Supporting Early Linguistic Competence: Evidence to Practice

ROUGH EDITED COPY

EHDI CONFERENCE

Supporting Early Linguistic Competence: Evidence to Practice

11:00 A.M. 12:00 P.M. (ET)

FEBRUARY 28, 2017

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CART CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY:

ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES, INC.

P.O. BOX 278

LOMBARD, IL 60148

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This is being provided in a roughdraft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

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>SPEAKER: Okay. I'm going to try this lapel mic. Can everyone hear me okay? Not too noisy? Background noise? Clothing? It's messing up the aesthetics of my nice new shirt.

All right. We're going to get started.

>MS. NUSSBAUM: Good morning, everyone, close to lunch. Thank you for coming. My name is Debbie Nussbaum. I'm a project manager at the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center. I know many of you, if not by face, I know many of you by name. How many of you do I do I know from different contacts I've had through the clears at the Laurent Clerc Center? Good. Quite a lot. Thank you for coming and Supporting Early Linguistic Competence: Evidence to Practice. I know that's something we all do.

So I wanted us to start from the beginning. We're going to kind of go on a little journey today, and we have programs from all throughout the United States I'm going to explain a little bit.

But first I wanted us to think a little bit about all the different presentations we've heard and all the biases we might come with, all the information we might come with and try to disband it for a minute and let's think about we all just landed here, let's, say from Mars, and we're at this early intervention conference, and we're trying to figure out, what do we do? We really don't know anything about working with deaf and hard of hearing children, and now we have to figure it out. We don't have our biases. We just know that this child can't hear.

So let's try to come from that, and we don't know anything, so we have to look at what the evidence is telling us. So this presentation is going to help us look at the evidence and what we're going to talk about today is a resource that is available through the Laurent Clerc center. We launched it last year. It's called Early Intervention Network, Supporting Early Linguistic Competence. Has anyone had an opportunity to see this resource?

I see a few head nods, but that's one of the things is we're so is we're busy doing what we're doing that we don't have time to stop and look at the resources that are available. So what we're going to do today with this resource is kind of unpack it for you so that if you look closely, and you hear about, oh, that's that's what I can find there, then you'll go back and look for it yourself.

So what you're going to do is in this resource and I'll show you where you can find it, it talks about the work of a strategic planning group at the Center that came together, parents, professionals from all different backgrounds, and we spent the time that many of you don't have to do is looking through a pile of evidence. Everything that was out there at the time. And since then we tried to keep up with the evidence, of course. We know it's coming faster which is a great thing but it's also harder to keep up with.

So we're going to say, okay, let's look at the evidence. Here it is, and I'm going to show you where you can find it so when you have to go back and show the evidence to families you're working with and professionals you're working with and trying to help them understand what linguistic competence is, you'll know where to find it.

Okay. We have all this evidence. That's great. Now, what do we do? So we spent a lot of time saying if the evidence says this, then the recommended practices are that.

Which makes sense. That's what the evidence says, that's what we should be doing. So we did that.

And then next we said, okay, who is doing that? And then we sent out a survey to 250 or so programs throughout the United States and said, who is doing and we got all the information, and we compiled it and that's who we have with us here today. We have programs who are actually supporting the evidence. We ended up with 5 factors that impact linguistic competence. I know we all know, that there are many different things that we're talking about other than linguistic competence for children who are deaf and hard of hearing excuse me.

But it's the foundation of everything else to come. So that's what we're focusing on for this website, not that we're ignoring the other areas, but we really focused on linguistic competence for this.

We're from Mars, and here are our wings that we got from the plane so we can fly all over the country and meet ear intervention providers. This isn't a chance to get together this is a one time a year opportunity but I'm going to show you through the network one part of the network is having online discussion groups, so maybe we can keep in contact and talk about topics that are of interest to all of us as well.

When you come to the Laurent Clerc Center website you're going to get a few of how you can subscribe and get more resources and if you're not familiar with the center, wear federally funded. We're guided by the Education of the Deaf Act. On Gallaudet's campus we have Laurent ClercNational Deaf Education Center which is birth through high school. As part of that we have national services, and technical assistance, and resources and we also have two demonstration schools, so it's all available to you, but you have to know where to find it. Hopefully you'll have an opportunity I know we're close up to take advantage of our exhibit booth but if you come here and take the time to explore, like I said, free. Free resources. You can see the resources section. We have a part called info to go where you can find many resources, learning, on line learning, web cast. So just take the time to look.

So exploring this early intervention network. You always have to keep in mind the cute kids that we're looking at because we all get caught up in what we're doing but I do have to say I really do love that picture.

And I keep using the word linguistic competence, and I think it's a word that we had to define as a group when we were talking about it. It wasn't just being able to say the word. It was able to use our words and language for learning, problem solving, reading and writing, and I'm not sure how many of you were able to attend the plenary last night but it hit me with the words "language nutrition." Was that the word that was being used? And we talked about feeding ourselves and our nutrition but the language nutrition and how do we start off so that we don't have language delay? And I think that's something we our goal is the same but, you know, what is the evidence to show how we reach that point?

So once you get into this website, not only from the Laurent Clerc Center website we have all this information about the evidence and the factors, a whole list of additional resources on this topic, references that are linked to other places. We tried to make sure that you could get to the references, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about the discussion theories, too.

I know you can't read these here but the five factors we're going to go into in a minute.

The resource library are on all of these different topics. The references, like I said, you can link to. And we held our first discussion group, I think it was last May, and I'm confused because we've had a few discussion topics.

So we took one of the factors. We had other people who were involved in working with this factor and then we had an online discussion. And it brought up a lot of good points, and you can go to when you go to our resources go to our online learning, and you'll see the online learning community, and go to the discussion group, and you can see what your colleagues were saying on this topic.

The first topic was on factor 1 which we're going to talk about in a minute, and here is the we're at factor 1.

So we looked at all the evidence and then some of this you might say, this is common sense. Okay. So direct and daily access to language and communication is essential to facilitating each child's language and communication development. And that was another thing that I pulled from the plenary yesterday about every child having communication partners from the start. Someone who can provide accessible language to the child. We have a child who can't hear. How that accessible language? What is it going to look like? So what did the evidence show?

When you go to the website you're going to get these little sections. One shows you the evidence. One shows you the associated recommended practices, and one shows you the programs that we have represented here today.

So factor 1. And, again, it might seem common sense but we have to, like, have it in front of us and be able to tell parents, this is what the evidence is showing. Makes sense, language happening early in a child's life and parentchild communication. Regardless, you want to get the early bonds set up.

So if that's the case, our programs need to be collaborative in providing family education to understand about this direct access and daily and accessible to communication.

So if that means visual language, that means we have to provide the supports to help the language learn that visual language so they can facilitate their child's visual language.

And family services and supports to spoken language as well. We want to see how the child is doing with both. We're not the evidence is showing stimulate both, both modalities, and both languages.

The first program that's going to come up with our program at the Kendall Demonstration Elementary school our parent infant program. We have three of our teachers today and head of our childhood education. Debra Kushner, Brenda Perrodin.

First of all, is communication accessible to everyone? Is everyone okay? I'm going to move out of the way.

I got a helper here. Thank you.

>SPEAKER: Hi, everyone I'm Debra Cushner from Kendall School. Sorry.

Technical difficulties.

We're good. We're good.

>SPEAKER: I'm Debbie Cushner from Kendall School. It's nice to see all of you. I'm here with part of our early intervention team. We're thrilled to be here and we've a lot of information to go through so I'm going to move pretty quickly. The Kendall School, what I wanted to share with you was some of our programming strengths and why we're part of this factor in particular for factor 1.

And one is the importance of systematic language planning, and system language planning is what we do for all of our children in the early childhood education program, and I'm going to focus on the birth to 3 group. Yes, there's intentional language planning with the students from birth through 3. We do it twice a year, fall and spring, and we assess each language independent of the other language.

We work as a team to do these assessments so in regard to looking at American Sign Language, we use the BCSL that's developed by VL2. Looking at spoken language, the speech and language therapists have the tools that they use for that. And we as a team come together to look at both languages. We look at this in relation to what we planned for in the spring, and progress being documented again looking at it in the fall and progress being documented into the spring, and of course, parents are included as part of this process and documentation.

We've gotten a lot of positive feedback from everyone about how much this process has helped in looking at languages separately and what we provide in the program.

Of course, we want to support each language, so in looking at the support of ASL, we have fluent ASL users in the classroom and environment at all times, and wonderful deaf role models available to everyone and to families.

Provide free sign language classes Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings for all families and for the greater D.C. area. We're proud of that, and I'm sure you're familiar with the shared reading program. That's another program we access.

In addition our parents are participants in the classes on Wednesday and and join in our twoyearold class, and through that are guided through activities that pertain to development of ASL. Storytelling, surprise boxes and those kinds of things.

In relation to English we also have to support that, we have a staff audiologist in and out of classroom, checking things and working with families independently and with the classroom. We have SLP's that join our Monday, Wednesday/Tuesday, Thursday, and 2yearold class and integrate into the classroom to provide services that are documented all on their ISSP.

And, again, there's the opportunity for guided activities and coaching for families when they're participating.

Challenge. I'm sure we all share the same channel. If your child signs he won't speak. We need to share the evidence that's available to everyone that that's not true. Families, teachers, schools, medical people. Share the evidence.

And also one thing that really has been helpful for us is to have families meeting other families, seeing that how children progress over time, building relationships, and that, I think, is one of the key, and best things we can do for our families in regard to supporting language development, and I'm going to pass it over to Brenda.

>SPEAKER: Also talking about how using natural ASL in the classroom. We all come together and there's a wide variety of parents, hearing and deaf. It's a natural environment. And it's also includes a lot of fun activities. During home visits, again, we use a natural environment and the main challenge is, you know, parents often are concerned about how they will learn ASL. When we're in the home, we're there interacting with them in a variety of ways. Communicating with them in whatever way possible.

And we don't focus on one language. We incorporate, you know, as was during the talk yesterday, a dad talked about giving opportunities for sign language, English, spoken language, a variety of different exposures.

We challenge our parents not to just pick one thing, to just use natural communication, and that will that will come. The ASL will come. We want to develop confidence in them. They will know before we do what they need, and we will communicate through expression, through body language, and we are there to reinforce and support the parents in that journey, and hope them feel okay in their learning of ASL.

>SPEAKER: Hi there. I'mSenoaGoehring.

And these are awesome teachers. I'm not really able to sign because of my hand injury. So we're the team. All three of us together.

>SPEAKER: Thank you, guys.

>MS. NUSSBAUM: The second factor you can find in the network talks about a collaborative, ongoing process. It should be used to explore modalities, technologies, and strategy.

>SPEAKER: To support the development of linguistic competence.

Okay. Again, it seems common sense, but in the plenary this morning, Dr.Knutt talked about no more one golden provider who happens to be the first person that the child came in contact with, child and family, and that person is responsible for the child's whole early intervention process. We still see I work as a coordinator of cochlear implant education center and get calls all the time about families waiting to get the cochlear implant, and it's a whole year until maybe they're getting the implant, and how many months? And we all know what the process is, and we're holding up language. So this talks about having people who can collaborate to get families the information they need.

So the evidence, again, the recommended practices and the two programs that we're going to be talking about who are going to come up with the m center, Karen Hopkins, and Dinah Beams from Colorado CHIP about how the collaborative process that they use.

So what is the evidence just hold on one second.

Karen, you were right, I said when you see your name I said come up. But I want to go through the evidence really fast. Sorry about that.

I say this about children with cochlear implants but if you've seen one child with a cochlear implant you've seen one child with a cochlear implant, and I say that about all of our children that we're serving. So we don't know what the outcomes are going to be. Even with certain characteristics in place, they can hear, they're wearing their hearing aids, and cochlear implants. Spoken language? We don't know. We don't know. If we don't know if we're fitting these children. If they're visual learners or if they're going to have additional learning disabilities so it's important that we have a collaborative process, and with distance education, and Internet. If we don't have someone in our neighborhood we need to find someone we can collaborate with.