The team was excited to report after only a couple of weeks that they were seeing dramatic improvement in the student’s attention, engagement, and accuracy in pointing at communication symbols. They used communication symbols highlighted in blue. They changed the settings on his iPad so that a blue overlay would cover the display. The student’s team also immediately began to offer the student assignments copied onto blue paper. The teacher contacted his parent to schedule an appointment with an ophthalmologist. Students with CVI often have a strong color preference (although it is usually red or yellow). When the teacher mentioned that the student always chose a blue crayon or marker for a task, I was pretty sure that CVI was a possibility. Cortical visual impairment, or CVI is where the eye itself is healthy but the visual pathways in the brain struggle to process an image. As they described the student I started to hear some behaviors consistent with a cortical visual impairment. Using picture communication had been inconsistent for him. The student had a few words and some gestures to communicate but they felt like he had much more to say. Jessica Conrad, PATINS specialist for AAC and I consulted with a teacher and speech therapist about a student who had puzzled them for a while. Part of the grant for Manchester’s schools provides specialized assistance with finding the right communication device or system for a student with more intensive needs. Dave’s restaurant remains the same as does their tenderloin recipe. If you don’t know what either of these are google “playground hazards from the 1970’s”. The playground next to the little league field at the old Thomas Marshall School no longer has maypoles or tether balls. The injuries I sustained couldn’t possibly have happened there. The sledding hill at 5th and East Streets looks impossibly smaller than when I was 11. I’ve enjoyed visiting, and being reminded of my childhood in this small college town. Manchester Community Schools is one of the several districts receiving our PATINS AEMing for Achievement Grant this year, and I have been assigned to help them with guidance and training. My traveling views over the dashboard this winter are taking me frequently to my hometown of North Manchester. I’m working on reducing my screen time, and literally, taking a longer view, by scheduling time to look out the window. My eyes are worsening each year, in no small part, due to screen use for work and I admit, due to viewing flowers, babies and political nonsense on social media. January is when I go for my annual eye exam, and as a specialist for issues regarding vision, I suppose my optometrist braces himself for that lady who has all the questions about eyes. Where’s the most unusual place you’ve taught students? PATINS will provide virtual or in-person training no matter the size of your space. If you can’t make it to any of those, check out our new Professional Development Guide to request a no-cost training or have us design one for you. In the next couple of days, our specialists will be traveling to Summer of eLearning conferences near you, Indiana educators. They’ve seen it all and have helped you UDL-ify your space. What’s unique about PATINS specialists is that they also work in all types of "offices" as they train in classrooms, schools, and districts. You can serve students anywhere because communication is everywhere! You know it’s not the space that’s important, it’s the quality of the therapy provided. To close out Better Speech and Hearing month this May, let's give a shout out to all those SLPs who’ve had offices in janitors closets and mobile homes, shared offices, moved offices (with or without notice), or had no office. O ne master’s degree later, I can confidently say the band/van mystery is solved and that student was appropriately identified for services. However, the student was most likely referring to “the van”, which was actually a gigantic RV stationed in our school parking lot where the speech-language pathologist had an office. A few days went by and my mom mentioned it to my teacher who laughed and said there was, in fact, no band. My mom, genuinely confused, said she hadn’t heard about it either. I stomped all the way home fuming that my mom didn’t tell me about the school band. “ Why didn’t I know about this band? And they give prizes?! Sign me up!” Another classmate whispered to him “Where did you get it?” To which the beaming student replied, “I got it at the band!” All of us were instantly distracted from our silent reading to a simple object in his hand. My classmate burst through the teal trimmed door smiling from ear to ear.
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