________________________________________________ Let ’ s MAT @ BASSC! ________________________________________________ Special Education Teachers, SLPs, OTs, PTs, SWs, Psychologists & Administrators Come for the information, leave with the materials! Join the BASSC AAC/AT Department for a series of MATerial (make and take) sessions throughout the 2019-2020 school year.
approach, but without the intensive training piece on how to implement the materials, it was not a problem-centered ap- proach to learning. It was lacking that connection of how the materials could be immediately utilized to support students. This explained why just giving materials, without a complete ex- planation and demonstration, was missing the mark for effective professional development. We paired this information with our observations and feed- back gathered through a needs assessment to determine what components and supports staff was hoping to see included in a professional development offering. One of the main points we kept hearing throughout this process was professionals express- ing how frustrated they were with attending workshops and getting excellent information, but then coming back to work and not having the time or resources to implement what they learned. Haven’t we all been there? You spend the day away from work at a great training and leave feeling excited to im- plement the ideas and strategies. You go back to work the next day with all the handouts and information, ready to follow up. But now you are behind with your caseload because you were gone the day before. You do not have the time to research and prep new resources, which leads you to not feeling confident in implementing those new strategies because you do not have access to the resources you saw at the training. So you hold off on implementing the interventions. But once you do finally get planning time to follow up, you run into another problem. You do not have access to all the needed materials to create the re- sources. Your school doesn’t have color printing. You are only allowed a small allotment of lamination for the year, and you have already used it up. You can get velcro, but only if you buy it with your own money. These are the barriers some educators face. And it can have a significant impact on the carry-over of strategies learned at a professional development training to the classroom or therapy room. Taking this information and keeping in mind what the liter- ature tells us about adult learners, we developed a professional development initiative to tackle these barriers by combining learning with resource development. We wanted profession- als to leave our trainings with ready-to-implement materials to create conditions in their day-to-day practice that promotes the use of evidence-based interventions, bypassing barriers and obstacles. This is in line with recommendations stated in The Assistive Technology Trainer’s Handbook. According to Reed, Kaplan, and Bowser (2009), “to increase the likelihood that your participants will implement what you trained them to do … pro- vide the tools they need to implement back in their own set- ting” (p. 92). Our solution was a make-and-take training series that combines clear explanation, illustration, and active learning with hands-on material making to encourage increased AAC strategy, visual support, literacy and assistive technology use in the classroom. This MATerial (make and take) training initiative was designed to provide evidence-based strategies for teachers
Save the Dates! September 20th 8:30-3 November 1st 8:30-3 February 21st 8:30-3 April 24th 12-3
BASSC Board Room 2411 Pathways Crossing Belleville, IL 62221
Leave each session with information, CPDUs, and materials ready to use! Come MAT @ BASSC! Topics include: 9/20/19 - Let ’ s Get Communication: MATerials 11/01/19 - Let ’ s Get Reading: MATerials 2/21/20 - Let ’ s Get Writing: MATerials 4/24/20 - Let ’ s Get Visual: MATerials
Flyers with specific information for each topic & RSVP will be distributed at a later date
Questions? Email: Jeanna Antrim @ jeanna.antrim@bassc-sped.org or Maggie Judson @ maggie.judson@bassc-sped.org
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and related service personnel to increase student learning in the school setting by providing hands-on time for making materials that relate to the information provided during the training. In the ‘save-the-dates’ and ‘RSVP’ forms, we say, “come for the infor- mation, leave with the materials!” (See IMAGE 1) That is how we view this professional development initiative - a way to provide evidence-based content easily digestible through the creation of relevant, applicable resources that can immediately be put to use to support students. We structure this training program as a four-part series spread out over a school year. According to Darling-Hammond, Hyler, and Gardner (2018), professional development that is spread out over time, as opposed to a one-time training, is more effec- tive at creating change in practice. While participants can pick and choose which topics to attend, we present the training as a series and share the benefits of attending over time. The topics we selected to address were based on needs assessments and through informal discussion and observation with staff. From this, we identified the topics of visual supports, communica- tion development and emergent literacy as are our top areas of need. These topics are very much interrelated and feed into one another in terms of supporting students with complex commu-
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