Every day may not be good,
but there’s something good in every day.
Author Unknown
When I ask people to describe a particular student with autism that may be on their caseload or in their classroom, I often hear about the student’s challenges. I might hear about the fact that the student isn’t motivated to learn or that [...]
Like many others, my town has baseball leagues for children and teens. The park district building was overrun the other day with kids and their parents signing up for these leagues. Most of the kids ran (or at least walked really fast) up to the door excited to get their team assignments. One boy, probably [...]
I often find myself helping people who are brand new to AAC. This often happens in the school setting when a teacher gets a student in their classroom who either already has a device or is going through the process to acquire one. Sometimes, it is an SLP who doesn’t really know how to support [...]
My friend has a 2-year-old son who, needless to say, is very active. When she is busy with cooking dinner or other such things, he is even busier…taking the opportunity to pull things out of drawers, playing with the telephone, grabbing objects of interest from the countertops. She needs to stay a step ahead of [...]
In one program I consulted in there were several students who were physically disabled and included in the typical classroom. It seemed as though they were constantly juggling therapy time and support equipment. Often the two did not match up! The idea of Integrating Academic, Communication and Motor Programs for Students with Significant Disabilities comes [...]
So many things have changed in the field of AAC over the past 15 years. Synthesized voices have gotten better. Device capabilities have become more remarkable. Access to funding has improved. There seems to be an endless amount of resources available.
One thing hasn’t changed – the challenges that we face when trying to implement AAC [...]
Do you remember lying in the grass seeing shapes in the clouds as they moved across the sky on a warm spring day? I can still feel the grass softly cushioning my back, the slightly damp cold in the ground and the wind gently brushing across my face.
Today is one of those sublime days and [...]
In one program that I worked with, the school system or AT support team was very clever about using online trainings with device companies and or information to train staff. In another school system where I worked it was mandatory for an assistant to work with a student; in fact, they were able to receive [...]
I love to people watch. My favorite place to watch people is in the airport. Over the past few years, I’ve started to notice that most people are constantly connected to technology, and I think it’s pretty cool. I sit and watch people use their phones, DVD players, computers, music players, etc. Technology has definitely [...]
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 [...]
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