munication or AAC skills. What can we do differently to increase student competency and independence?
were so many amazing resources available from so many Assis- tive Technology “rock stars”. Best of all, most of these resources were free! Candice and I identified what topics needed to be covered. We started with ten topics-Dispelling Myths, Core Vo- cabulary, Visual Supports, Operational Competence, Engineer- ing the Environment, Facilitating Communication and Model- ing, Communication Partners, Social Scripts, Communication Stories and Evaluative Feedback. We certainly could add more topics but the goal was to get staff trained and devices in the hands of students. Effective Learning Strategies Several studies have demonstrated what supports are most impactful. (Rispoli et al., 2011) Instructional methods used in these studies included Instruc- tional videos, written instructions, verbal instruction, modeling, practice, role playing and feedback. Conscious of how adults learn and retain information, we quickly realized that we were better off breaking up the content into modules. We also knew we needed to make the informa- tion fun and engaging. Our hope was if the materials were inter- esting enough, that not only would we have more of a success rate with completion of the training modules, but we would also have the side benefit of the paraeducators sharing the informa- tion with other staff on their team. Providing Options The modules included a two-minute homework assignment to be viewed before the training and an icebreaker activity or video to start the training. We created slide presentations with notes. That way, a trainer can present the slide presentation to a group and have talking points or ask paraeducators to view the presentation independently or in small groups. For those in need of a different format, we made videos of the slide pre- sentation. As best practices dictate, you must provide options! This also made it easy for paraeducators to review if they missed a training due to illness or if they wanted to revisit and review the training multiple times. The slide presentations are editable. Districts can add material or customize the text or pictures to address a school’s unique needs. We decided to add resources relevant to the module top- ics. This promotes further exploration and points participants to free resources available. Finding out there are resources avail- able and having the opportunity to view them only takes a min- ute but we had to limit the amount of resources in order to keep within our 15-minute time limit. Every Good Lesson Needs an Assessment We needed a method of determining if the material we were using was meeting the needs of our paraeducators. We created a Google form with questions directly related to our objectives. We didn’t want it to be intimidating as some of our paraeduca-
Empowerment Candice Steel works with adults that communicate using AAC. Four years ago, she was taken back by the amount of de- vice abandonment in the adult population. She started training paraprofessionals in a series of one-hour trainings. The results were amazing! Not only were the AAC users increasing their communication output, other staff in the room were starting to learn the strategies. The paraprofessionals she trained in her program called, “Power Partners”, modeled the talkers for the members and other paraprofessionals. Communication in- creased, competency increased, and staff started volunteering for the Power Partner training. Three years later, when you walk into her programs, devices are out and staff is modeling the be- havior. More importantly, members are using their devices and communicating. In schools, we see both success and abandonment. We hail the successes and work to support those classrooms where the teacher and paras have supported their students to become effective users of AAC. Clearly these teams are knowledgeable, trained in Aided Language Stimulation and value the impor- tance of creating opportunities to use AAC. The challenge is to reach the teams that aren’t seeing progress. Our students are counting on us to investigate and implement change! Within the schools, we do not have the luxury of time built into the paraeducators schedule to provide one-hour trainings. When I approached my supervisor about giving time for train- ing, there was a definite, “no” response. I could train the teachers or I could have 15 minutes before school started or at the end of the day. Fifteen minutes was a start. Determined to reach these classrooms, I started my re- search. Though there was a plethora of resources available, there were but a handful of programs focused solely on train- ing paraprofessionals to work specifically with students using AAC. There are several online programs, with one of the most well-known, from Pennsylvania’s PaTTAN. There are similar pro- grams offered in Connecticut, Minnesota and Phoenix all cover- ing a range of topics from an overview of eligibility categories, academic support strategies, behavioral plans and health and safety practices. This course work is independent course work and not always supported by school districts-meaning there may not be any “reward” for completing the program. Most notably, these courses are not going to address the time con- straints and require a lot of self-determination on the part of the paraeducator to enroll and complete the program. Starting Line I partnered up with my colleague Candice, who had already had so much success training her support staff for adults using AAC. We decided to create our own 15-minute trainings. There
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