I have had some great opportunities to meet many teams working with individuals using AAC.   Every team seems to operate a little bit differently. Some school teams seem to lack any direction in terms of who is responsible for AAC. Some school based teams assign full responsibility to the SLP for “all things related” to the device.  In the worst case scenario, I’ve seen classrooms that do not use the device until the student is picked up for an individual speech therapy session!  Other teams become dysfunctional when some members are left out of the loop on the goals and progress, and they seem to fall out of the swing of things related to the user’s system.  Some groups implement a shared responsibility where priorities for the device are broken up and split among the team. There are certainly many different ways that teams can move forward successfully based on the strengths and needs of each team member.  I recently had the opportunity to see a team that is really empowering each of its members and even more so the AAC user himself in action!

At this particular school, each of the team members felt a bit unprepared to begin working with their new student who arrived via a school transfer with a high-tech device.  Instead of the SLP or teacher tackling the responsibility individually, the entire team (parent, OT, SLP, teacher, PT, inclusion facilitator, and social worker) met to review some “AAC 101” resources on the DynaVox Implementation Toolkit, as well as the “Opening the Box” Learning Path.  Once they felt they understood InterAACT and the way the content was organized, they took their weekly meeting to a new level.  It was with great relief that they discovered that the content on the system was already developed to reflect opportunities for both language use (Now! Out of the box!) and language structure (to support literacy and more specific language building).  The team took turns facilitating parts of the Training Package available on the toolkit to get other professionals in the building up to speed.  At this point, the whole school was getting excited!

The original team has now started an amazing weekly meeting, completely optional and open to anyone in the building, to begin sharing ideas and brainstorming together about new ways to implement use of the device across the school day.  These sessions are full of energy and enthusiasm and always take time to celebrate the successes that their student is already experiencing. While the original team developed the earliest meetings, anyone can now sign up to lead a discussion, or propose a new topic that the team can conquer together.  Not surprisingly, each meeting has a packed room of interested and excited professionals!

This group has really demonstrated the power of the team approach to AAC. This student has benefited tremendously by being a part of such a supportive and powerful group.  The inspiring key behind this is that when the student first came to the school, each professional reported feeling somewhat overwhelmed or intimidated by learning something new. In a few short months, relying on the resources on the Implementation Toolkit, their own desire to learn, and the professional support of each other, they have grown into a strong team ready to support this student and many others using research driven practice to support AAC!

Have you been a part of a team that creatively distributes opportunities for its members to be involved? What’s working for you? Share your ideas in the comments section!