Episode 267: LJ Seiff: 14-Year-Old AAC User

This week, Chris and Rachel get the opportunity to interview the amazing LJ Seiff! LJ is a 14 year old boy with cerebral palsy and cortical visual impairment, which impact his ability to speak intelligibly. LJ shares about his AAC journey and some of the things that her wishes were done in the classroom more, like giving him more wait time to respond or asking multiple choice questions, since an AAC user can respond with a single press of “a” “b” or “c”.

Before the interview, Chris, Tucker, and Melissa Bugaj have a family discussion of Tucker’s recent playing in the pep band for the Special Olympics at a local school. Tucker chats about what interested him in being a part of the pep band, and shares a sweet story of helping a boy join into a group picture by giving him a chance to use a sousaphone.

Key ideas this week:

🔑One of LJ’s biggest frustrations in the classroom is when teachers don’t think about incorporating or using his device in the classroom setting. He also gets frustrated when staff and teachers do not give him the wait time that is written in his IEP.

🔑LJ doesn’t enjoy when people talk bout him right in front of him as if he wasn’t there. People will also touch his device without permission, which LJ says makes him feel powerless because he can’t say “no” when people don’t ask.

🔑A lot of times there’s focus on literacy, but not as much focus on the needs for students who can do more advanced math. LJ had a lot of words that he needed for his math classes that were not available on his device and that he had add himself. 

Links from this week

Equatio - Digital equation editor that can work with speech to text or text to speech. https://www.texthelp.com/products/equatio/ 

Blog post by LJ about his AAC journey: https://lessonsfromthebigtoe.com/2021/06/24/lj-seiffs-aac-journey/