Episode 305: Caitlin Armstrong: Writing a Persuasive AAC Initiative Proposal for School District Admins

This week, Chris has a discussion with Caitlin Armstrong, an SLP in New Hampshire who contacted Chris asking about writing up an AAC Initiative proposal for her K-5 school district! Chris breaks down how she should approach the mission statement, ideas for making a more persuasive argument, and things to avoid (e.g. too much research up front).

Before the interview, Chris and Rachel talk about the AI Reading Coach at coach.microsoft.com. It is similar to the Reading Coach that is part of the Immersive Reader tool embedded in Microsoft Word, and allows people to practice reading with someone analyzing their speech in real time!

Key Ideas this week:

🔑 If you are writing an AAC initiative for AAC in your district, start with a mission statement about robust language and what your district believes in. If you start with a statement everyone agrees with and lay out the steps from there, you can get more buy in from the start!

🔑 Chris recommends breaking up AAC implementation into four prongs: Mindset, Training, Coaching, and Tools.

🔱 Mindset - The mindset we need to have is everyone can learn language, and if we give them the right tools and time, they will learn it.

🔱 Training - If training is going to happen, there may not be enough time in the instructional day to add on additional time for staff training. There might need to be substitutes or other resources included to help staff attend the training.

🔱 Coaching - Once you have given your trainings, you need to follow up with more direct coaching on how to provide the services. Admins don’t always think of coaching as separate from training, but the distinction is essential. Coaching can be as brief as a few minutes to reflect after a lesson if you are already in the classroom.

🔱 Tools - You can include a proposal for high tech robust AAC, with an alternate proposal for light tech (e.g. core boards) supports and/or a mix of the two. Ideally, you would have high-tech devices for teachers and staff as well as students who need AAC.

🔑 You can include some links to research about AAC in your proposal, and you want to have that information your back pocket, but you don’t want to go too heavy with research up front. Focus more of your time first on, “We know this is good for kids, you can be assured there is thought behind this and it won’t just be thrown in room, and there will be training and coaching for the team.”

Transcript of the Episode

Please Note: This transcript was generated using speech recognition & AI tools; it may contain some grammatical and/or spelling errors.

00:00:08
Welcome to talking with tech. I'm your host, Rachel Madel, joined, as always, by Chris Bugaj. Hey, Chris.

00:00:13
What's going on, Rachel?

00:00:14
Not much. I'm so excited. We're doing a podcast recording.

00:00:20
Yeah, it's kind of a unique thing. We don't get to do it very often.

00:00:24
Just after every week.

00:00:26
All right. I'm excited to show, you know, over the years, occasionally come on these banters, and I'm like, I got to show you a new piece of tech. It was one of the reasons that I agreed to do this in the first place all those years ago when Lucas asked us to get together, it's like, who's this Rachel Madel? Oh, my gosh. She loves technology.

00:00:44
I love technology. All right. Right. So the way we have done this in the past is I've invited you to share your screen, and we kind of walk through together. If I'm showing you something new, are you down for that?

00:00:55
Yes.

00:00:55
All right. So while you're sharing your screen, I will ask, are you familiar with immersive reader?

00:01:02
Yes, I've heard of it. I know it. I don't use it that much, but yes, I'm familiar.

00:01:07
Okay. So I'm not going to go into immersive reader or go over that with you now or for the listeners that are listening right now, I'll give you the quick flyby version. If we were in an elevator together, I would tell you what immersive reader is. So that's. I'll do that quickly because you can go play with that on your own.

00:01:22
It is built by Microsoft. It has text to speech. It has all these different functions, like it's got a picture dictionary. It can put little parts of speech over words. It can syllabify words by putting dots in between them.

00:01:38
It can have high contrast or other contrasts. And the way Microsoft did it is rather than have it be a standalone product, they built it into word, and they partnered with tons and tons of websites that you can find immersive reader in. So what we teach students is to look for this little immersive reader icon, and then you can use immersive. So in some versions of immersive reader, like in Microsoft Word, so it's not universal. What I'm about to tell you is not universal.

00:02:09
They have added a feature for a couple of years now. They've had a feature called reading Coach. Are you familiar with reading coach?

00:02:17
Yes, I'm familiar with it, but I don't know a ton about it.

00:02:20
Okay. Again, if you have Microsoft Word and you take some text and you plop it in there and you go, and you click on the view tab and go to immersive reader and click through the tabs. One of the options there will be reading coach. And you can go play with that on your own. Again, I don't want to take a minute here to describe it, just know that that exists.

00:02:41
The people that have been using it have provided really good feedback to Microsoft saying how much they enjoy it and like it. I'm certainly a fan of it. But what they've done just recently is they said what if we broke that out out of immersive reader and created a new experience that is specifically reading coach. So that's really what I want to show you today. It's something new from Microsoft that I don't know.

00:03:06
You tell me if you've seen it before. Okay, the website that I'm going to ask you to go to is coach Microsoft.com. All right, I'm going to share my screen coach Microsoft.com.

00:03:20
Reading coach.

00:03:22
Yeah, and what it says right there, you see it engage students and improve reading fluency with aipowered stories and personalized practice. Right? And if you scroll down a little bit, it says getting started. And there's three different tabs. One says parents and guardians, the next says educators, and the next says it administrators.

00:03:39
You might intuitively think, oh, I want to go to the educators or the like. If you worked for a school district, maybe the it administrators, but what those do is this. They take you and they invite you to sign up and then you become part of the community to actually play with the tool. You want to go to the parents and guardians tab and it says get started. You don't have to download the Windows app, just hit get started.

00:03:59
So then you sign in. Yes, you do need to sign in. Okay, so you see when you click the get started, you sign into your Microsoft account and then there's some permissions that you click on and then you hit continue. But let's get to the actual tool, right? So what this says is let's practice reading.

00:04:16
And it's really a reading tool. So you see once you get to the actual tool, it says let's practice reading. And then there's some options. But the option that I really want to show you, it says create a story using AI. So when you click on that button, it gives you all these different characters so you can choose an animal, a fantasy creature, a science fiction creature.

00:04:39
And they have the short little words like bear, cat, dog and a little icon like an emoji over there owl.

00:04:48
Because I'm a temple owl. For those who don't know, I went.

00:04:52
To Temple University, and then it says, choose a location. And then there's options here, like house, space, school and so forth.

00:05:01
Definitely choosing island.

00:05:03
All right, so now you've chosen an owl and an island, and the next thing it says is choose your reading level. And there's some options here. It's like one through eight. So can you picture in your mind one of the kids that you work with and maybe you think where they might be? And it's not clear to me whether this is supposed to be some sort of grade level or something, but just start.

00:05:23
Pick somewhere. All right, so you picked five, level five example, and it gives you, like, four words of what the story that it's going to generate might be, or four lines of what this story might generate. Do you think, okay, does this about right for the student that I'm working with?

00:05:38
Yeah, I think so.

00:05:39
All right, choose level five. So you hit a button and it's doing some work. You see the owl spinning, the icon for the palm tree, for the island spinning, and it says, welcome to reading coach. And then reading coach is really similar to the reading coach that was built into immersive reader that is in the word version. Again, reading coach is not in the web version.

00:06:02
If you were to go to one of the websites that have immersive reader, you wouldn't see reading coach, but it's in the word version. And now they've made it the separate tool married with AI. So it says, start reading. And when you do this, it's going to give you a little countdown, Rachel. And please, intentionally make some mistakes.

00:06:19
Okay?

00:06:20
In the middle of a lush islan high up in a tall tree sat an owl named Olive. He loved living in the tree, where he had a magnificent magnificon view of the forest and the ocean beyond.

00:06:52
Now hit stop. So what did it do? It used AI to create a customized story from the characters that you selected. And then it says, choose what happens in the next chapter, and you can choose, and it'll generate even more right, if you continued reading. But underneath these options to continue reading and having the story go on, there's something that says, done reading, see results.

00:07:17
And when you see the results, it gives you the results. So there's pronunciation, accuracy, reading time, and then words to practice beyond owl, ocean view, forest. These are ones that it analyzed and said, okay, these are some of the words that you might have struggled with. Some of the words that you might need additional practice with. And then you can choose to either keep reading or choose practice words.

00:07:41
And if you choose practice words, it gives you these five words.

00:07:46
Select any word to tackle them again.

00:07:50
So fun.

00:07:51
It's.

00:07:51
It's reading, coach. It coaches you through it and read.

00:07:54
The word out loud.

00:07:57
Faux. Faux rest.

00:08:04
That's not quite it. Give it another shot.

00:08:09
Do I have to hit this again? I think so, Forest.

00:08:16
You're getting there.

00:08:18
Let's read it again, Forest.

00:08:25
Your effort is showing. Great reading.

00:08:29
Wow. This is so cool.

00:08:32
Yeah. Now there's some other options. If you'll hit the next button to go to the next word, let's talk about some other options. You'll notice that there is a little pronunciation guide. So if you were to click on that and it says, hear the word ocean.

00:08:45
So you can now. Okay, that's the word. If you were trying to sound it out at first and use all the strategies that a teacher may have taught you, use your finger underneath or notice there's an arrow there. See what those arrows do? Stretch the word so it shows you where the syllables are.

00:09:02
It's o shin. Right. And there's a space in between. And you can listen to o shin. There's little buttons you can click, which you just did, over each of the syllables.

00:09:15
So you can learn how to break it down. And then if you needed, like, okay, what is this word? What does it mean? I'm not sure what it is. There is picture support, but in this particular.

00:09:24
It's weird. Ocean doesn't have a picture.

00:09:26
Feels weird.

00:09:27
Yeah. So the idea being that you can coach yourself through it and kind of work independently on practicing these words, and then when you get to the end of practicing them all, you can go back. You can see that in my estimation, it sort of gamifies the practice experience. Like, okay, this is what my score was when I did it this time. Let me read it again.

00:09:50
Or read a different passage again and try and beat my high score.

00:09:54
Totally. This is awesome. I'm just going back.

00:10:00
Yeah. I think what's most fun about it is generating your own story with your own characters. That's personalized. Yeah.

00:10:08
I also love that it kind of is like, what are we doing next? The battle for the forest or Oliver's encounter with the intruder? That's fun.

00:10:20
Yeah. Look, it's creating.

00:10:23
This little owl on his island adventure. Awesome. Okay, I want to just pause it for a second. Hold on. Let me stop reading.

00:10:36
I wanted to see the other features.

00:10:38
Hit read again at the bottom.

00:10:39
Read again. Okay, so is there a way to pause it?

00:10:47
Yeah, hit the x. Okay, so you want to see what some of the other features are of immersive reader if you haven't played with them or you just need a refresher. So in the top right of this immersive reader experience, now, this is going to be universal in any immersive. So on any website that has immersive reader or in Microsoft word, there's some of these features, like what do you see?

00:11:09
So there's text preferences, which is super helpful for some of my students. It looks like there's a dark theme, which I feel like would be so good for kids with any type of visual impairment, including CBI. There's grammar options so you can toggle on different parts of speech that have color coding if you're working on helping students understand different parts of speech. And I also feel like that's just really helpful for vocabulary purposes, understanding the different kinds of words. I do a lot of work with kids with prefixes and suffixes and root words and how you can use that to kind of decode a word that you don't know.

00:11:50
So I feel like that would be a really good strategy to kind of utilize when you're teaching, it has a.

00:11:55
Show labels button, so if you're not seeing colors and those colors don't resonate with you, you can put whether it's a noun, so it'll give you a little n or a v or verb. And yeah, it's super important. Like read or the color red. Well, red is going to be an adjective and read is going to be a verb. And as you're trying to work through that, that's a clue to help you know what the word is.

00:12:17
Love it. Syllable. That's super helpful. If you have a word that you're not quite sure of, toggling on syllables to break down the word. This is a strategy that we teach kids.

00:12:31
This is great. Reading preferences. Ooh, this is really nice. The line focus. This reminds me of the little bar on Google Read and write, which is the tool that I use the most to kind of help kids track.

00:12:46
Right? It kind of grays out the top and bottom, and it hyper focuses just like a window on one line. Or in this case, you could choose a wider one, like three lines.

00:12:58
Yeah, this is great. Love it. Picture dictionary on. That's great.

00:13:07
So that reading coach is new and it says free preview. So I don't know when I say reading coach, that standalone at coach Microsoft.com is new and it says free preview. And I don't know what Microsoft's plans are for. I don't know, monetizing it or if it's going to be free forever or how they're going to continue to use it. But right now it's available.

00:13:30
So I would say go play with it. Go check it out, see what stories you can create. Show it to students, see what they think, try the different levels, and have them create stories that are personalized to them.

00:13:41
I'm really excited to use this at my therapy this week, Chris, so thank you.

00:13:45
And I'm super excited to get feedback. It seems like every time we do this, you show stuff to students, and then you send me a video and I'm like, yes. Oh, my gosh. Look, it's actually students are using it, so that's cool. I'll be looking forward to it.

00:13:59
So, Chris, what is our interview about today?

00:14:01
Well, the interview today is with someone named Caitlin Armstrong, and what she was wanting to brainstorm about was how to write a proposal to administrators about having some sort of inclusive AAC initiative. So we sort of brainstorm how to actually convince other people to embrace a more universal approach to AAC.

00:14:27
I'm so excited to listen to this interview.

00:14:38
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00:15:01
We'd so very much appreciate it. Now let's get back into the episode. Hello there. So I'd like to welcome on to talk today about, I guess we're really going to talk about all sorts of stuff is Caitlin Tenalia. Caitlin, how did I do?

00:15:25
You did great. That sounded great. Cool.

00:15:28
So, Caitlin, let's talk a little bit about who you are and what you do.

00:15:33
Sure. So I am a preschool based speech language pathologist. I graduated and earned my cs right at the beginning of the pandemic, which was not the best time to be joining the workforce. But I certainly gained some great skills because of that situation. I was kind of a nontraditional student where I finished my undergrad back in 2012.

00:16:05
Then I worked as a speech language assistant for a number of years, went back to grad school, came out of grad school, went back to working. Well, I did a very short stint in outpatient and then went back to working in schools. So, yeah, I'm in a preschool right now, and not the preschool that I started in, but I have really enjoyed that setting because I feel like I can really push in with the kids and model using AAC, which I think helps not only the children, but the staff. So it's been really awesome.

00:16:44
Awesome. And then you reached out because it sounds like you have some supportive administrative support and you have some specific questions. So I'm just going to just listen and let you kind of explain where you are and what you're thinking.

00:17:01
Sure. So I'll jump back a little bit to my first year in preschool. I was working in a title one district, so fewer resources than, say, a more affluent area. And when I started in the school, it was only my second year working as a speech pathologist. And I noticed that kind of Taylor's oldest time, lots of pecs, modified pecs that would come out around snack time and then be put away.

00:17:40
And so this was probably right around when I first started listening to your podcast, and I thought, okay, I feel like we can take what we know and do a little bit more. And so I knew that I wasn't going to get all of the iPads that I wanted just my first year, starting right out. So I scrapped a lot of the pecs, and we started doing a communication flipbook, sort of. So it was like a five x seven core board. And then I had categorical fringe words.

00:18:14
They're like two x seven strips across.

00:18:16
The top, like colors, colors that were up there, some descriptive words.

00:18:22
Exactly. And I had the Alphabet on the back. And so I started using these with a couple of kids. And then I thought, well, why don't we just make a ton of them and have them throughout the classrooms? So the preschool that I was working in had a really cool model where there was a special educator and a speech path in every classroom.

00:18:45
And we kind of co taught and worked on curriculum together. So I got my co teacher on board, and we started just modeling, using these communication books all the time. And the kids were starting to really pick up on it. And I found that we were getting a lot of non speaking kids coming in in the pandemic, and people were realizing pretty quickly, like, hey, this works. This is cool.

00:19:14
And that was without voice output, really. Right. You were being the voice output.

00:19:20
Exactly. And the fantastic para educators who were in the classroom who really quickly picked up on modeling without expectation and providing aided language input throughout the day. So then my second year in this preschool, I said, well, this is great, but let's see if we can do better. And that's when I went to my really wonderful supervisor and said, hey, I want five iPads with touch chat on them. When can you get them to, uh.

00:20:02
That was a big, like, okay, Caitlin, we like your ideas a lot, but we don't have the funding for that currently. And so at this point, I was, like, sending her your podcast episodes, and I was leaving research articles on her desk every day.

00:20:26
And it's like, I want to help. Okay, you're saying you need this. I'm not questioning that you need it. It's a matter of how do I get the funds and where do.

00:20:38
Tangent a little side tangent just around funding. In New Hampshire, our education funding formula isn't the best in our state. We actually receive the lowest state fund per pupil in the country.

00:20:59
Okay, I didn't know that. We do.

00:21:01
And New Hampshire, we don't have sales tax and we don't have income tax. So 70% of education funding comes from property taxes. So that's kind of where these inequities arise. So if you live in a town that is affluent, then you have access to quite a few more resources, and then if you live in a town that is property poor, you do not have the access to all of these resources.

00:21:33
Do you mind if I dig into that just for a second, without what I think I know? And you'd be like, no, Chris, you're way off on your New Hampshire knowledge.

00:21:42
Some.

00:21:43
I have family that lives in the northern Massachusetts area, and something that I hear from them, extended family, talk to them a handful of times a year, text messages, that sort of thing. But something I hear out of that region of the country is people sometimes leave that region of the country, and so the number of people buying homes there are not necessarily going up. So your property taxes, if that's how you're primarily funding your schools and your population is decreasing because people are leaving, then is that all fair, or am I off on my numbers?

00:22:24
You're very. We have, it's very interesting. We have a very high aging population, and a lot of younger people are leaving. A lot of teachers and educators cross the border into Massachusetts because this situation is a little bit better in terms of funding and pay in Massachusetts. But we also have a lot of people coming in from other states because we don't have the income tax and the sales tax.

00:22:56
So it's an interesting situation. We get a lot of people coming in who are buying second homes and vacation homes who might not be as vested in the education funding as people who have young children in the area.

00:23:11
Okay, so all of that to say, funding is an issue.

00:23:15
Funding is an issue. And that's why I think that this model would be really fantastic for a lot of districts in New Hampshire because it kind of minimizes, helps eliminate these inequities that we see from district to district when it comes to access for assistive technology.

00:23:35
You mean the specific language system first approach?

00:23:37
That is exactly what I'm talking about.

00:23:40
Let me ask some other clarifying questions. You said that the para educators sort of are just wonderful, and they kind of picked up on it. Would it be fair to say that you did some sort of. Let me teach you about this experience where you probably did, I'm guessing you may have done some training, and then they picked up on, as opposed to, oh, caitlin comes in and does something, and I watch them. And then by osmosis, I learned it.

00:24:07
Is that so?

00:24:08
I didn't do a lot of whole group trainings. It was more one on one with Perez and showing them how to model while I was working with students. I was lucky in my last preschool in that I was in the classroom with these educators and students all day long. And so a lot of education happened kind of more on the fly. I realize now that I think some good trainings would have been helpful, but, yeah, a lot of it was more in person, working one on one with staff and students.

00:24:49
Let me just make sure I heard you correctly. So because you're in there more frequently, it wasn't like some people might have an image of, like, the speech therapist comes in 30 to 60 minutes a week in little chunks and does something magical and then leaves. It sounds like you're a 50 50 partner with the teacher in that room. And so because you're spending more minutes in that room, they can see you doing that magic, and then you can say, see how? Here's how I'm doing the card trick, right?

00:25:21
I'm seeing the ace is up my sleeve, right. So now you can try and put the ace up your sleeve. Is that the idea?

00:25:27
It was a really lovely model. So when I have a new baby, so I unfortunately am no longer in that preschool, we ended up moving further away from the district. I did just learn that they were able to get funding for these iPads within the classrooms, and I know that they're well supported right now. The district decided to contract an AAC specialist who's spending quite a bit of time at the preschool who's been on board with everything. And I've been in quite frequent communication with my old supervisor and saying like, what do you need?

00:26:09
I'll come help you. Even though I don't work for your district anymore, I will come in and help this. Yeah, you're invested because I'm invested. So now I'm in a new preschool, slightly different model. There's two classrooms.

00:26:24
I have a really wonderful speech language assistant, and then there's myself. And I'm working part time. And so I can I just let.

00:26:36
Me ask, let me just ask one quick clarifying question there too, because different parts of the country as they're listening to this may well, is it all in the same district or not? But if I understand my New Hampshire correctly, it's small townships that each have their own school district as opposed to where I am, where it's 90 to 100 schools, all within, on county, it's individual townships. Is that fair?

00:27:00
Yes, individual townships. I'm in a collaborative district now, so I'm going to get this wrong. There's, I believe, six different towns that each have their own district. That's preschool through fifth grade, and then they all go to converge and go to the same middle school and then the same high school. But I work for my own small little district in a little cohort of other little districts.

00:27:29
And my new district is quite a bit more. There is certainly more funds available for things like assistive technology and assessments and whatnot, because taxes are much higher in this new town. Okay.

00:27:53
They have a little bit more money that you could maybe tap into. Can I ask one last question before we get into. I want to thinking about your old preschool. You had said you went to your supervisor and said, I need five iPads with touch chat. Is that fair?

00:28:07
So let me ask, why five? Were you thinking? One for me, one for the teacher, one for each of the paraprofessionals or just this is what I think we can afford, or there was five kids and I was thinking one to one for each of those kids. How did you come up with the number five?

00:28:22
Sure. The number five came from. This is what I think that maybe I can get away with. Maybe that I'll get some support on. And the why touch chat, that was what most of the educators were most familiar with.

00:28:42
That's what I was most comfortable with. I know that now that a lot more could have gone into that decision, and I think it could have been more of a team based decision, but it was kind of a, hey, I just need some help give you these things.

00:28:57
Totally. I had no judgment about how you made the decision.

00:29:00
These classrooms have. Each classroom has an iPad, and they have the large poster sized boards in the classroom. And so they're really off to a great start with us. And I'm super excited, even though I'm not there anymore, I'm very invested and excited.

00:29:16
Well, you said that the kids in the room were making progress with language in an exciting way, not in a fake or forced way. So clearly, those decisions of some sort of robust system, that it was well supported is working. So I think you have nothing to look back at and go, I mean, of course, look back and reflectively. What would I do differently? Maybe I could have made it more collaborative.

00:29:40
Sure. And use that moving forward. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the way you did it, because it's working.

00:29:45
It was working. It was working. I think part of that touch chat decision also came from. There was one student who came into the district that I started modeling on my personal device, touch chat. And so a lot of educators were seeing me model that specific system, and that's kind of where we went.

00:30:05
Yeah. All right, so now in the new system that has a little bit more money because the property taxes are a little bit, or there's just more property taxes, more resources. More resources. Where are we now?

00:30:18
So I said, let's do this all again. And I had kind of an impromptu, informal conversation with my new supervisor, who's super, super forward thinking. I mean, the preschool that I'm at now had playground communication boards and adaptive swings. And so she's definitely of the mindset that AAC is good and AAC is helpful. So, thankfully, coming into this conversation, I knew that, and I said, hey, this is something I started in my last district.

00:30:53
I would love to do something similar here if we can swing it. And she said, sure, write up a proposal. And I said, oh, yeah, I'm on it. And then I thought about it, and I haven't done that. Last time, I just bombarded my boss with your podcast episodes, and he was like, sure.

00:31:14
So now I need to do something a little bit more formal. And I thought that you would probably be a very good person to reach out to for support with that.

00:31:26
So let's understand why the supervisor is asking for the proposal in kind of a written up form. Do you feel like that supervisor is going to have to justify the decision with other supervisors or a board of supervisors, a school board of some sort? Is there something that they need to point to, or do they just need to understand it better? What do you think is the driving force for why they ask for it in a written format? Sure.

00:31:54
I proposed the specific language system first approach within an MTSS framework because that is what the district currently, they're currently utilizing that right now. And so I think there is a kind of broad understanding of what I'm asking for, but I think a little bit more explanation and I think some justification, too. I am quite sure that this is just kind of an initial proposal. Hey, here's this idea. Here's why I think we should give it a go, but I think that there would likely be something more in depth to follow.

00:32:33
Got you. So just kind of a one pager outline of. Here's the snapshot idea. What else do you need me to provide beyond that, but with the idea that there could be a whole much deeper proposal with budget s and spreadsheets and you and I had emailed about this a little bit, but just to bring everyone else who's listening or watching or whatever into the fold, that those are things, a greater outline of the whole thing might be a phase two of this. Phase one is just proof of concept.

00:33:06
Yes. Go with it. And is part of the proposal a position at all, or is it. No, you're a speech therapist and this is it, or no, I'm looking for a position that does something like this. Is it literally just a proposal for the hardware?

00:33:31
I think right now it's a proposal for the hardware and adopting kind of a more AAC inclusive environment within the school. Believe me, I would love to have a job where I am facilitating these sorts of things throughout the district. But I think right now I'm on a one year contract hoping to be renewed. So this is kind of my starting point.

00:34:04
Got you. Okay. Since this is sort of a small school district. Right. What are our numbers?

00:34:13
We're talking. Did you say you're currently in two preschool, different two.

00:34:17
I'm in one preschool that has two classrooms. Okay. And then there's a k through two elementary school, and then three through five elementary school within our district.

00:34:31
Okay. So you serve all of them?

00:34:33
No, right now I'm solely in the preschool at the moment.

00:34:37
Got you. So there's other speech therapists providing support in those. Okay. And so let me just ask that real quick before we get into what the write up might look like for a proposal. Are they on board with robust language?

00:34:51
Because what's going to happen, why I asked this is if you think of yourself as one third of a team or one quarter of a team of people, they're going to adopt these kids, you know what I mean? Like kids are going to get older and they're going to leave. What's Caitlin doing down there with this? This is a waste.

00:35:13
So I have had conversations with the k through two speech language pathologists because I just wanted to get a sense for right now, I don't have any AAC users at the preschool. I have students that I am vying to be evaluated right now. The district is using more of an expert model. So I have students that I have put forth for the waitlist, but I don't have any users currently. I spoke with the K twelve slps and they have five users, four of which are using touch chat.

00:35:54
One is using lamp. And then I'm not sure about the numbers at the other elementary school with the upper grades yet. It's on my to do list, my fact finding.

00:36:06
Okay. And again, you feel like those speech therapists are allies in this notion.

00:36:11
Yes, I do. From the conversations that I had with them, they seemed really supportive. I wanted to get a sense for what is the comfortability with AAC in the school. And I think that people are feeling pretty uncomfortable with it. They've had a couple, like one or two time trainings, but generally that's the biggest area I think that would need to be developed is building capacity within teachers and other educators.

00:36:48
But they did seem on board, which was great, right?

00:36:51
They weren't opposed to it. They were open to the notion. And you got some skills here. You already did it in another place, right? Yeah.

00:37:01
Okay, awesome. Well, first I just want to say, I bet you there's people listening that are going to be going, wow, I'm so envious of the position that you're in because I wish I had supportive educators and that I was being asked to write a proposal. So let's talk about what this proposal could look like. So the first thing that jumps to my mind is some sort of mission statement at the beginning around robust language and who it's for and sort of what we believe in. Right.

00:37:30
So I think that's the start. And does that sound fair?

00:37:33
I think that totally sounds fair.

00:37:35
Yeah. And then underneath that, once we have this sort of mission statement about what we as the school district believe, and then the administrator would read that and be like, okay, yeah, I'm on board with that. Let's do that. I don't have any objections to that belief. Well, now it just becomes, how do we provide those opportunities that we've outlined in that mission statement.

00:38:00
So I think what you're looking for is, I like to think of it as a four prong approach. Okay. So the first prong being mindset. These teachers are already open to it. So what needs to change?

00:38:17
What do we need to adopt? And that is the idea that everyone can learn language, right. And if we give them enough time and the right tools, they can learn it faster and they can learn it easier. Right. So I think that's, number one is mindset, number two is the training.

00:38:38
Okay, I'm on board. Yeah. Kids are going to learn language. Who's going to teach them? I am.

00:38:41
I don't know how to do that. Okay, I'll show you how to do that. Here's some training materials. What I heard you say you did at your last preschool was not anything formal, like come to this place or pull you out of the classrooms or get subs. It was on the fly.

00:38:55
Let me show you a little conversations here. But because you had the time in the current preschool, do you still have that same amount of time or is it more like that other model? Like. No, because I'm covering two rooms, I am less time in each room. How does that look?

00:39:09
I would definitely say that that's the case. Right now. I am only providing services two days a week, and then I work another half day doing meetings and evaluations. So I definitely have less visibility in the classrooms compared to my previous position. Okay.

00:39:29
Just to be so, I think more.

00:39:31
Formal training would likely need to occur. Okay.

00:39:34
In that sense, that's fair. And I think that's typically how it works. Actually, based on all the conversations I've had with educators like you everywhere. Yeah, we need to do something formal because they don't have those minutes like you described in your first talking when you said, yeah, I do evaluations and meetings. It's not all AAC.

00:39:56
You're a speech therapist, so you're doing the whole thing, all the speech stuff.

00:40:00
Lots of things.

00:40:02
Okay. So that would be the question. The next would be what would that training look like? So if component one is mindset and component two is training, what could that training look like? And I would outline that in a sentence or two, one full day, two half days, because that gives the administrator.

00:40:19
Okay, so I'm going to need subs or we're going to need some sort of rotation model where they're going to be in there, but it's going to be a slower ratio because they're going to be pulled out. Thinking through what that training looks like, and being very explicit that training is, I'm going to share knowledge with you. Like, I'm going to give you stuff. It can be fun and interactive. It's not just know, show up and Caitlin lectures to you for 3 hours, right?

00:40:41
No, it's not like that. But the whole point is I'm giving you information, right? Exactly what we've done in our neck of the woods. And this would be this third component, which would be coaching. Now, you know what to do.

00:40:55
I've given you this information, what to do, and I think you've been listening to the podcast, so you might know what I'm talking about here is that now it's like just what you were doing in your previous preschool is, okay, watch me for a little while. See how I did this card trick. Now you do the card trick, and I'll give you that. And I think breaking it out like that is, oh, okay. So now I know Caitlin, or whoever follows behind Caitlin, will be providing some of their minutes helping other people learn how to do this, not by telling them what to do, but by asking reflective questions.

00:41:27
We can dig in deeper about what the coaching could look like. But right now, I think for the proposal, it's just that training is a separate thing than coaching because your supervisor is probably not thinking of those things as separate entities.

00:41:41
That makes sense.

00:41:42
And then I said there was a four pronged approach. The fourth part, which I think is what you're keyed in on, is the tools. Okay, so I want them to learn to ride a bike. They need a bike. I want them to learn a magic trick.

00:41:54
They need these cards. I need them to learn language using AAC. They need the AAC. And if I heard you correctly, what landed last time and what worked last time to a limited capacity was some sort of low tech version. Now you're realizing I necessarily have to start with low tech.

00:42:13
I could use the high tech. And so I feel like that could be a two pronged thing. That. Here's the proposal for the high tech, accompanied with the paper based. That goes with that.

00:42:27
So let me just stop there. And how do those four buckets, or components, you can kind of see them. I kind of see them in the proposal as maybe quadrants, like a visual as opposed to heading, but it could be as simple as a heading with text underneath. I don't know your canvas skills, but.

00:42:46
You know what I mean?

00:42:47
Like, if you're graphic organizing, kind of like, you could make it look like, you know what I mean?

00:42:53
Absolutely. No, I think that all sounds really good. In terms of mission statement, I think about, you did an episode recently, and I might be wrong about which one it was. I think it might have been with Mackenzie and Danny where they talked about, and Kendra where they talked about aligning kind of your goals with the district's I or the school's goals. And so I spent quite a bit of time combing the school website.

00:43:29
What is their mission? And they have this really strong push for more education around DeIj and student and staff health and wellness and meaningful assessment. So I feel like this all kind of, I can very easily make the rationale that, like, hey, my goals really fit with your goals right now. If we want to make education more equitable, we need to make sure that all of our students have the tools to be able to participate in education. So I think that all of that works really well.

00:44:08
And then mindset, I think most educators in my district are of that mindset. I mean, UDL is a huge component of learning in my district. We meet about and talk about universal design frequently. So again, I feel like that all fits in really well. I am sure that there are likely some educators who are not as comfortable and familiar, which is going to be the case probably wherever you go.

00:44:45
But I think that mindset is certainly a place that I won't have to.

00:44:50
Do too much shaping.

00:44:53
Yes, too much shaping. Yeah.

00:44:56
In keeping it tight. In your proposal, an administrator I was working with during the pandemic was we were formulating our messaging to the community and to teachers. That was a word that he used. He was like, we're going to keep our messaging tight. And I just love that.

00:45:10
I was like, yes, exactly. So when I say mindset, what I really mean is around the end game of language, because that is where I might have this very inclusive mindset. Yes. Everyone's in here, but what do I do with language is someday these kids move on. What does the graduation look like?

00:45:30
So just in a tight phrase might be to eventually say whatever you want to say, wherever you want to say it to whoever you want to say it, something along those lines. So it's like, it's not just like getting your wants and needs met. So that might be helpful in the picture for this. Again, not knowing who the supervisor is and to be. Oh, okay, language.

00:45:56
Yes. I'm trying to be inclusive. I want everyone to be involved. But the end game for language, now I have even a clearer picture of it.

00:46:02
Exactly. Cool. Sorry, go ahead.

00:46:07
Well, so the next part is where it gets a little bit fuzzy because you're probably halfway through your one sheet paper, right? You have your mission statement. You have this awesome graphic in the middle, or these short little paragraphs or a couple of sentences with bullet points. And then what's the actual ask underneath, right. And so I think one of the things you'll have to explain is what the tools are for.

00:46:32
So let's talk through that with the number of students you have. Like you said, you don't currently have any ace users because they're on a waiting list. And so what does that waiting list look like? What I mean is, so you have probably some outside provider, or is it you that is like, doing the evaluation?

00:46:51
The district contracts with an outside company.

00:46:53
So they're having someone come in and doing an evaluation. Right there. There's a money saver. Right. That brings me to if they were not so much about saving money, is that if they were to move to provide these iPads that you're thinking, what would the numbers look like?

00:47:22
Are you providing them? Are you thinking, well, this is what we directly give to kids, or is it, we would give these to the teachers, and then the kids could use them. And then we have even more evidence when so and so comes in to do their evaluation, which is a whole nother model we could be thinking about, right? As opposed to doing the sort of bring someone in, I think, more collaborative way that we could, I guess someone could come in and make it collaborative, but that's not typically. My experience is someone comes in from the outside, writes up a report and provides it, maybe does some interviews.

00:47:57
But there's another way of sort of all the educators getting together and discussing the needs. So are you thinking the iPads are. I want the iPads, Chris, to give them directly to the kids, or I want the iPads, Chris, to give them directly to the teachers or start with the teachers and eventually the kids. Where is all that fitting with you?

00:48:16
Well, in my ideal world, it would know we have this as a tool. So if we see someone come in who is maybe minimally speaking or non speaking, we can say, hey, why don't we jump in and just start trying it and modeling it and using it and see if it works? And at the same time, we are modeling to the whole class so that AAC becomes a bit more ingrained into the classroom culture and the school culture, so that we're bringing other kids into it and showing them, hey, some kids talk with their hands, some kids talk with their voice, some kids talk with technology, really making it more inclusive. So I think being able to one speed up the process and just hit the ground running and expose kids to this right away. But also to be doing kind of a whole classroom modeling at the same time, if that makes sense.

00:49:24
Yes. Then I think that coaching piece is going to be huge because that's how you get those other educators doing it when you're not there is they feel more secure in doing that. All right, so the tools then to me are for the educators right now with the idea that, because that's how you build the culture. Right. I have it.

00:49:46
This is my thing. This is the tool that I use. And when I'm sitting next to any kid, whether I'm thinking they need it or not, I'm going to be modeling language. It's going to help the kids that absolutely need it, and it's certainly not going to hurt the kids that, you know, what they probably don't need. And if, I don't know, I want to lean on the side that they do.

00:50:03
It's going to help everybody learn language. Right?

00:50:05
Exactly.

00:50:06
Yeah. So does that sound right? Like, could you start with in year one? I want to build in time for coaching, for training. So I'm thinking probably some subs and then some of my time is coaching.

00:50:21
So they're going to need that doesn't take a lot of time outside of the classroom. It's in the classroom doing the work. But I do need a few minutes to reflect with them after each coaching session so they can build the skill of modeling and then think through some explicit instruction and then meaning, okay, how are we organizer instruction around language and embedding language? Right. And then the tools I need are to give each of the educators in that room a device with some more.

00:50:52
Let's plan for breakage. Let's plan for. Some kids are going to need them because I feel it one of these educators will be like, well, this kid needed it all the time, so I just let them use it. And I never really adopted it all with those paper based supports. Right.

00:51:11
I don't know how tight it is. It sounds like they have a little bit of fun. So maybe printing out core boards and making big posters. If you're talking about touch chat, you've got chat editor that we can bring up on the interactive whiteboards. That's a pretty limited expense, do you know what I mean?

00:51:28
And chat editor is free to these.

00:51:31
Individual evaluations that are taking place throughout the year, I would think. Certainly. And I think cost is always going to be a big factor with a proposal. Yeah, certainly brings down cost.

00:51:45
I'm not clear at this point if I feel like you need to include, like a cost breakdown or make a comparison yet. That might be phase two. But just here's the ask for year one. Maybe at the end, a little bit of a. I have a multi year plan.

00:52:02
Like by year three. This is where I'd like to see it to go. An invitation to elaborate on this proposal. But do you feel like that gives you some sort of a framework to start with, that you could come up with a cool one sheet that sort of explains it? I would consider.

00:52:22
Again, I'm not knowing who your supervisors, if they geek out on this stuff. Like, since you said, I like to call it the Shawshank approach in your past. So are you familiar with the Shawshank redemption, that movie?

00:52:35
I am, but I'm not sure about the approach you're speaking of.

00:52:38
Yeah, how did he get the library in that movie? He just kept asking. Right, so that's what you did with your supervisor in your, like, every day. There was a new podcast episode, there was a new article, there was a new Instagram thing. Right.

00:52:51
You just kept.

00:52:51
Okay, yeah.

00:52:54
Right. So I feel like that's something that could happen here as well. Embedding a QR code to learn more, and it takes it to a podcast episode. Or when you're talking about coaching and it's like, coaching on what? Well, really modeling, mostly modeling.

00:53:07
There's other stuff. It's not just modeling. We're not going to get there just with modeling. But here's a link to a YouTube video that explains what modeling is. Oh, okay.

00:53:17
Especially if your supervisor kind of geeks out. I'm like, oh, a QR code. You know what I mean? Definitely making it very 2023 ish. 2024 ish friendly.

00:53:26
Could be. It adds a multimodal, especially if they're UDL. It's like a piece of paper, you know what I mean? It's like, okay, what do we got here? So I feel like that is probably a way to start.

00:53:39
How do you feel? What do you feel like your next steps are? Do you feel like that's the right direction for you?

00:53:44
I feel like this all sounds really great, and it seems like a really kind of foolproof way to kind of make my case. I think that my district will likely say, okay, where is the evidence? In which case I can say, well, we have lots of research around UDL. We have lots of research around MTSs and RTI. We have lots of research around AAC in general.

00:54:12
So I think sprinkling some of that in there will also help my cause. But yeah, I think it all sounds really good.

00:54:23
I mean, if you're talking about one sheet, you've got two sides, so you could have the most technical information on the back. And that's where I think those QR codes could come in for the multimodal approach of showing the research. And chances are, though, I would be willing to bet that they would trust you. Do you know what I mean? Like, okay, Caitlin thinks this is a good thing.

00:54:48
Yes. I need some research to back it up, because if I do have to sell this up the chain and somebody have questions, and I am a little concerned that maybe AAC steals kids speech. Okay, let me show you the research. That's just the opposite, right. So I think a little bit of that, but I think it'd be a mistake to go too heavy with that.

00:55:05
It's all that stuff to have in your back pocket if you need it. But I think it's more about, we know this is good for kids. This is the know that I've thought out that it's not just throwing tools in there, but there's support behind those tools. And here's the plan. We're going to do training, coaching and tools.

00:55:23
Awesome.

00:55:24
Okay, that all makes quite a bit of sense.

00:55:27
Any other thoughts? Any other questions? Anything?

00:55:32
My last thought, I am just about finished with your course.

00:55:38
Oh, thank you.

00:55:39
Thank you for taking really fantastic and wonderful. And I feel like it kind of set me up to have all of that stuff in my back pocket if I need it, with research and rationale and all of that.

00:55:54
Right. Intentionally so. I started the course with all of the, because what I hear with the specific language system first approach is, well, it's not research based. Yes, it is. It absolutely is.

00:56:06
And I don't even, research is one component of it, but it's certainly evidence based. I know AAC users, Chris Klein is a friend of mine who just did a major talk for talking AAC, where he referenced how this is the future of AAC is this approach. So we have AAC users saying to use it as one example. He's not the only, we certainly have all the research behind it from a, we need modeling, we need to decor words, we need to embed it into job embedded coaching. So I'm glad you took it.

00:56:40
I'm glad that those slides and that research and all the references can help you. Absolutely. And make it a lot faster for you to just put it all together.

00:56:51
I very much appreciate your use of memes throughout the course.

00:56:59
Yeah, I never want it to be boring. Thank you. I appreciate that. Something else I'm going to say. Oh, I know.

00:57:09
I have one last little piece of advice for you. Sure. That is, I don't know how you feel about this, but I know if I was faced with this task right now in 2023, 2024, I would totally be leaning into barred chat GPT I'd be looking at AI to be like, all right, here are my thoughts on. I don't necessarily have to write it out in paragraph form. Here are my thoughts about blah, blah blah.

00:57:32
Please write this paragraph for me and then edit it and compare it.

00:57:36
That's a really great idea.

00:57:38
I think that could be a big jump start for you and save you a lot of time.

00:57:43
My district, they did a presentation on AI recently, so they're leaning into it. And I actually shared the consensus app with them that I learned about from you, which they were excited to hear about. And so it's nice to know that all the technology is being embraced and will hopefully make things more accessible for our students.

00:58:08
For sure. There's so much opportunity embedded in those tools as long as, like you said, embrace them. I'm so. Oh, man, you are in a really good spot. Yeah, I'm sure people are going to be listening or watching, going, should we move to New Hampshire?

00:58:24
I hear Lakewinda Pasagi is nice this time of year.

00:58:29
I'm in a good spot for awesome.

00:58:31
Awesome. All right, well, listen, this doesn't need to be the end as you work through this or you come up with a proposal. If you want to run it by me and be like, all right, thoughts? Tweak it here. Don't say that or say it this way.

00:58:42
Always happy to be a support because I just want to see you win here. I want to see the kids win and I'm just super excited for you. I think it's going to be awesome. Thank you.

00:58:51
Thank you. I really appreciate your help, Chris.

00:58:53
You're welcome. Bye bye now.

00:58:54
Bye bye.

00:58:55
Good luck with that baby.

00:58:57
Thank you.