Belote from California and Beth Kennedy from Michigan. Maurice, Beth and I were invited. My memory is them little rocky, I think was about a year ago. It might have been a little longer, to meet with a group of people to release strategize on how to best go about disseminating and promoting and using the guidelines. Following that meeting, Marianne and I as well as Betsy have had numerous conversations with our project officer, Ann Smith, strategizing what would make the most sense on how to use and really promote these guidelines. We had another meeting and Ann Smith joined us because it came right before topical and we have representation from the Nebraska deafblind project, Illinois, NCDB was there and, of course, Marianne and Betsy. We did some more strategizing. One of the strategies was to conduct a webinar, such as this to really get the word out to do some explanations and clarifications of the purpose and function of these guidelines and how they might be used. Another strategy that we came up with is to selectively identify where we thought we could pilot these guidelineses because that was one of the outcomes prior to topical. On July first, Marianne, myself as well as Tracy Evans will be going to Augusta Maine to the special ed director as well as other stakeholders that Marianne has identified to sit down and see what is the best way to launch these guidelineses in a est.. There were lessons learned from what did and did not work around the vision that leds and we do not want to repeat what did not work but want to capitalize on what we learned. We will do that the in Maine. We will look for other states to pilot this in. We have tended to discussions with people in New Jersey and, perhaps Puerto Rico. As you hear Marianne, Maurice and Beth talk about how they are going to use things in their states, you might help us with additional ideas about how we might maximize and use these guidelineses. So, with that, Marianne, I will hand it over to you and let you get started. > Okay. Thanks to so many people that are showing up on this call. I am Marianne Riggio from Perkins. I have been working, I guess, with most of you for many years in many different capacities. I am happy to have this opportunity with this new medium. I would just like to kind of go through some of the goals of the webinar that Kathy has already spoken about. This might not be use to read some of you, but for the people that have not been a part of the process so far, I want to give a recap. The goals, I think, are to give all of you a little background about how these guidelines came about and, kind of go over some of the key themes that we thought were important messages contain in the it did 49. Most importantly, talk with all of you about how you are using them. I know all of you should have received copies of them in the mail and meeting your grant requirements and also to build support within your state. There was a President said in writing guidelines to Services for Special populations of students with low incidence disabilities. Many of you are probably familiar with mostly known as the NASDSE guidelines in vision impairment because there was training across the country several years ago. They have continued on. More recently, NASDSE developed the guidelines for Services to students that aren't deaf and hard of hearing, which they also have a training component that goes along with that. I think for all of us who have written anything, I think we have-we have learned a lot about the power of the written word. the people gave us great encouragement to write these, the NCDB staff, the people from State Deafblind Projects and NASDSE. We zero a lot to Gail. I do not think she is on the call, but she was an energizing force behind these, even though these are not NASDSE guidelines, they do not financially support the guidelines, they were helping with the development. When we sat down to write the document we wanted to make sure that we had a good representation of all of the interest in the field of deafblindness. We wanted to make sure that we had representatives from the State Deafblind Projects, training programs, NFADB, direct service providers, NCDB staff to make sure that this is, truly, a well-rounded document. I just wanted to say thank you at it is . to all of the people that contributed to reap the peer review of the document. We value that input from each of you and read every line of it and, hopefully, we addressed everyone and try to respond to keep them in the final printing of the book. I think for all of you that have seen the article in DB perspectives, that was a nice opportunity for get me to think back a little bit about where we have come as a field. I think it was really kind of a great moment for me to realize how we have really grown in strength over the last 20 odd years and really not been complacent with the fact that we, as the state projects and the national efforts should be the only people who are out there addressing the needs of this population of children. It does represent our tiny but mighty spirit, I think. And, our goals are to build awareness amongst those people who, that the state level are creating systems and those people that the local level who are responsible for Direct Service to students with deafblindness that is not okay anymore to say that we do not have professionals in the field who can be high on the teams with every student. We are not going to ask for that. I was just talking with a woman from [ indiscernible ] public schools who said they write in deafblind services because they feel like this very important that that is in every student's IEP. In their system they have people addressing the needs of students with deafblindness. They built that into the school system, itself. It is okay two write into a IEP that a stood it means deafblind services when they do. Also, we have tried, we meaning all the state and multi-state projectses to really be running around, trying our best to meet all of the needs of the thank you in our state. If represents that we really can say that that is the service for the students with guidelines that the state and what they should receive. We need to become more of a second tier of service in supporting districts and that states must really think about all of that and put a system into place that is not just the State Deafblind Projects, but a more thought out system for their meeting the needs of students with deafblindness. That is our big and bold in the development of the book. So, what I want to do next, and maybe now would be a good time to open this to any questions about that piece of the background, if anyone has any questions about that. > If anyone has any questions, they can take themselves off of mute or use the chat pod, as well as. > Okay, we will move on, then. Are you hearing me? > I can hear you, Marianne. > Great. If there are not any questions on that piece of it, why don't we take a look some key points in the documents. I think what I wanted to talk about here, a little bit, too, is not to some of the documents because some of the slides are adapted from training modules that a group of us that were in and Bob in the writing of the guidelines, in December we all got together and wrote up training modules, began to write training modules that would match the content of the publication. What these are is really kind of a quick look at Some of the key themes. I think what I wrote in the DB Perspective article might be more prescriptive. One of the points that want to make is that this is a population of students that is very diverse, but there are also some commonalities, a hewn to range of kids. They have unique communication needs and difficulty accessing the physical and social and educational environments. So, obviously, that is one of the points that we start off with is, really getting an understanding of, who are we talking about here? There are challenges in delivering services, obviously, to this population of children. I think we want to convey to the states and local providers that we understand this, that it is a low incidence disability and the students have very complex educational needs and throughout it, we did talk about the limited access to incidental learning activities. They are challenged to meet the needs. I think our goal is that we are going to use this whole process as a way to open the door to sitting down and figure out how to meet some of these challenges. sum of the educational needs that we outlined repeatedly through the text is the collaborative planning that fully includes family members. We really highlighted the importance of families, even though it is and a mandate in of the law, how important it truly is foredecks dids with deafblindness and the learning environments have to foster the development of communication skills and conceptses and getting back to the lack of incidental learning, some of the foundational needs that will be to the building of social, academic and functional abilities. We keep hitting home on that. The concepts that we must give the students concepts and skills that will help them move through the environment. And, equal access, they should have equal access to the General Education curriculum and access to these skills contain in the expanded group curriculum that will allow them to live satisfying and meaningful lives. I think the whole issue-I think many of you must be familiar with the expanded corporate among the in visual impairment. There is a lots on the Texas website about it if you need more information about it. I will show you some of the skill area is in the assessment piece. It is really important to say it is not just the curriculum, the regular general curriculum but a lot of other things about our students need to have addressed in their educational experience. We spent a lots of time on personnel needs, the need to 1 to 1 Communications support and I applaud Linda and Mary Jean getting the knowledge and skill standards for the interveners in there. It gives credibility to meet the needs for specialized training for the professional that is working in the class room and that we have to have trained people that are meeting the needs of our students that we cannot have a learn as you go out system. The teams to really need to include a Professional with knowledge and skills. That is an essential element that has to be it there. Again, these are themes that have played through many sections of the book. Of course, the most fundamental priority for teams to recognize is Communications. That is the foundation for everything else that happens. Assessment is a big, big area where people struggle. Again, to get our students a fair shake, I think we have to advocate that they are assessed by personnel who really understand the impact of deafblindness on development and learning, that they really need to know the impact on communication, on behavior, on learning concepts. I think, as all of you know-I like I am preaching to the choir here. All of you really understand the pitfalls that we have seen so many kinds of kids really been under estimated because they have not been evaluated by people that really understood this disability and were held back by the lack of competencies in the assessment team. So, it is an area that we have really hit strongly that we really need to try to put those assessment teams in Place and. Again, the assessment is multifaceted and ongoing. These bullets on this slide of some of the areas that we have to assess relate to the expanded group curriculum for those that are not familiar with it, these are the key areas that are addressed. They apply both to vision interment and to our students. Another key theme is that transition is very difficult for Stevens of that are deafblind and providers and family at any age, not just transition to adult life but transition that happens along the way that we really have to plan and coordinate everything that happens. It cannot be just an 11th hour planning meeting. Otherwise, the astute and's Life is very destructive and, oftentimes, the training that needs to happen in the next Environment does not happen and people are learning as they go. We do not want that to happen. In the Services and placement options section, we really wanted to make sure that people are making an informed decisions about-based on their own knowledge and, hopefully, we have people on the team that really understand and are trained to help this population. Resources is an area that all of you come in and provide that to leave many educational teams. The placements' must be looked at in terms of achieving the potential for lifelong independence, community participation and personal happiness and satisfaction of the students. We really have to think, think carefully about what the placement needs are in the life of the student. There was a slide that was out of place, but one of the other issues that we really wanted, and this comes under the state information is the importance of identifying students as deafblind. Everything-I know for how many years have we all been challenged in identifying, correctly, the students with deafblind? If we want to have a system that really meets the needs of students with deafblind, we need to identify them. We want to hit home on the fact that participation in the deafblind census allows blind to better develop appropriate training assessment and program design. So, it is really important that everybody were collaborative Lee in the state to make sure that they are maximizing the resources that they have. We talk a lot about if you have university programs or a State School for the blind, stays cool for the deaf and blind, make sure that you are cultivating resources within those entities that are going to help better serve the students that are deafblind and to develop, really, again, take stock of, what are the resources that you have? What are the resources you need? I think that is where we, hopefully, will have the outcome of a lot of the training is that states will sit down. I think one of the big criticisms of some of the past trainings that have happened in the vision guidelines that there was not a mechanism within the process of conducting the training, what was follow up, that created the needs of practice to sit down and hash out, okay, now we know all this, how are we going to make our system stronger? That is something that we really need to make sure happens as a parts of it all. So, that was pretty quick. Does anybody have any comments based on your own use and reading of the document that you would like to share, or any questions? I feel like I have sped through this. > Hello, this is Tany.