Episode 334: Kristen Hughes & Amy Kennedy: Building a Collaborative AAC Framework in Schools to Streamline Selection, Support, and Success

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Kristen Hughes and Amy Kennedy! Kristen and Amy both work for Baldwin County Public Schools; Kristen as a speech-language pathologist and Amy as a special education resource consultant. Kristen is also a parent of a six-year-old son who uses AAC. Kristen is transitioning into a new role as an AAC specialist within her school district, and she wanted to ask Chris more about the Specific Language System First approach, leveraging collaboration, refining selection processes, and supporting educators with resources and training.

Before the interview, Chris shares experiences from a recent classroom lesson that unexpectedly turned into a broader discussion about fostering AAC culture for a whole school!

Key ideas this week:

🔑 Collaborative Decision-Making for AAC Selection: Kristen and Amy, along with Chris, emphasize a structured, team-based approach to selecting AAC tools. Instead of relying solely on a single expert’s choice, they suggest involving a full team—including teachers, parents, and relevant therapists—to determine the best AAC solution for each student. This approach helps foster shared ownership of the decision, ensuring consistent implementation and increased buy-in from all parties.

🔑 Efficient AAC Implementation Process: The team explores the idea of moving away from lengthy “trial” periods in favor of setting up a solid decision-making framework that defines criteria for selecting AAC tools based on specific student needs. By doing this, they aim to streamline the AAC selection and implementation process, helping reduce delays and allowing students to start benefiting from the tools more quickly.

🔑 Increased Support and Training for Educators: Recognizing time and comfort with AAC as barriers, they discuss the importance of training and support for teachers. Implementing consistent resources, like core boards and training on specific AAC tools, would empower teachers to integrate these tools more naturally in the classroom, reducing abandonment and ensuring AAC devices are used effectively.

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 Rachel Madel
Welcome to Talking With Tech. I'm your host, Rachel Madle, joined as always by Chris Bugaj. Hey, Chris.

00:00:13 Chris Bugaj
Hey, Rachel. How's it going? Good.

00:00:15 Rachel Madel
What you got for me this week?

00:00:17 Chris Bugaj
Well, if people have followed me on my social media stuff, they'll have seen that I am back from London and Paris, France. Um, people know that on the. If you've been listening to the podcast for the last couple episodes, that I was invited to go to a conference there, the Communication Matters conference, which was awesome. Rachel, we missed you completely. So many people were like, give Rachel hugs. And we love the podcast and it was just, it was awesome. And there's going to be tons of content coming around that conference. There's certainly interviews that I've lined up. I talked to a bunch of people to come and be on the podcast and talk about, talk about different strategies and techniques and different things. You know, there was just so many connections that were made myself. There's certain sessions that I went to that I would love to share with you and brainstorm back and forth and just, you know, unpack a little bit and, you know, you know, just as we do. Right. I just, you know, how we come back from ETIA or something like that and sort of unpack the conference, that sort of same thing. But, but that's not today, Rachel. Today I have something completely different to talk about. So I'm just teasing that that's coming. So here's what happened earlier this week. So I get back from London and Paris and of course I have missed a week of work. So that Monday is, you know, catching up on all the emails and stuff like that. One of my colleagues, Joyce, calls me up and says, chris, I'm sick and I have this thing lined up on Thursday and I was going to ask one of the other team members, but I just know you love doing this and I know you're probably scrambling because you're back, but I just know you would love to do this. Can you help me out? Because I'm afraid I might have to cancel this thing that I have to do on Thursday. Unless you could say you could be my backup and come. And so I was like, what is it, Joyce? She's like, well, and this thing we've done before, I've talked about it on the podcast before, but it was with a new speech therapist. To me, like we hadn't met before, the speech therapist was running a. A short session, maybe 30 to 45 minutes in a first grade classroom for all the kids bringing communication devices and talking about what it means to be a good communication partner, how to find words, how to model. We talked to the teacher about, you know, that kind of stuff. They're going to do that sort of. That sort of experience. And she's like, so would you want to do that? And I was like, yes, yes. You know, because, you know, people have heard me say this on the podcast and, you know, this, too, that, you know, once upon a time, the knees on my. On my khakis used to get worn out from playing on the floor with kids. And that happens less frequently now as I've, you know, in an administrative role. I'm in meetings talking about how our school district is wrestling with generative AI with other administrators and how we're going to design systems and meeting with, you know, in meetings, more than crawling on the floor with first graders playing, like, I. Like, I love. Right? So I was like, yes. And that's. And my entire team knows that, right? And knows that I miss it. So every time there's an opportunity where I get to flex a muscle or they see that for me, they're like, chris, we're doing this thing. Can you come? Would you like to come? And I was like, yes, thank you. So this was one of those opportunities. And I was like, yes. And that was today. So I, this morning drove to the school and get to the school, walk in. Like I said, I hadn't really met the speech therapist. We just did some exchanges. And it turns out my colleague got better enough that she could come, but she was still like, I don't feel like I'm not sick or contagious, but I don't feel like up to leading a lesson right now if I have someone else that can do it. And Chris, the speech therapist meant to do it. So I get in, and I walk in, and the dean of this particular school comes up to me, and she says, chris, do you remember me? I was like, no, I don't. I mean, I know we've met and seen each other, and I know we've emailed. She's like, yeah, but do you remember me from back in the day? I'm like, help me, help me. She's like, you were my child's speech therapist back when? Back when, you know, a number of years ago. Right. And. And so she's like. I'm like, well, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. Like, so tell me. She started describing her child, which I remembered, but I don't remember the parent you have one or two interactions with at IEP meetings. And anyway, I just Said, so how is she doing? Oh, she's married and she's got kids and she's loving it. And I'm like, yeah, but how's your speech? And she's like, no, she's great. I'm like, great, it worked. Job done, right? It was so fun and it's so great because we've talked about this on the podcast too, so many times. We don't find out what happens. The fruits of our labor, do you know what I mean? Like, we see little progress in the progress notes and we think things are getting better or the data shows that we're getting better, but that long term outcome sometimes is lost on us. And, you know, there's certainly, you know, now with social media and that, that is a little bit, we see those a little bit more frequently, the fruits of our labor. But it was so great to hear from a parent that, that it was a good experience, that it was, everything worked the way it was meant to work and that the student was, you know, communicating everything she wanted to say, how she wanted to say. It wasn't an AAC user, but still, you know, so then that was a great little moment. And then came in and we were brainstorming with the speech therapist before going in, like, what's the lesson going to be like? Like, how do we want to do this? And unbeknownst to me, and actually unbeknownst to the speech therapist, word had spread that we were doing this around the school. And so the assistant principal showed up and an occupational therapist showed up and the dean that I was just talking about stayed. And suddenly we were having this sort of impromptu meeting, not really about what we were going to do in this first grade classroom, but a larger scale, like, what can we do in the entire school? Like, how can we build a culture around aac? And you know, what kind of parent interactions can we have to help parents learn from each other and have experiences that are positive? And it was just, you know, what can we do to get more people in the school involved and how can we spread this and trade information with other schools? And it just turned into this great brainstorming session, which is again, very, very awesome thing. And then the way that sort of ended up was the speech. The speech therapist said, well, okay, so I've only been working here a couple of years and yes, I've been doing aac. I'm getting better and better at it, but I would love it. I'm not sure I feel confident running this lesson with the first grade kids. I would Be more confident if you let it. And then the next one we do, I lead it. And I was like, okay, so I got to lead this lesson where I'm, you know, I'm on the ground surrounded by first grade students with a first grade teacher who was so engaged, so into it. The principal came down and sat in the lesson, and everyone was engaging with him, and the teachers were engaging with him, and the students were engaging. And we just did like a little scavenger hunt finding words. And we talked about which words do you think are you used more frequently. Do you think you say the word pizza more frequently? Or do you think you say the word eat more frequently? And when we talked about that, and of course, the kids were all over the map, like, pizza, Pizza. And I was like. And then the first grade teacher was like, I don't think so, guys. And she's like, the way we did it was, put your hand on your head if you think it's pizza. Put your hands on your hips if you think it's. If you think it's eat. And you know, it's like, all right, everybody turn around. And there's the principal and there's the first grade teacher, and there's the assistants, all with their hands on their hips, showing them, like, it's eat. That is more frequent. So long story short, it was just this great experience getting to work with kids, laughing with kids, finding words. Okay, don't tell one little girl, right, sorry. Cracking up. This one little girl comes up to me. She turns the iPad to me, and she has spelled out. Because we talked. We had talked about how not all the words are on here. There's only so many words on here. What would you do? And they're like, we have to learn spelling. I'm like, right, that's why your teacher's teaching how to spell in first grade, and that's why you're learning how to do it. Little girl turns the iPad to me, and she had typed in P, O, O, P. She just this. This cute little, like, coy smile, like, look what I did, right? And I was like, yeah. And then I had to, like, I smiled and laughed inside for a second. I was like, okay, I got it. I got it. I got to say I got it. Yes. I go, that's so funny. But also, you know, would we say that with our friends? No, we probably wouldn't say that, right? So should we say it on here? And she's like, no. And then it's like, so teaching moment. But, you know, I'm like, oh, that's such a shareable moment on the podcast. And it's so awesome, right? That's what kids want to do. They want to type in poop on the thing and play with it. You know what I mean? Not play with poop, but play with the language and the words and make people laugh and do fun stuff. And that's exactly what this experience was. It was just really great, you know, it was a great. It was great to get to flex that muscle. And then we left that. I talked to the first grade teacher for a little bit and it was like, I guess towards the end of this thing, we pulled up. This was an app that you could have on the interactive whiteboard as well, and we could model on the interactive whiteboard. So I called up a student and said, I started to read a little book. And I was like, look, in this book, the word love is used over and over and over. Like, Chrysanthemum loved to sleep, she loved to eat, she loved to drink, whatever it was, right? But love was repeated over and over again. And I said, so I pulled up this little girl and I asked her to. When every time I say love, you find it on the board. And then, of course, you know, she found it multiple times. And I turned to the teachers, like, this could be every time you do a reading. You know, this could be every time you do a small group reading. It could be every time you do a whole group reading. Like, this is what could happen. Like, and I literally asked. I was like, because, you know, we say this in our presentations and I know other teachers have done it. It's like, do you have classroom jobs? She's like, of course I do. You know, light switcher, line leader, that kind of stuff. Like, this could be the modeler of the day. She's like, done, done. I'm doing that. I was like, great. So really receptive, really excited. Really had fun finding the words. And she's. The teacher's like, can I take one of these home and use it over the weekend? Was like, yeah, go ahead. She was like, and then bring it back, right? She's like, I'm going to play with my husband. Like, bring me wine. And so she was having this great experience. Like, yeah, that's what you need to do. Just go play with it. Have fun with it. Don't be scared with it. Ask some questions. Why did they put it here? Why is this thing yellow? Why do these cells have yellow backgrounds? I'm not going to tell you why they have yellow backgrounds. See if you can figure out what's in common with those and then come back, the other people. When you come back, your speech therapist will know the answer. The assistive technology person, Joyce, who I mentioned, will know the answer if you get stuck. But, you know, know that the people that put these things together knew what they were doing and that things were there for a reason and just have fun with it. And she was all in. And then, just to wrap this story up, then we went down to a preschool classroom that is an inclusive preschool classroom. So there's students with disabilities, but there's students who do not have disabilities that are integrated together into this inclusive preschool setting. And we did that same sort of experience with them. But just like the speech therap said, okay, let me see you do it, and then I'll do it. She took the lead this time, and I took the back seat. And she was like, at the end, we had all the kids, one after the other, giving commands to me. And then I would act out the commands. Like, we showed them where some of the verbs were. It's like, all right, tell Mr. B to sleep, and then sleep. And then I'd fall asleep and tell Mr. B to go. And then I'd get up and run around the room, and, you know, it was just a blast. I could talk about it all day, and I just. I'll think about it for months. I told him on the walkout. You know, I was like, this didn't make my week. This made my month. Because I don't get to do. I don't get to flex that muscle. I know I said that before, but I just so enjoy getting to do it. I'm sure you can hear the exuberance in my voice from getting to get to play and interact with kids and be with such awesome educators that were so invested. Like I said, the principal was there. I also got to see him on the way out, and I was like, so what'd you think? He was like, awesome. That was so awesome. I learned so much. He was goofing around with the other. Putting in words and goofing around with the other staff. And I said, if you thought that was an awesome experience, then I want to invite you to do me a favor. I said, the next time you're at a principals meeting and, you know, you go and sit down, you hobnob with your principal friends before the meeting starts or whatever, and they go, hey, what's going on in your school? Share this. Share this awesome thing, right? There'll be the temptation to Kind of complain about something or share something that's happening with test scores or something like that. It's like, share this so that they get. It continues to infect other people. And they go, well, oh, we want that at our school. Yeah. We got kids that use those devices. Oh, they could be in. Yeah, we got a second grader. What if they did that in our second grade? Like, it will spread if you start sharing some awesomeness. You know, share those moments of awesome with everybody. So I know I'm rambling. Sorry, Rachel, I'm not even giving you a chance to respond to it, but I was just really excited and couldn't wait to share with it because I knew I was going to talk to you later in the day. And I was like, I can't wait to tell Rachel all about this.

00:14:28 Rachel Madel
Oh, I love it, Chris. You're so excited. I can just feel the enthusiasm and the passion, and I totally can resonate with that. And I was so funny. You're talking about this experience. Yesterday, I was on a call where one of my clients was having an AAC training for their team, and so I was invited to go. And it was completely the opposite of what you just explained. It was, like, kind of boring, kind of basic, not super, like, engaging. And as you were sharing your experience, I was thinking, like, you know, the beginning of the school year, this is when everyone's doing all the training, right? It's when everyone's going into the classrooms or having special meetings outside of, you know, the school day to train communication partners on AAC for that new student in their class that uses aac. Like, what if we did more activities, like you just explained, where we're able to share about all the different components that are really important with aac, but we do it in a way that not only teaches this, the classroom staff, but also teaches the children in the classroom so they can be allies for our students, they can be peer models. And it's just more engaging and more fun. It's like. And it doesn't have to be this like, oh, everyone stay after school for an hour to learn about aac. It's like we're learning about it right alongside of our students who are actually engaging with it. And it. It's super practical and it's super fun. And so it's just like, hopefully this story can really inspire people who are listening to rethink AAC training, because it doesn't have to be a super boring PowerPoint where you're just going over basic facts. And in fact, I would argue that that's not going to translate to our communication partners in a classroom actually knowing what to do. And so I love all the things that you're sharing, and I feel like it can be inspiration to our listeners to again, rethink how we're supporting our students, especially in gen ed and mainstream classrooms. It's like, why wouldn't we involve the entire class if we could? Not only does it promote AAC in that classroom, but it just creates a culture around it, and it's just. It's more fun, it's more engaging. Everyone wins, right?

00:16:57 Chris Bugaj
Totally. It can be like eating candy instead of taking your medicine. Right. It can taste sweet and be fun and something you want to do as opposed to, gotta take my medicine today, I gotta stay. After all, I'm really motivated to do this. It just. It doesn't have to suck, right?

00:17:12 Rachel Madel
Doesn't have to suck. Yeah. Unfortunately, the training I went to wasn't so good. I won't say it sucked, but I will say that I was just kind of like. And I was looking around the room and everybody was just like, eyes glazed over, like, I'm not even listening to this. And I was like, ah. So I of course, like, piped in and I was like, let's talk about how that specific strategy is relevant to this student. And I'm trying to, like, like, breathe some life into, like, the practical application of these ideas. Right. And I think that's so important because oftentimes, SLPs and AAC specialists, people listening to this podcast, they're responsible for teaching other people about aac. And the way we teach something matters, like how we present information matters. It's not just kind of having the bulleted checklist of things you need to target during the training. It's like you actually can make it fun, engaging, relevant, practical, so that people have the tools and the inspiration to go out and do the thing. And so, yeah, I'm just like, it's so funny. We're just contrasting our experiences.

00:18:16 Chris Bugaj
Well, you know, who else is trying to build a culture around AAC in their school district and provide wider supports and think through these sort of systems that we can put in place so that it does create culture. Kristen Hughes and Amy Kennedy, who I had the great opportunity to interview, and kind of, they interviewed me. Again, it's more of a interactive conversation, or I guess just a conversation rather than an interview about a specific topic. But so, without further ado, let me introduce you to Kristen Hughes and Amy Kennedy. This October, join Impact voices in the AAC community in Arlington, Virginia. Hello, I am Lance McLemore, a board member of Impact Voices. Don't miss our second live AAC hangout and celebration at the Crystal Gateway Marriott on October 17th and 18th. Our theme is Building Futures Together to empower AAC users, connect policymakers, employers, and each other. Hear from AAC users who are shaping the future, explore our challenges and opportunities, and discover how we can all work together for a more inclusive world. Register todaympactvoices.org we can't wait to see you. And I relive 2020. Welcome to Talking with Tech. My name is Chris Bugaj, and today I'm joined with one and a half special guests. Is that the best way to put that, Amy? I don't know, Kristen. How about we start with you and then you. We can pitch it over to Amy, and Amy, you can say why I'm calling you, like, half a participant today. Okay, Kristen?

00:20:12 Kristen Hughes
Okay. You just want me to introduce myself? Yeah.

00:20:14 Chris Bugaj
Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do and why we're here today.

00:20:17 Kristen Hughes
Yeah. So my name is Kristen Hughes. I'm a speech language pathologist that works for Baldwin County Public Schools, which is in south, south Alabama along the Gulf Coast. I've been a speech therapist for a little over eight years. I've worked in the nursing home setting, early intervention, and now I'm in the schools. And my son is actually an AAC user. He is six years old. And I've, I've primarily been like an itinerant SLP within our school district, but I'm going to be transitioning into a new role as an assistive technology, or AAC slp. So we're very excited about that.

00:20:57 Chris Bugaj
Awesome. And Kristen, just real quick, will you be the only person in that role or is like a whole team being developed or it's like you're the team?

00:21:04 Kristen Hughes
Well, a lot of our, it kind of has gone through this process. So initially we did have like a team of, of like, kind of like the expert model. Like, we had an slp, a pt, a ot, and then this guy who kind of just does assistive technology in general and like vision stuff. And we were doing like all of the evaluations were all formal and they were taking forever. So then we had someone else move in, like from Georgia who did 80 over there. And she was like, well, the SLPs can just be doing their evaluations. And so it kind of got turned over to all of us. But then a lot of us weren't like, super comfortable or didn't have a lot of training or felt like we needed more support, especially like for the more complex kiddos that we couldn't just slap on an app or that sort of thing. So yes, all of that to say I am basically the person that's going to be supporting all of the SLPs. They're still going to be doing a lot of their own evaluations, I guess you could call it. But I'll be there to help coach, support them and the classroom teachers and also handle like writing reports through insurance and obtaining equipment and the. That sort of thing.

00:22:17 Chris Bugaj
Okay. Exciting, exciting. New role for you, you said, right? Yeah. Awesome. And then Amy, you want to tell us a little bit about why I said you're like half a participant today?

00:22:28 Amy Kennedy
Yes. So I am. I have a background in speech pathology and was a speech therapist in the county for 16 years before I went moved into this role. So I am a resource consultant for the special services department. So just basically helping to train, teach teachers, troubleshooting, helping with paperwork, just different things like that. But I cover a couple of schools in our county as well as all of our special education preschool classrooms and all of our speech therapists.

00:23:03 Chris Bugaj
Awesome. Awesome. And just before we started recording, you said, I'm mostly going to listen in because I've got all these core boards I need to slice, so I'll jump in if I need to. But I'm going to be doing double duty here, working through the summer, getting ready for the school year. Is that fair?

00:23:17 Amy Kennedy
Right? That is correct. We are trying to. We've printed large poster size core boards for all of our preschool multiple disabilities and Project Reach, which is our significant communication and behavior students. We've printed those for all of those teachers to have in their classroom to display for them to use while they're teaching. So I have finished 60 of them and have about 20 left. So I'm trying to get those cut and laminated so we can get those out before the school year starts.

00:23:51 Chris Bugaj
Sounds great. Sounds great. All right. So Kristen, tell us a little bit about how we got hooked up for today and what the discussion is going to be about.

00:24:00 Kristen Hughes
Yeah. So you and I have been emailing back and forth mainly about the specific system First Approach or whatever it's called, it's got such a long name, but basically us kind of choosing an app not to be for every single kid, but just to kind of be like our primary app so that we can get our teachers more comfortable, comfortable with implementing AAC and that sort of thing. So that is why Amy has printed all those Boards, and we're getting started with that. But I was kind of getting lost in the weeds, I guess, as far as, like, creating a super clear, like, AAC process for everyone, like, how to go through formal evaluation, I guess, like the process for that and when to do it, when not to do it, and I guess the paperwork and that sort of thing. So a big concern that I had, I recently went to, like, the state conference, and they were talking about formal evaluations, and we don't have, like, a timeline in the state of Alabama for those. We call it, like, we do, like, a re. Eval for IEP changes. But they said at the conference they were like, well, you really shouldn't be taking, like, more than 90 days states to do it. Which I've heard that number like in other states. But, like, the thought that was going through my head was like, I've had kids before where I've been trialing things and getting stuff, like equipment from companies and stuff. And it takes me longer sometimes than that. So I was like, well, I don't know. What do you guys do?

00:25:37 Chris Bugaj
Gotcha. Okay, well, so a couple things just in what you said there. Let me ask some clarifying questions. They said at the state conference, you shouldn't be taking more than 90 days. So 89 is okay. Right. Or if 91, that's not really okay. Like, what's the. Why 90 is it?

00:25:56 Kristen Hughes
I don't have no idea.

00:25:58 Chris Bugaj
Right. Okay. So that's just sort of a. Because it feels arbitrary to me, you know, like, how did you. Why not 60 or why not 180? Like, what's the rationale for 90? So I know that's not you, that's them and whoever them is. Right. But that throwing numbers like that out has been sort of a thing in the world of assistive technology and aac, while really doing evaluations in general when it comes to students with disabilities is like, we sort of pick this target of a date when really why is there some sort of evidence that suggests that if we did it in 60 days or we did it in 90 days, we'd get a better outcome. And if we did it then 75 days, I'm not sure why that number exists. So that's number one. And I think you. I see you nodding along like, yeah, it is kind of arbitrary. Is that fair?

00:26:49 Kristen Hughes
Yes.

00:26:50 Chris Bugaj
Okay, that's number one. And then you use the term formal evaluation. And so let me ask you this. What's an informal evaluation?

00:27:00 Kristen Hughes
I guess, well.

00:27:05 Chris Bugaj
There isn't one. There isn't one.

00:27:08 Kristen Hughes
I Feel like you're kind of doing dynamic assessment as you're trialing anyways, you're giving the kids something and. And basically doing your therapy and seeing how they respond to it.

00:27:18 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. Okay, so let's. Let's start at the very beginning. Here we have a teacher, and that teacher has a student in that classroom. The speech therapist is a person that's supporting that classroom so far. Am I painting the picture?

00:27:32 Kristen Hughes
Yes.

00:27:32 Chris Bugaj
Okay. And then somebody says, hey, we think this kid might need aac, or they might. You know, we're thinking AAC for this. What do you feel like the teachers and the speech therapist's next step is?

00:27:47 Kristen Hughes
Typically we get like, an app and start trialing it.

00:27:51 Chris Bugaj
So how do you pick which app do you start trialing?

00:27:56 Kristen Hughes
That has been a question we've all been talking about, and that's kind of why we were trying to move to the specific language system first approach.

00:28:06 Chris Bugaj
Gotcha.

00:28:07 Kristen Hughes
Now, the copies that we have in our district right now are lamp, which I think looking at the list of what everybody has right now, LAMP is the primary one that's being used.

00:28:17 Chris Bugaj
Okay.

00:28:18 Kristen Hughes
To go. Because the guy who did 80 before on that team, I think he was kind of just putting that out for everybody. That was kind of his go to choice. And then they got a few copies of Touch Chat because it had the head tracking on the app.

00:28:34 Chris Bugaj
Okay, so. So if. So if you made a list, if you made a giant spreadsheet of all the people, all the learners that have aac, I'm hearing you say Lamp comes out as the most frequently used. And then the second runner up there is proloquo. And then after that, it's Touch Chat. Is that fair?

00:28:54 Kristen Hughes
Yeah, that's fair.

00:28:55 Chris Bugaj
How did LAMP get decided over the. The course of a few years? Has it been like, okay, well, we want to try something. So the speech therapist in that. That's supporting that that team or that teacher and that student would go, okay, well, let's try Lamp. And it's sort of based on the preferences of that individual speech therapist. Is that. I'm taking a stab. Is that probably.

00:29:21 Kristen Hughes
I think that our area is just very heavy as far as LAMP goes. Like all of our outpatient clinics, the therapists that are there, they're getting Lamp for most of. Not all those kids, I guess, with united ability and stuff, being up there. And, you know, they do a lot of LAMP up there too. So I think, yes, it's just like, familiarity and that sort of thing, and people really like the motor planning aspect of it.

00:29:47 Chris Bugaj
You know. So with the decision making process for Lamp Proloquo, Touch chat, or really anything else, does it mostly reside in that speech therapist that says, here's what I think we should try?

00:30:00 Kristen Hughes
Yes.

00:30:01 Chris Bugaj
Okay. And then Amy, this might be you, but a little bit of Kristen. Okay. So would you. What are some barriers your speech therapist that you work with would say they have around aac? Like they're punching the gut frustration? Nope, there goes Amy. So, uh, oh, her battery died. I'm sure of it.

00:30:28 Kristen Hughes
Well, I can try to answer your question.

00:30:30 Chris Bugaj
Yeah.

00:30:33 Kristen Hughes
I think it just varies. Like some of our speech therapists are like, I only have a bachelor's degree. I've never been trained in aac. I don't even know what that is. It's very intimidating and scary. Some of our SLPs are very strong and have a lot of training, but the main thing that I hear is they just can't get the teachers to get them off the shelf. And. Yeah. And they have very high caseloads. The SLPs do as well. And so they're like, I just don't have time. I don't have time to do this and they won't do anything. And you know.

00:31:07 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. Thousand percent, Kristen. And it's so funny the listeners can't see this, but I just made this face when you were talking because I knew that's what you're going to say. Right. Like I absolutely knew you were going to say we don't have time and we can't get it off the shelf or there's abandonment issues. All right. Amy's computer died for a second. Amy kicked out.

00:31:28 Amy Kennedy
Out somehow.

00:31:28 Chris Bugaj
What do you think are. Because you didn't hear what we just said, right? What, what do you think are the greatest frustrations of the speech therapists around implementing AAC or AAC in general?

00:31:40 Amy Kennedy
Probably the biggest one is not enough time. And a lot of times I think some of them feel like their case loads are too large, which some of them were. Some of them were towards the end of last year. But we've, we've hired some new staff and gotten some new positions that we can hope hopefully alleviate some of that.

00:32:03 Chris Bugaj
Okay. For the ones that are kind of comfortable with AAC and they're trying to implement it, where are their, where does their frustration lie?

00:32:13 Amy Kennedy
I think the ones that are that kind of have some background knowledge, they're probably their main concern is time. The others, I think that, that a lot of them don't feel comfortable and maybe feel like they lack knowledge or expertise in that area and so that kind of becomes a barrier as well.

00:32:32 Chris Bugaj
Okay. Would it be fair to say now this isn't just for you, Amy, back. Back to Kristen or the. The both of you. So if as speech therapist, whether they feel secure with their AAC knowledge or they don't, something you both said is time. Time like. And that would be. I probably. Number one, if we were playing Family Feud, number one answer. Right. Number two might be how secure they feel. And number three would be what Kristen said. Amy, which, which was another thing that Kristen said, which is the teachers aren't implementing it. It's sitting on the shelf. Right. And you're not. You're not in. Okay, so let's just start with that time issue. How, when you think of the pie chart of how they're spending their time, do you find that the way they're introducing and selecting AAC is going through. Again, you've mentioned this word trial. Right. So I think I want it to be this. I'm going to trial it for a while, I'm going to collect data on how it's going or doing, and then I'm going to pick something. Is that, is that a part of your current process?

00:33:35 Kristen Hughes
Yes.

00:33:35 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. And then once they've trialed it and they think they want something, do they have to document that or justify it in some way? Is that when you get to that. I'm going to put it in quotes here, that formal evaluation.

00:33:49 Kristen Hughes
Well, and that was kind of a question I was going to ask you, because if they figured out the app that they want and they're good to go with it, at what point do you meet to put that in the iep? Like, how do we create a good paper trail? Like, what if the kid moves in the middle of the trial because we have kids move in and out all the time, and then all of that is just lost. You know, I don't think we're moving like to a formal at evaluation at that point. I think what they were wanting us to do, the new person who came in, was if that wasn't working and we had kids who were like, more complex or needed something else or needed a different access method, at that point, we would do formal.

00:34:32 Chris Bugaj
Gotcha. Gotcha. And that's sort of tricky, right, because where, what line do you cross to say? And then why not choose? How did we. If we picked the wrong thing in the first place, could we have picked something better in the first place? So is there a better process so that we didn't waste 90 days trying something that doesn't work. Right. So there's a different approach here. And that approach might be, again, Tier one support. Sounds like LAMP Words for Life is your go to sort of thing. With that in mind, do your teachers have. Have iPads with LAMP Words for Life on them as modeling tools do? Does your speech therapist. Speech therapists have an iPad with LAMP Words for Life as a modeling tool? And follow up to that, Amy, you're cutting those core boards. Is the core board a screenshot of LAMP words for the home screen of LAMP Words for Life?

00:35:32 Kristen Hughes
Yes. Our SLPs do have copies of LAMP on their iPads. Amy. I'm not sure. Do all of our teachers have. Have iPads with.

00:35:40 Amy Kennedy
No, not all of them.

00:35:41 Kristen Hughes
Okay.

00:35:43 Amy Kennedy
But all of our speech therapists do. But not all of our teachers. Some of them do. And some of them, especially, like our preschool teachers have requested it. So if they have a kid that they think would benefit from doing some trials, then we can give them an iPad that has it available.

00:36:07 Kristen Hughes
So that would be trialing. It wouldn't be for, like, universal support, I guess, is what we're saying.

00:36:16 Chris Bugaj
Right. Kristen, I heard you say that could be a goal, and that just completely resonates with me is that you probably have a spreadsheet of all the teachers and their classrooms. Right. And I could totally see. Or easy enough to create one. Or that could be a goal to create one. And I already picture it with tabs down at the bottom for each. Right. But starting just this year, creating a spreadsheet that has all the teachers and then do they have an iPad or don't they? That gives you a number of what do we need to get? Like when you're going to administration and saying, this is what we try. We think we need this as a tier one support. Yes. We're going low tech. Amy's been working all summer cutting up core boards for us. But beyond that, our next step is to make the electronic piece the. The tier one, not just the. The paper based. And we're sort of all on our way there because some people already have it. We're just filling in the gaps of the people that don't. And here's the number we need this particular year. Does that sound like. Because. And I'll just say traditionally, what I found are not traditionally. Over time, what I found is that it's, it's not so much finding the money or the resources, it's understanding that you need them in the first place. Once, you know, I need 60 iPads. Okay, how do we. Let's go. How do we find it? How do we get it? Who are we partnering with? You know, are we doing donors choose or are we doing pto or are we doing a car wash? Like, what are we doing? We're getting 60 iPads, right. And we're not going to buy the app until it goes on sale. So we're good there. We'll get it at 75% off. The school districts can get it at 50% off if you're doing volume purchase. And then during that, during those app sales, it usually goes on sale for another 50 off, which means that it's 75% off total. So that's the time to buy. I think you guys know that. But if we're doing a podcast, people might be listening, going, what? What, what? You have to buy them in groups of ten. So. Okay, so let me just stop there. Does that sound like an action step for you? Is. Is creating a spreadsheet and figuring out the number to present as iPads as, as it. Is it as. As teacher devices?

00:38:30 Kristen Hughes
Yes, absolutely.

00:38:33 Chris Bugaj
Okay, cool. One on my list. Okay. And then, Amy, don't kick me. Okay. How about part B to that question? The giant posters that you're printing out, are those LAMP words for life?

00:38:47 Amy Kennedy
Yes, they are.

00:38:48 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. All right. And I'm really excited about that because for years it has not been. That is many places have sort of. Because we understood core vocabulary. So when I say we kind of as speech therapists, all kind of like. Or in a, in a three year period, everyone got the tidal wave of core vocabulary. So everyone ran out and sort of made core boards. But they were random core boards and they didn't, they didn't have a follow through to some sort of high tech device. So it sounds like you're already past that. That's not something you're dealing with as an issue. So just give yourself like a reaffirming pat on the back. Like, that's awesome. Like, we're, we do have some sort of through line from our paper to our high tech, even though we don't have to start with high tech, we're just building a culture around this. And the posters are just a piece of that. Is that all a fair way of summarizing what you're trying to do?

00:39:43 Kristen Hughes
Yes.

00:39:44 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. Okay, so now we have a. Now what happens, why that changes is the teacher goes, all right, so we've been using LAMP in our classroom and we don't have a particular their iPad for this kid. But man, is he coming over and grabbing my device or he's Going up into that core board or he's, we've got the small laminated core boards and, and, or none of that's happening. But we still feel like they need something. What's the next step? And this is what I think you're really kind of struggling with, right? Is that like, well, should it be an evaluation? And does a speech therapist do it? And you said how do we do it? So I'm going to tell you how we do it as maybe something that you could consider as an option. So if we go back to the problem of man, I don't have time and now I'm doing all this time to do an evaluation and write up the results and look at the data and collect the data. And oh by the way, this, the teachers aren't really implementing it the way I want them to implement it. I mean some are, but some aren't. And so that's a variable in how much the data I'm collecting. Right. Because that teacher in Classroom 141 collects data and does modeling all the time. But in 142, that person, I just, they, they won't do it. How come they won't do it? And they're this, okay, well is that influencing the data that I'm collecting is how much they're modeling. Right. So. And how much they know how to implement it. So maybe there's a better way. And this is how we do it. The second someone says we think a kid needs something, we pull together a team. So Kristen, you said you kind of used to have a team, but I'm thinking in the way we do it is the school based team. So you very likely there's an occupational therapist supporting that classroom. Clearly there's a speech therapist, maybe a physical therapist. And I don't know that the OT and PT always need to be involved, but they, I'd like to invite them at any time, of course, the classroom teacher, the parent and any outside provider that the parents give you permission to correspond with. So a private speech therapist and then anyone else that you think is important in the decision making process. Imagine pulling them together for a hour meeting. I'll just, that's a, that's that's random. Like it could be a little bit longer. It could be which. But meetings generally like is a good 60 minutes is a good time. We can always come back and meet again if we don't finish in that 60 minutes. And we can all be really happy if we get done before that 60 minutes and we can have more time on our on our calendar. So if you just have like a 60, 60 minute meeting where you say, okay, okay, now let's together collectively decide what do we think this learner needs to support their language. And then the speech therapist takes on a different role. Or maybe Amy or Kristen, you take on a different role as a facilitator or guide of asking the questions to help that team decide what the thing is they'd like to try to implement. And notice I, I very specifically do not use the word trial. I use the word try. And I'll explain that in a second. But okay, so pull them all together and you have this structured conversation going. All right, what do we think we need? Well, all right, team. Do we know that we've been focusing on core vocabulary and core vocabulary? So clearly we need an app that has core vocabulary. Right? We need some sort of tool that has core vocabulary. Everyone agree? So you write core vocabulary and imagine this in a grid. Grid, okay. Or a table. So the first column in the table, you're the first cell. One column, one, row one. You write core vocabulary. Just let me stop there and say, what other questions might you ask this team to help tease out? What are the things this kid might need? What are some questions that jump to your mind?

00:43:36 Kristen Hughes
Does the system have a keyboard?

00:43:38 Chris Bugaj
Aha. Right. Do we think this kid is going to learn to spell someday? Then let's get him a keyboard. Hey, guess what? That fringe vocabulary that you've been wondering, hey, can we. Can we add that to the device? Device? Yes, you can, but how often do you use it? How about we jump over to the keyboard and start spelling those out on your modeling device? And just. Amy, I'm guessing your posters don't have a keyboard. Right? Right. Which is more impetus when the. When your administrator goes, well, wait, didn't we just. Didn't we buy these posters? Like, why are we getting 60 iPads? Because 60 iPads. The iPads have keyboards, and the. Our posters don't. Right. As one design feature. So, okay, so keyboard. Yes. Awesome. Kristen, what else? Else?

00:44:20 Kristen Hughes
Motor planning.

00:44:21 Chris Bugaj
Yes. Okay, exactly. Let's. So we do this. We've done this. This activity, and we wouldn't do this in these 60 minutes, but imagine pulling together Amy being like one of the lead speech therapists, a handful of speech therapists, and whoever. Whoever else. And doing this exercise. What I call is how many hits. So that exercise is simply this. All right, Amy, give me three, three word phrases. Kristen, you give me four. No, give me three. Four word phrases. And one of them has to be A question. Sarah, give me a five sentence question and make sure there's a fringe vocabulary word in each one. Right. You make a list in the, in the first column of a different spreadsheet and you say, okay, we have a list of sentences now on lamp Words for life. How many hits does it take to get to these sentences? In Proloquo with about 80 cells, how many hits does it take? TD Snap or touch chat, how many hits does it take? And you can do a little exercise to see which one has the least number of hits so that you know you're decreasing how many hits it takes to get to the center of the lollipop, you know what I mean? To get to say that phrase. And that would be all the apps. It's going to be a motor plan to get to the word words. It's just which one has the simplest motor plan? Does that make sense? So you don't have to do that every single time? Just if enough people sort of recognized that, hey, we did this experiment and this one comes out of the wash most frequently. You know, it can give you some insight onto. Onto what's the most frequently used app. Does that help?

00:46:04 Kristen Hughes
Yes.

00:46:05 Chris Bugaj
All right. Besides motor planning, anything else sort of jump to your mind? Oh, gosh, I'm on the spot. Well, no, I, I know I'm thinking about.

00:46:21 Kristen Hughes
I mean, I always go to, like, can it be adapted in some way? Because I'm just thinking about my own child. He has cbi, so our high contrast icons available.

00:46:36 Chris Bugaj
Bingo. And now you wouldn't necessarily need that. Like, so does every student need it? No. I would make the argument, you've heard it here first on this podcast, that eventually the default mode for apps will be black screen with white text. That's not how it is right now, but someday that's how it's going to be. Right? So. But your point is, we're talking about, in that 60 minutes where we're talking about this kid, let's say it's your kid, Kristen, and you go, well, this I know my kid needs black backgrounds with white text. And can it have different color borders around some of the words or all of the words? And can we increase the space, pacing? Besides, all those are design considerations that you might put down in that first column. And then when you're looking at options, because that's what the next columns are, Lampards for Life Proloquo Touch chat. Now you can kind of match them up. Other questions you might ask, just how many hits does it take to get to the Grammatical markers like, do we think this kid is eventually going to use ing and ed and S? Okay, we got to make sure they have the grant. And what is that? Like, does it mean I have to change my motor plan and press hard just because now I have to teach them to press and hold for think for a thing to come up with grammar or is it where. How. Just. Let's just discuss how does the grammar look on these different apps? You already said keyboard. Keyboard. I would argue that the keyboard would be word prediction as well. So for teaching literacy, we can say, can this kid reckon? Let's teach the kid to recognize the words. They don't have to spell the entire word. You mentioned it, Kristen, again, about a particular kid. What's their access method? Right. Are we thinking eye gaze? Are we thinking head tracking? Are we thinking direct select? Are we thinking direct select? But maybe a keyguard because they, they hit. So a discussion about access, you said, can it be customized in some way? Or like you said, the black background. I would also add quick fire phrases. What is, what does programming look like? Right. And if you were for the people that are talking about gestalt, like, hey, can we add phrases? Yeah, that's a quick fire phrase. You could add a longer phrase if you wanted to. I would also argue what are the voice options? Like can. Are there a whole bunch of different inflections? And can that match what the, what the student would like their voice to sound like or what the parents would like the student's voice to sound like? Right. And then the last one that I think is really, really important is, all right, the class that this student's in, what are they already using? What are they already familiar with? Because if they are, if they're already familiar with this, that's less of a learning curve than that. We'll have to teach them. Now, that shouldn't be the deciding factor, but is it certainly in the mix of consideration. Yeah. Lamp Words for Life. They're, they're, they're good with that. Like they, they're pretty comfortable with those. What are. But guess what? This kid speaks Vietnamese and we want Vietnamese to be on here. And lamp Words for Life doesn't translate to Vietnamese. So do we have another tool that, that, that speaks Vietnamese? Okay, so guess what? You're going to have to learn this other tool because it, that that thing came out of the wash a little bit bigger or a little bit had had more yeses. And, and just, and if you have that discussion and you ask those sorts of questions and you're getting everybody's input at the end end. Right. As you fill this out, you go, well, okay, let's look. Look at lamp, and let's look at proloquo. And let's look at Touch Chat. And let's look at anything else we need to look at. Because guess what? None of these things really match. Or this. This thing came out of the wash the most. Do we all agree people can't see me, but I'm looking around this mythical table and I'm going, do we all agree that this is what we think we should try? And like, yeah, it seems to that that that flow makes sense. Parents, you think, do you want to try this at home? And teacher, you think you can implement this? And private speech therapists look good to you. Because it looks like this thought process led us to this decision. And then the trial is over because you've already thought through what the thing is you'd like to try, start implementing it. And I'll put this in quotes. The trial begins because now you can start collecting data. Now we're all implementing with fidelity. And any point, if for some reason you think it's not working or someone has questions, you can come back to the table. And the first question I would ask is, what can we do to change the instruction? Why isn't it working? Not necessarily. Oh, well, the app. The app that we spent all this time trying to figure out what was the right one. Yeah, we messed it up. We probably got the wrong app. No, you probably got it right through some implementation thing that wasn't right. The teacher got sick and they were out or they quit, or we. Yeah, we did this in April, and we did this in April and a new team came in. So there was a change. So some of the team members were on board. But not like there's some sort of dynamic that will trip people up in some cases. But the point is, it wasn't the outside speech therapist. I don't mean the private. I mean just a speech therapist that has, you know, 68 kids on their caseload. Some of them have AAC. They came in, they said to do this. The other people in the room are like, I don't know. Sure. Oh, here comes Amy. Get out that device. Now they can say, wait, we all have ownership on this choice, and we all have some responsibility around this choice, and I don't want to be wrong, so I want to implement it. And so now in one hour's time. Ish. Because you also said, Kristen, there are some times when it takes more Time than that, right? Like, yeah, this kid might be a switch user or we're not sure what the access methodology is. So we're going to narrow it down to two. These two things. And so we are going to have a little bit of like, all right, just for like a day we want to try this, and the next day we want to try this. But that's very minimal. For the most part it's. And we just want to try it to see. We think the kid can hit this switch, but we're not sure. So we're not sure if we should place it by their knee or by their elbow. Like, so we're going to try some things. But you've decided you're trying this together. You've decided you're trying a switch or switches. All that stuff also becomes. You take that table that you're filling out and at the end you copy that table and you plop it into Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT. Take out the kid's name, make sure there's no identifying information, and you say, write a little summary of what we decided here. And of course, you don't have to do that. You could write the summary yourself. But if you're. If your number one thing is time, right? Like, hey, do that. And then you have your justification. You have some. Someone who holds the purse string says, well, we don't have an. We don't have that app or we don't have an iPad with that. How did you. Well, this whole team got together. Here's our. You can clearly see our thinking and why we think this kid needs this, and that's why we need it. And we are deciding as a team as opposed to one person coming in, picking something they think they like, like that guy who liked Pro Loquo or that person that liked Lamp. Like this way, we're deciding together what we think we want as our tool, and that becomes the justification. And you also have a document then that will move with the student so that when the next team comes on board, because you're laughing, you must. High turnover rate, just like everywhere else in the country. Then you can go, well, how did we. What did we decide Right here? Follow through right here. Here's the whole thing. This is how we decided as opposed to what were they using. But how did that. What. Who. That speech therapist left and the new speech therapist came in and they really like touch chat over, blah, blah, blah. So now they're making a change. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We got a whole thing here that we decided how we landed on things. So I did a lot of talk in there. What do you think about something like that?

00:54:34 Kristen Hughes
So you're doing it all up front. Like we were just kind of trialing and then saying, oh, this is working, we'll add it to the iep.

00:54:44 Chris Bugaj
Well, okay, Kristen, this is why I say I specifically use the word try rather than trial. Many years ago, I realized that trialing things was a bit problematic in that when you say the word trial, it's sort of like, I want to do a test. Right. So I'm not. It sort of says I'm not sure. Right. I want to, I want to try this and get some data. I want to try this and get some data. And I want to try and this and get some data. And that's sort of how insurance companies want it. Right. But is working for a public school entity. You don't have to do it that way. And there's no evidence that I, that I know of that says that way produces better results than what I just described to you. So the things that's problematic with trialing is how did you decide which thing to trial first? Like if you, do you pick the thing that you know won't work or do you pick the thing that you think will work? And how did you decide what you think will work? Well, whatever that thought process is could be the thing that you just used to implement it. Second thing is, what does a successful trial look like? Like there is no delineating number or factor or, you know, what magic line does someone have to cross to say this is a successful trial? And the time factor. This is why I was sort of joking around about 90 days. Well, we implemented this trial for 30 days. Okay. Did that include sick days? Did that include when the teacher was there or when the teacher wasn't there? Well, we're in middle school, we do an AB schedule. So which is at just on A days or B days or like. So there's so many variables. The kid was sick for a few days. How much skill knowledge does the teacher have? So there's all these variables that sort of interrupt the scientific method that is sort of suggested when you say the word trial, which is why I've been moving away from the word trial for ages and say we're going to pick something and then we're going to implement. Implement it. We're going to try it. I put that in quotes. But we believe this is it. We're very confident that this is it. Prove us wrong, the kid's going to have to Prove us wrong. That because we're going to keep implementing it and trying it. And what if. What if back in that trial mode, what if the kid needed. We tried it for 45 days. That's what we decided. Our trial was 45 days, and it was the 46th day that the kid would have got it. Because we know TIT language takes that much longer. You know what I mean?

00:57:19 Kristen Hughes
That's what I was going to say. Sometimes it just takes more time. Time.

00:57:22 Chris Bugaj
Yeah.

00:57:23 Kristen Hughes
And that's why I was so confused, because I'm like. I mean, for instance, my own child probably took three years for him to understand and that there was a second hit on lamp, but somebody would have given up on him. People did give up on him very early on, you know.

00:57:43 Chris Bugaj
Well, and that's a tricky thing with LAMP particular, the teacher specific. But anyone who's first implementing lamp, I say this all the time. People look at it and go, well, this. What, this doesn't make any sense. But then a little bit of training, you start to realize, oh, there's patterns here. And yes, there's a second hit, but really it's one motor plan. Right. And there's a structure to it. There's a verb line, and that's where the hits are. So I don't have to explain it to you. I'm sure you're familiar now, but that is the reason if you're using LAMP as your sort of Tier one one. Well, now what happens is we get new teachers. They need a little bit of. We need to spend some time with those new teachers, kind of showing them the structure. And the new teaching assistants, the structure of LAMP is structured, otherwise they won't know. Right. And it'll. That your kids like your child. We can get them there faster if the teachers know. And the speech therapists are currently saying, how do I have time? When do I have time to train them? Now you have. Now you have more time because you're doing less evaluations. Does that make sense? Yeah.

00:58:44 Kristen Hughes
Yeah. Yes. Okay. So I guess what with the paperwork process of it, it sounds like you're just having an IEP meeting kind of.

00:58:57 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, I don't. So that's. That has been a point of like, wrestling with. It's the players of the IEP team in. Except, do you really feel like you need a general ed teacher there? And maybe sometimes you do. I don't know that you do. Do you really feel like you need an administrator there every single time? I don't know that you do. So this could be just Sort of a. What's called a staffing meeting or an instructional meeting. And then if you've already got an accommodation that says aac, where you want to change the accommodation, you can always say, hey, we're not the IEP team. We think this might be an IEP team to decision. Let's get those other players. Let's talk through why we think this might be an accommodation and get everybody's input and then let the IEP team decide. This is what the accommodation should be. But in the same way you. Let's say, let's say a speech therapist and a. Well, let's take speech out of it. Let's just say a instructional technology person and a second grade teacher are having lunch together. And that second grade teacher is just like, oh, Jesus, kid, he's not reading. And you know, I'm trying this structured approach. Hey, have you tried, like hitting this play button and having him like, read it? Read, like, listen to, like read with his ears? No, I've never tried text to speech. Well, you know, it's not going to solve reading, but that's something to try. Did we just violate some sort of IEP thing because we're trying some sort of instructional thing? No, we're not. Right. It's just an instructional tool that we're trying. Well, same thing here. This can be an instructional tool that we're trying. And when we think the kid needs to guarantee a free, appropriate public education, let's pull everyone back together and make sure we decide together as a team that, that this is what we think the kid needs to guarantee. Fape.

01:00:47 Kristen Hughes
Okay, that makes sense.

01:00:50 Chris Bugaj
Cool.

01:00:51 Kristen Hughes
I like that. I'm trying to think about. Any other questions?

01:00:57 Chris Bugaj
Well, to get back to your sort of like paperwork thing, I think so listeners, Kristen sent me a Google site ahead of time where you. Which was so well done, Kristen. I just want to tell you the thought process and the easy to follow. If I was a teacher in your school district, like, awesome, I know exactly what I need to do. Right. And you have all the resources in one place. So I think something to consider is taking that same website, which maybe you've already shared, you might have like a Bitly or QR codes to it, so people might already be familiar with it. Or maybe it's something new and you haven't even implemented yet either. Either way, you've got that tool and you can make adjustments to it. Imagine they're saying, do you need help making a decision? Here's our. We'll be your facilitator right when can we meet? Here's the paperwork we're going to use. We're going to use this chart and come up with a little bit of a chart with a summary thing underneath. And you. At first, I would think you would want to be there to help guide them through that. Or maybe again, if you have some really seasoned speech therapists, get them together and just do it as a pilot for a little while. Hey, you three, we know you rocket this. Can we try this on with you next kid? Can we just do this approach for a little while and see what you think and get your feedback? We don't have to do, you know, your entire school district all at once, although you can, we could trial it if that made your administration feel easier or made you feel easier. But then you could work out the paperwork that way that could go up on the website and then think five years down the line. Right. Some teams, some, some, some teachers, they're staying longer because they feel like they're supported and they have a say in the decision making process. Like that's one of the reasons maybe they're staying longer. They had this facilitated process, Kristen, where you were there asking these sort of questions, but let's say they've been that two through, through that three or four times. Times. Do they still need you four or five years from now or are they like, yeah, I feel pretty good asking these questions. I kind of know how to lead us through this conversation. Then maybe you can sort of back off. But at the first stage here, it sort of makes sense. Well, this is new. I know what I'm good at and I know what I've done for many years. I know I go in and I suggest lamp. Right. Or I know I go in and I suggest proloquo. I don't know how to lead a conversation where I ask questions about, well, what do we think the access methodology is? And then withhold my answer to hear what everybody else says. Because what I'm really good at as a speech therapist is telling you that you need something with a black background and white text. You know what I mean? So that's a skill that takes time to develop and that something that you could model and practice with them as they, as they learn to take a backseat to or become part of the decision making process rather than the decision maker.

01:03:49 Kristen Hughes
Yes.

01:03:50 Chris Bugaj
So what do you think about it? What do you think about all of that?

01:03:53 Kristen Hughes
I like it. I really do.

01:03:55 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. Cool. All right. What other questions? What else sort of like, you know, resonates with you or doesn't or sort of is tripping you up.

01:04:07 Kristen Hughes
I mean that pretty much answered all of my questions because is, we discuss trials, we discuss the whole. Basically I'm doing away with at formal is what it sounds like.

01:04:21 Chris Bugaj
I. There, there will be times. Here's what I'll tell you. There'll be times because we'll have some sort of lawyer or advocate or some parent that's really demanding it and they're sort of used to it. We never say no. Right. I would, I. When I say we, I mean, let's say as a country, let's say we don't say no because that could get us in hot water. Because in the, in the law there's the word evaluation in the definition of assistive technology technology service. And it says there's the word evaluation. So we won't fight it. Yes, we'll do it and we'll. I would say maybe you could try to work on eliminating the adjective before the word evaluation because it's sort of. Are there different types of evaluations? No, it's just we're either doing this or we're not doing this. And what it's going to result in is it's going to result in me, a person, not me, but a person coming, coming out, observing, talking to all the people, trying some things, writing it up on a, on a piece of paper that has the official banner of our school district at the top and it's got our nice logo on it and I'll sign it at the bottom and that will look very official and it'll take a number of. That's one way of doing it. That's an evaluation. We won't say no to it. But can we consider this other thing where we get together and we discuss it, especially around AAC and we, but I would say all of assistive tech technology and we come to a conclusion together about the things we'd like to try. So I think what I'm really advocating for you, Kristen, is again, you can think of your service delivery model as a triangle. Like, well, what's our Tier one? Our tier one is a facilitated conversation. But are we ever going to say no to this other thing? No. You know, for individual cases. Yes. And you know, there's always sort of one off things in special education that's, you know, in this situation it doesn't make sense to do it that way. But as your General Practice Tier 1 Service Strategy, you could, yes. Sort of do a wave with. But reduce, minimize, reduce.

01:06:20 Kristen Hughes
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:21 Chris Bugaj
I also noticed in your in your Google sites, you had mentioned the wadi. And that is what we use when we were sort of developing our process. So the WADI is for, again, for listeners, the Wisconsin Assistive Technology and Initiative. And part of that is something called the asnat. All that is, it's free resources that you can go and look at. But if you're like, okay, Chris, you just ran through a bunch of questions for aac, but what are the questions? What are other questions that I might ask? Or you sort of glossed over the access methodologies. But what if I needed to go deeper? They do like, they go through sort of. All right, we might need to take more than 60 minutes to figure this one out. Let's have a series of meetings where we are structuring these on a calendar and we are going through the questions of the WADI to help us figure out how to answer that access question or how to figure out this positioning question. Right. Whatever the questions might be, that tool goes a lot more in depth and can help you figure out as a facilitator what questions to ask to the entire team.

01:07:28 Kristen Hughes
Yeah. Okay.

01:07:29 Chris Bugaj
Because I noticed what you were doing, I think is having like one person try and fill that out. But this makes it more of a collaborative effort. Right? Is that right?

01:07:37 Kristen Hughes
It was just the slp.

01:07:38 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. Right, right. And this way everybody owns it, you know, if they do it together.

01:07:43 Kristen Hughes
Yeah. And I like that because we do need our teachers and mostly our teachers to be helping more. But also, I'm mean, I really want to try to involve the parents more.

01:07:57 Chris Bugaj
Too, you know, definitely in the decision making process. Because then they'll own it, you know.

01:08:02 Kristen Hughes
Yeah.

01:08:03 Chris Bugaj
Because that's another thing. Right. We hear is that, well, the parents don't really know how to implement it at home. And you just said the time thing. And our service delivery model is everywhere across the country. It's likely 90% direct services to a kid. Maybe 5% talking to a. Is a consulting with the teachers. And another 5% is maybe, maybe, maybe consulting. Consulting with the parents and giving them stuff to do at home. You know, but what if we could increase that by having them help have part of the decision making process?

01:08:35 Kristen Hughes
You know, do you meet with parents to help train them?

01:08:39 Chris Bugaj
Well, so every place has their growth points. And so let me say this. Back in the pandemic, I think everywhere across the country was a little bit closer to that model than we are now. Like, so remember, like, were you working during the pandemic? Right. Is this.

01:08:57 Kristen Hughes
I was like part time. I was doing early intervention, Amy Amy.

01:09:01 Chris Bugaj
Were you working with over the pandemic?

01:09:03 Amy Kennedy
Yes, I was doing speech therapy.

01:09:06 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. And what happened? Did you do it online with, with your kids?

01:09:10 Amy Kennedy
I did.

01:09:11 Chris Bugaj
And.

01:09:13 Amy Kennedy
Well, depending on the, the child and the parent, really, some of them were successful and participated, but. But the majority did not. But I was also at a Title 1 school, so Internet was an issue and some of them, they were with grandparents or neighbors or whoever during the day. So I mean, it was definitely challenging.

01:09:36 Chris Bugaj
Sure, sure. Well, something we saw you just mentioned with those people. If those people, whoever they are, who is supporting the kid could be in that lesson with you and you could sort of of again, think of your pie chart. I've got 30 minutes with you or 60 minutes with you online. Do I need to be spending all that time with the kid? Well, we know we need to improve the skills of the communication partner and that's going to be even better for the student. And by the way, grandparents are gonna be with the kid a lot longer than I am, or parents are, or the siblings are, or aunts and uncles are. So let me focus more time on you. So that could be. Again, Kristen, if you were writing long term goals, I think across the country, I think it'd be fair to say we could do, we could be thinking about how could we change our service delivery to increase our time with our parents to help them become better communication partners.

01:10:26 Kristen Hughes
Yeah.

01:10:27 Chris Bugaj
But as a first, like.

01:10:29 Kristen Hughes
Sorry, go ahead.

01:10:30 Chris Bugaj
No, I was just gonna say as a first step, maybe get those iPads, maybe think about how we select, you know, together and then invite them in because there's only so much you can do, you know, all at once. But as a long term goal, I think it's a good goal.

01:10:42 Kristen Hughes
Yeah. Okay.

01:10:44 Chris Bugaj
Right. Don't you, Kristen, as a, if you as your parent, like you think about, take off your, your speech hat and put on your parent hat. How much time do you spend with your, your child's speech therapist? And would you, would it benefit you for any of your family members to benefit be spending time with that speech therapist?

01:11:02 Kristen Hughes
Yeah, absolutely. That's something that I really liked about early intervention. They were great at teaching, teaching me how to do that, you know.

01:11:11 Chris Bugaj
Yeah.

01:11:11 Kristen Hughes
And then eventually I had to teach other people how to do that.

01:11:14 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, exactly. It's so funny you say that because we have a podcast episode from a couple years ago with Dr. Lauren Kravitz Bonnet. She's one of the people participating in that episode. And what they talk about in that episode is just what you're saying is that what if we use. We have a model for this in special education. It's ifsps, right? It's that early intervention model for how we implemented therapy, how we approached therapy or intervention. What if we look to that as a model for extending that into the regular school? You know what I mean? You know, pre preschool and when I say regular school, preschool and up, you know.

01:11:59 Kristen Hughes
Yeah, cool.

01:12:01 Chris Bugaj
All right. Other questions like, oh, I know something else maybe. I think as we were emailing back and forth and you sort of mentioned it. What about like private funding? Well, private funding, like, or getting through insurances and things, you're still going to have all that same paperwork you might have to do. Again, if we think of the service delivery model as this triangle that again, how often do we have to do that? Not as often. So yes, but occasionally we'll still have to run through whatever the hoops are to get it, get, get that funding, you know. But if we're purchasing it through our school district funding, we don't have to do that. We don't have to follow those rules.

01:12:36 Kristen Hughes
That was another thing they mentioned in that conference when they were talking about formal at evaluations, they're like, if you're going through private funding or insurance funding, they recommended that you do a formal process as far as the paperwork goes, which I know I'm writing a report already, but I'm like, for our district, does that mean I do a re. Eval for IEP changes and then amend the IEP and go through all of those things? Or do we meet and just say we're going to do this or.

01:13:14 Chris Bugaj
Well, okay. Again, I think it's really helpful to think, well, that doesn't have to be our main process. Right. I can figure out the one off or two off things when that happens. You know, if we're going through that funding source, but if we're not and really assistive technologies free to the, to those who need it with disabilities. Right. Like it's part of the law. If you're found eligible, then as a person with a disability, then as a student with a disability and you're in the public school system, then it's free to you. So you don't necessarily have to go through that private funding. Right? Yeah, yeah.

01:13:55 Kristen Hughes
I think the reason I was also kind of looking at, at it, you know, we got all this Covid funding and we got all these iPads, and the iPads are getting old. And so we're like. And that was another reason I think I got hired, because it was like, well, can you Find money. Can you write reports? Which I do. Like with the reports, the parents are going to get support. We have a warranty. They said they will train teachers if we need.

01:14:26 Chris Bugaj
Who will train the teachers and who's giving you the support? The reps. Do you think he. So this will be a question for your rep. But. And for the different companies. But I get a lot of support from the reps and we never submit any sort of funding that way. Right. We purchased your thing. That's how we purchased your thing is not relevant. But we. Your thing was purchased and so we're going to give you support. Does that make sense?

01:14:53 Kristen Hughes
Yeah, yeah.

01:14:54 Chris Bugaj
Right. They're just interested in fact. Okay, let's. Let's take it off the reps point of view and take it on to your administrator's point of view. But yes, look, you. We say we didn't have to buy this $8,000 device. It went through private insurance. Yeah. Count up the number of hours it took you, Kristen, to do the. Do the evaluation, do the trial, write it it up, how long that take and how much do you make an hour. Right. So you just freed up all that time. If I don't have to do it that way. And oftentimes they think, yeah, but we're paying your salary. Yeah, but look at how the kid that. Look at the devices over there that got abandoned. Right. So did you really save $8,000? You know what I mean?

01:15:38 Kristen Hughes
Yeah, that makes sense.

01:15:39 Chris Bugaj
Right. And again, there's lots of kids that maybe. Kristen, if you don't mind me asking, putting on your parent hat, you said your child uses a lamp word for life on an iPad, on an accent or both.

01:15:52 Kristen Hughes
He's on an accent because he has vi.

01:15:54 Chris Bugaj
Gotcha. Because you need that. Yeah. And it's not on the iPad. Right, right. Okay. So again, if you don't mind, let me ask him. We can always cut this private insurance or did you go through the school district to get that private.

01:16:08 Kristen Hughes
He goes to outpatient therapy. And she wrote the report for him.

01:16:11 Chris Bugaj
And she wrote the report. Okay. So there's a whole different thing that. So how much time did it take the teachers or this private speech there. Sorry, the public speech therapist to do that? Nothing. Because you went through outpatient. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll just leave it there. Right. Because it. A lot of administrators will make it up in their head that look how much. That's time and look how much money that's going to cost. And here's a perfect example of a parent that got AAC without Costing for a device costing a dollar to the, to the public school.

01:16:48 Kristen Hughes
I guess I'm also thinking about our kids that are, you know, have behaviors and they're, you know, throwing iPads or slamming them against their head or stepping on them. And we're going through like 15 iPads a year.

01:17:03 Chris Bugaj
Yeah.

01:17:04 Kristen Hughes
So that was an issue too.

01:17:06 Chris Bugaj
Okay.

01:17:06 Kristen Hughes
Did the warranties.

01:17:08 Chris Bugaj
Well, okay. So yes, the warranty could be a thing. So. So here's some things you could investigate. One is the cases that you're using, if the case keeps breaking, are the cases that we're using. Are they the right case? And you mentioned these sort of relationships you have with vendors of devices. Well, how about relationships with vendors of cases? And you might do some research around finding cases that come with warranties as well. Like hey, if the iPad breaks. And our, our case, we believe in our case so much that, that we have. We've got a warranty. We'll pay for the iPad if it breaks. Right. You might find a company that does that. Let me just say, I know some exist. Right. But being a podcast that doesn't take sponsorship. Right. We. I don't want to necessarily give out a name. Just know there's stuff out there that exists. Right. So that's number one. Two more time spent teaching the teachers how to have neurodiversity affirming practices that, that set that will decrease the number of times that I'm feeling so super frustrated. And that's not always why someone might break an iPad. But you know, typically. Not typically. I use that word too, too often with iPads. Break. It's it. And it might be because someone's frustrated and why. Let's get to why they're frustrated. Frustrated as opposed to let's try and put a better wrap around the iPad and keep frustrating the person. Let's fix the environment, not the, not the tool. You know. And so by freeing up your time to do less evaluations, you can work better on implementing those neurodiversity approaching practices so that the number of breakages go down.

01:18:54 Kristen Hughes
Right? Yeah.

01:18:56 Chris Bugaj
Cool goal. Yeah, I think it's a good goal. It would be interesting to say we would like to increase the number of iPads that don't get broken. The iPads that go all year without with. And what I mean is there's always going to be an occasional drop and a superficial thing here and there. It's part of it. Again, when those things happen. Awesome. That means they're being used. Right. But know the so. So writing some sort of goal around that could be a thing, you know?

01:19:33 Kristen Hughes
Yeah. Okay. I will definitely look into the case thing, though.

01:19:38 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, I don't.

01:19:40 Kristen Hughes
I don't know if we're doing that. Amy, do you know if we have cases that have a warranty on them?

01:19:45 Amy Kennedy
I am not sure. I don't really deal with much of the selection of cases and ordering, but I can look into it for sure.

01:19:57 Chris Bugaj
Let me ask you that. Do you have sort of a tier one case? Like, when we get an iPad, we put them in this case, or is that hit or miss for each individual person?

01:20:10 Amy Kennedy
I believe we mostly use otterbox, but I could be wrong.

01:20:14 Chris Bugaj
Okay.

01:20:16 Kristen Hughes
I think we've switched cases a couple of times.

01:20:18 Chris Bugaj
Okay. Yeah.

01:20:19 Kristen Hughes
The person who was managing the inventory. So I don't know exactly what we have on it now. So we have to look.

01:20:25 Chris Bugaj
Same deal. Imagine getting a small group of people together and saying, all right, what do we want out of a case? Well, we want a warranty. We want a screen protector. And we find these screen protectors are, well, let's see which one breaks more frequently than that. We need one with a stand. We want one that has a color. We want one that whatever. Right. You create in the same way we're figuring out what a kid needs. What do we need? And so you create this list in the first column, and then we go otterbox, rugged. Just keep listing them, you know. And now let's go shopping. You know, which one has the most. Hey, Rep, we'd like to test yours out. What's your warranty like? Oh, we don't have one. Okay. That's a big null in that, you know? Oh, you do have one. Okay, tell us about it. Right. And you could do a little research project to figure out what would be the tier one thing. And again, it won't be for everybody, but just when we get an iPad, we put it in this. Unless this is the thing. Unless someone says, you know what, actually, this kid needs this thing or that thing, you know, and then when. We can always make adjustments. Our. Our tier one is this case. Our tier three we can make. We can customize based on individual needs.

01:21:37 Kristen Hughes
Okay.

01:21:38 Chris Bugaj
Yeah.

01:21:44 Kristen Hughes
I think that was it. Do you remember me mentioning anything else in the email?

01:21:49 Chris Bugaj
No, no, that's. I think that summarizes it, but how about we end with this? Kristen and Amy, take a moment, if you wouldn't mind. I'll invite you to take a moment and summarize what you think your action steps are from this. Okay. Like one or two. What are your next steps? What do you Think you're going to do?

01:22:10 Kristen Hughes
Well, I need to, like, revamp the whole process that I had mapped out for sure on my little website.

01:22:18 Chris Bugaj
Okay. What else again, Kristen, I mean, I know this thing, what I just described. I'm very confident in it. Right. But I. Also not. But. And I would invite you to think about. Well, before I revamp all this, maybe I flesh it out on a Google Doc and I show it to a few people and they tear it apart and they go, yeah, but. Yeah, but before I delete everything I have in my Google site. You know what I mean? Don't take Chris Bouguer's word for one person. You know, I don't feel like it's just me. I feel like I'm representing a lot of places that have adopted something like this. But that said, you know, it wouldn't hurt for you to have some allies in your neck of the woods that, that, that wrestle with it and tear it apart and also have some ownership around it rather than, what is Kristen doing? Talk to this one person. And I don't heard this podcast episode. It hasn't come out for months. Like, like. Yeah, you know what I mean? Having some. Having a group of people that sort of agree with this, like Amy and you together. I feel like it's always better to have champions, you know?

01:23:32 Kristen Hughes
Yeah. Yeah.

01:23:34 Chris Bugaj
All right. Any other takeaways or action steps?

01:23:38 Kristen Hughes
Definitely going to look into the case thing. Definitely going to use the chart. I like the chart idea for the decision making in the meetings.

01:23:50 Chris Bugaj
Cool. Yeah. Based. Based off the wadi. Really, you know?

01:23:53 Kristen Hughes
Yeah.

01:23:55 Chris Bugaj
Cool. Try. We're going to just implement. We're going to make a decision and implement. Does that feel like a thing?

01:24:03 Kristen Hughes
Yes.

01:24:04 Chris Bugaj
We'll start collecting.

01:24:07 Kristen Hughes
Like, I'm like, at what point do we meet?

01:24:10 Chris Bugaj
And Kristen, let me just say everyone has been confused for the last 10ish, 15ish years. Like, how does this make sense? And if what again? What's the magic line someone has to cross to be able to say, this is the thing we need to use? So you are not alone there in wrestling with that.

01:24:27 Kristen Hughes
Yeah.

01:24:29 Chris Bugaj
Cool. And I'm thankful for people like you that are wrestling with it, that don't just go, well, that's how we've been doing it for years, so I guess that's how it works, you know?

01:24:39 Kristen Hughes
Right, right. Well, I just know what we've been doing is not working very efficiently, so, like, we've got to figure this out.

01:24:46 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, listen, don't be strangers, you know, feel free to hit me up along the way and follow up later. You know, let's. Six months from now or a year from now, you're like, all right, Chris, we did it, and guess what happened? And, you know, for good or bad, I'd love to hear what the. What the growing pains were, what worked, what didn't work, you know, what you do differently because there'll be people on your heels trying to figure this out as well. And, you know, as a larger community, it only. It only benefits everybody if we share like this. So, again, thank you. And thank your administration for coming on, you know, allowing you to come on and record this for everyone else to hear.

01:25:28 Kristen Hughes
Yeah. Thank you so much for meeting with us. Really. It's been very.

01:25:31 Amy Kennedy
Thank you.

01:25:33 Chris Bugaj
You're very welcome. All right. Thanks, Amy.

01:25:36 Amy Kennedy
Thank you.

01:25:37 Chris Bugaj
Don't get blisters on your fingers from cutting those posters.

01:25:40 Amy Kennedy
Thanks.

01:25:41 Chris Bugaj
All right, I'll talk to you later. Bye. Bye. There.