OUR HOW: Establish shared values:
assessing and supporting individuals who use AAC as a com- munication mode.
We started by having conversations with our classroom teachers regarding four main beliefs/values. The first centered on presumed competence: the belief that all students were ca- pable of learning. As an educator you may think, “Well isn’t that obvious?”The reality is that sometimes we do get in the way of a student’s learning because we are human and have our own perceived ideas based on our own experiences. We took it to a deeper level and started to flip our mindset from “I don’t think they will understand” to “Let’s try it and find out”. In doing so, we stopped putting preconceived ideas in the way of our stu- dents learning and started providing opportunities for learning regardless of the outcome. The second value discussed was seeing communication as an intrinsic right. Individuals with complex communication needs have a right to say what they want to say when they want to say it. As educators, we have a responsibility to give students access to language, not just words related to our aca- demic subject. What was observed in our setting was that AAC devices were not readily accessible and were often put away. They were provided to students during classroom activities when responses or participation were expected; they were also often removed as a consequence when students were not compliant or had misbehaved. Seeing communication as an in- trinsic right meant changing this practice to one that ensures that devices are accessible and within arm’s reach at all times; it also meant that AAC devices would no longer be removed in disciplinary practices. The third value was to view AAC as a mode of communica- tion and not a participation tool. As verbal speakers, our lungs provide the air we need to produce voice, our oral articulators help us to make sounds, and our brain helps us develop the language to communicate our thoughts and ideas to others. For an AAC user, while they may “articulate” their thoughts dif- ferently (using their fingers, hands or body parts), the AAC de- vice becomes their voice. We reminded staff that we can’t ma- nipulate a verbal speaker’s mouth/lungs to say what we want them to say so we should not manipulate a student’s AAC de- vice just because it is more tangible. Lastly, many of our students are emergent communicators and needed to be better supported in learning how to use their AAC system to meet their communication needs. Without ro- bust systems, many of our students had to rely on unconven- tional or conventional behaviors to communicate their wants/ needs, thoughts and ideas. A quote by Beukelman (1991) puts it simply, “... AAC alone doesn’t make one a competent, profi- cient communicator.” Having a communication device doesn’t make you an effective communicator any more than having a piano makes you a musician.” These ideas helped our teach- ing staff to reframe their thinking when lesson planning and
Set priorities: To apply our values into practice, we developed a set of pri- orities. Our first was to provide all our students access to ro- bust vocabulary systems. A robust vocabulary system includes a large amount of core vocabulary with personally relevant fringe. Core words are those that are most frequently found in our verbal and written communication (i.e. verbs, articles, ad- jectives, etc.) and their meaning can apply to many topics and across environments. In contrast, fringe vocabulary consists mainly of nouns that are context specific. A robust vocabulary system also includes a dynamic display in order to provide ac- cess to thousands of words within a few activations. Ultimately, robust vocabulary systems allow for language growth and de- velopment by providing access to grammatical endings (i.e. plural -s, present progressive -ing, etc.), as well as the ability to combine individual words into phrases and sentences. Our second priority was to build staff capacity in supporting our users in learning how to use their AAC systems through tar- geted professional development, coaching, and in-class mod- eling/demonstration of support techniques. We also devel- oped visual supports and demonstrated how to embed them into lessons, the classroom environment, and how to use core boards and icons/icon sequences as modeling tools. By remov- ing the expectation that students should automatically under- stand the icons, organization, etc. of their device, we created context for specific AAC support during classroom activities to build core vocabulary and functional communication skills. Targeted professional development: Provision of professional development for staff was multi- faceted, taking place in both large and small group settings throughout the year, and involved teachers, paraprofession- als, therapists, and administrators. New staff were also pro- vided training as they were hired throughout the school year. Through structured presentations, coaching, and interactive practice activities, staff were supported in building their foun- dational knowledge related to AAC systems and implementa- tion. Professional development topics centered on building understanding of functional communication as well as Aided Language Input and how to create an aided language environ- ment for students. Oftentimes, functional communication is viewed too nar- rowly in schools, seeing it as pertaining to only meeting basic needs (i.e. toileting, food), making choices and requests, and answering academic related questions; however, while these functions are important, functional communication encom- passes so much more! It includes the many reasons that we communicate, such as to comment, greet, tell a story, argue,
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