Episode 292: McKinzee Steve, Danielle Welge,& Kendra Everette (Part 1): Providing District-Led 1:1 AAC Training to Parents

This week, we share Part 1 of Chris’s interview with McKinzee Steve, Danielle (Dani) Welge, and Kendra Everette, three members of the AAC Team for a large school district in Texas! In this half of the interview,  McKinzee, Dani, and Kendra share about two projects they have been working on lately: 1:1 caregiver training sessions for parents and caregivers (with the help of grad students), and an "AAC Book Club" literacy enrichment program for AAC users!

Before the interview, Rachel shares with Chris about one of her recent success stories with a client! Rachel talks this student's profile, and how he started making significant gains once he moved to a “core word of the month”. In this strategy, it that starts with explicit instruction about that month’s word, followed by lots of modeling from communication partners throughout the month!

Key ideas this week:

🔑 If an emergent AAC user is not making progress despite lots of high-quality modeling from communication partners, ask yourself - is there a need for more explicit instruction, (e.g., teaching what the words mean)? Sometimes a student immersed in AAC will pick up how to use a device right away, while other students may require exposure for longer periods combined with explicit instruction.

🔑 Part of the services that McKinzee, Dani, and Kendra provide to parents and caregivers includes 1:1 training sessions with the help of local grad students over Zoom. Caregivers get six weeks of training with the grad students (with supervision). Afterward, parents and caregivers reported feeling more confident and capable of supporting their student’s use of the AAC device.

🔑 Another service McKinzee, Dani, and Kendra provide is an AAC Book Club. They have created "bins" that can be checked out by SLPs for six weeks that correspond to a particular book and include a variety of materials and activities that are extensions of the book. These lessons are based on the PRC Literacy Planner series.

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. My name is Chris Bugaj. I'm here with Rachel Madel. Rachel, what's going on in your world?

00:00:14
Chris, I'm smiling so big right now. Our listeners can't see my smile, but maybe they can hear it in my voice. I want to share one of my clients kind of a a success story if you will. So I have been working with a student for years. AAC user, I think he's now 11, has some verbal speech but very hard to understand and just like you can hear it, when he does use verbal speech, it's just so labored and it's just hard.

00:00:45
And so we introduced AAC. He's been seeing multiple therapists, speech therapists. So he has speech therapy at school. And then he has like 3 different private SLPS. So big speech team where sometimes we are in a little bit of disagreement about what we're focusing on and prioritizing.

00:01:05
But generally speaking, we've kind of been able to get on the same team. This student has a ton of nouns in his vocabulary, but not using a lot of core language outside of kind of memorized routines and contexts. And even then it's very inconsistent. And so one of my biggest goals for this student is to expand into more abstract language and using more core language. And so I've been advocating on his IEP for goals and all of these different kind of strategies to help support this in the student.

00:01:42
And it's also worth noting the student does get ABA 40 hours a week. So that's a whole nother conversation about the challenges that we've faced and how ABA has been supporting communication. I'm going to take a little bit of a tangent here and and share another piece of the story. The student we've been working on the core word on and we've been doing it with music because he's really excited about music. And so we model on, we put the music on, and then we turn it off.

00:02:13
We say off, you know, modeling on the device. And when we started targeting this specific core word, one of my therapists, Alyssa, she is working with him a couple times a week. And she sent me a video of this interaction where she's modeling. And every time she models on and turns the music on, and then she models off and turns the music off. His response in order to get the music back on is yes.

00:02:39
And she's not asking a question. And so as soon as I saw this, I was like, I knew exactly what I was looking at. I was looking at a student who had been drilled and killed with, do you want the music on yes or no? And it was just so obvious to me. I didn't.

00:02:57
I mean, I eventually asked Alyssa is like, is this, is this something ABA is targeting with yes, no questions. And she's like, yes. I'm like, OK, I already knew that. But confirmed. Yes.

00:03:06
And so Long story short there's been some challenges with what we're targeting and how we're targeting communication. But the the upside of this is you know the student has been we've been modeling core language in our sessions. We've been I've been doing parent coaching. I've been working with the school team. I've.

00:03:24
I'm very involved in this case. He gets a lot of intensive services. I really tried to support kind of a team approach and we just haven't been making progress. Like he, he will memorize a core word within a routine, but he's just not generalizing it, not using it in new and novel ways, not formulating with it. He's very kind of rote memorizing.

00:03:47
And so he did an intensive in my practice this summer and we were like really hitting the communication partner training on every front, like every communication partner on the team we were able to interface with and we started to get some momentum. And the other thing we decided to do, which I think is why he's, I can successfully say he's now making progress is we decided to do a core word of the month. And so I at first I was kind of a little resistant to this because I was like core word of the month, like it should be core word of the week. But I was like, you know, like let's just start with core word of the month and hopefully we can get some momentum and we can progress. And So what we've been doing is sending a sheet to the whole team that has the core word.

00:04:30
And then it has all the specific ideas for the student, how we can incorporate that core word and how we can model And and even at the bottom it has like, you know, remember, don't ask too many questions, remember pause like all the communication partner strategies. And so mom kind of has been responsible for giving this out to the team. And when somebody new joins the team, they get it. And it's just this constant reminder this, this is hanging up in, you know, his his playroom, it's hanging up in the kitchen, it's hanging up everywhere. So everyone is like kind of immersed in this core word of the of the month and we've been doing it for three months now.

00:05:08
And the other thing that we've been doing which I think has been really successful is that Alyssa, my SLP primes him before the the core word of the month starts. So if the core word is on, she's already been working on, on and then we kind of release it to the team to keep practicing and having it carry over. And Chris, he's using every single core word that we've taught and he's generalizing it. And so I'm just you know, excited to share this. And also I think for me it was a lesson because I was very resistant to core word of the month.

00:05:42
I was like that's too limiting. We need to incorporate more language, and I think it's just a good reminder that every student is very different and we need to keep kind of uncovering different stones as we're working with kids to figure out what is the thing that they need to be supported so that they're able to grow and learn. And for this student, I think he just needed to be immersed with all the different communication partners and all the different environments. And then he was able to learn and now use these core words.

00:06:15
Amazing. What an amazing story. You said every student is different which is yes, yes. And like you said the support for every student looks a little different. And so opening your mind to like, well, I could have been really resistant.

00:06:28
I could have put my foot down and not gone said no, we're not doing core word of the month. But you said what's up? Let me, let's try it. Let's try because it's that's what was necessary to support these particular communication partners. And once they have it, oh, now you've got the the hook in the side of their mouth, right?

00:06:44
And you just pull out a little bit like, what if we did it like core word of every two weeks and you can eventually work your way to a core word of the week, right? Or core themes of the week. OK, if it's not just on what if we added two for this month? Or, you know, there's different ways you can come at it, but that sounds awesome.

00:07:01
One other thing I'll share that has come directly from this podcast, Chris is Alyssa with my SLP who's working with the student has started modeling without any type of verbal in input for the student. So she's modeling on the device without saying anything else. And this comes directly from Alyssa Hillary Zisk and Lily Conine, that podcast where they talked about this idea of modeling with our verbal speech while we're simultaneously modeling on AAC and how hard that is. And so I had sent, I often times will send our podcast like really great episodes. I'll send to my team and be like listen to this is really good.

00:07:44
And afterwards Alyssa told me I'm going to start doing that with this specific student that I'm thinking of. And it is amazing how well it has worked. I'm like so excited and so grateful for that podcast episode and that interview we did because not only is he more successful, but he's actually more regulated. We're finding that less auditory input for him keeps his body more regulated. He's sitting, he's doing independent reading now, which like was a goal of ours for like, I feel like years at this point.

00:08:19
And he's now just it's it's such a beautiful thing. And I would definitely encourage our listeners to try this, you know, like anything else, it might not work for all kids and it might not be necessary for all kids. But playing around with these types of things has been really powerful in my own clinical practice. And it's just like, I really think that those two things is what has helped the student really learn and grow and finally start making progress with more abstract language.

00:08:50
I want to talk about that for a second. OK, So when I first learned about modeling and was starting to do modeling, it's sort of natural for me to not talk like, OK, I'm just not going to use my verbal speech. I'm going to just push buttons on the on the iPad or the device that I'm modeling on. Right? And multiple people came to me afterwards and like, why are you talking?

00:09:11
Like, you need to be talking, telling me to do that. And I was like, I don't know. And then of course, me being me, I was like, well, let me research it. Like, is there some sort of evidence that points me one way or the other? When I say evidence, is there some sort of research that is, you know, 'cause this to me is like, Oh my gosh, if I was getting my doctorate, this is like, I could be like, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do this and we're going to measure the results.

00:09:32
Like, that's one little variable that that has changed. So any potential doctorate students out there? I don't know of any research that says one way or the other, right? So people were telling me to do it and I was like, I don't know, just in my gut it didn't feel right. And I was like, I'm not sure that's what I should do.

00:09:49
And I can't find any research that says that's what I should do. So I didn't. I didn't. Right. And that it keeps coming up in trainings that I'm doing.

00:09:56
People ask what should you do? And then I give the answer. I say I don't know of any research that's one way or the other, but I do know that some people who are autistic have said it's like an echo. So I'm hearing it twice and I'm trying to process things twice. Don't do that.

00:10:14
So I said, you know, maybe try it out for each individual and and and see what kind of feedback you get from that individual learner. But that is listening to the, to the, to people that are in the know, right?

00:10:29
Exactly. And you know, especially if we're thinking about some of our cases on our caseload that might feel challenging where we might feel like we're doing all the things, but it doesn't seem to be working. It's like these are the times where we pull these types of strategies out of our toolbox and we're like, OK, everyone like let's do an experiment. And that's where I think being really open to new ideas and really being, I think really being a good clinician means, you know, really trying to customize and troubleshoot and problem solve within a team to get to success. And sometimes that is a long road like with his student.

00:11:08
But now we're like finally seeing progress and it's just like it's so exciting and it's also so motivating. Like the team is like on fire right now. Like just so excited to be modeling what's the next month's core word. I'm like, OK, like eventually I hopefully we can transition Chris to every two weeks and then every week. But I just, I'm really grateful and it just shows that like sometimes you have to kind of keep trouble solving and troubleshooting.

00:11:36
Can can I just add another thing there too? So recently I've had a conversation with our friend Kathy Howery, who has sort of expressed a concern in the field. She's like Chris, I just want to talk to you about it. So her and I jumped on a call and she what was what she was saying? And I think this, this conversation really leads into it is it seems like you remember when core words first came out.

00:11:58
Everyone's like, all right now, just core words. Well, yeah. But we still need fringe. And now it's sort of like everybody sort of understands, oh, we need to be modeling. But that's not.

00:12:06
And and yes, yes, we do. But that's not exactly what your story is. People might listen to your story right here and be like, yeah, we got the communication partners modeling more, which is true. But that wasn't everything He said it. There was more to it.

00:12:19
And that's what Kathy was trying to say is there's some explicit instruction happening. You said you were doing that the the clinician that you work with was like, OK, we're going to do some explicit instruction around on and then when in the environment where everyone's modeling it and then they're doing other instruction around on, that's what's worked. That's the magic sauce. It's explicit instruction plus the modeling, not just modeling. And I think it needs to be called out explicitly.

00:12:44
Absolutely you are. Yes, I am Like, uh huh, Because that is so true. I get so many emails, Chris, from people saying like I'm modeling, but like, he's not making progress. And exactly to your point, sometimes modeling alone is not enough. It's like, yes, model and immerse kids and language the language of AAC, but also include opportunities for explicit teaching, lots of variety with repetition and you know, that's the thing.

00:13:17
And then one thing else I'll add is, you know, being really aware of the levels of support you're giving via prompting and using a least and most prompting hierarchy, which is exactly what my SLP, Alyssa did. And that's how we were able to scaffold the learning so that he could become more independent. And so it's like all of those things make, you know, the the progress happen. And sometimes kids can just be immersed in the language of AAC and just like start picking it up really quickly. But I'd say that most of the time that's not the case for the students that I'm working with, especially when we're thinking about core language.

00:13:55
Yeah. Months, years in some cases. And that's why all of this sort of goes to the idea of building capacity, which is exactly what our interview is today. I interview, well, I guess we have a conversation with some educators from Texas that are trying to build capacity throughout their entire school district. And we brainstorm strategies and of course we talked for a while.

00:14:18
So this is part one of that conversation. We'll be back next week with Part 2. Hey Rachel, guess what we're headed back to?

00:14:35
ATA.

00:14:36
We've been doing this now for a couple of years and it's always super fun time. It's a great experience and so this this is a whole what, a whole day together doing a pre conference.

00:14:45
I love our pre conference Chris. It's just like such an amazing group every single year and every single year it's totally different. I feel like it's never the same day twice and just full of tons of fun activities and lots of engaging conversations. And by the end of it, we're all like BFFS and it's so much fun.

00:15:05
So if you're interested in attending, check us out at atia.org, find the Pre conference link, find us & up and we'll see you there. Welcome to the Talking With Tech podcast. My name is Chris Bougay and today I'm going to I'm here with three guests and I'm going to let them introduce each other. Mackenzie, I'll start with you and then you kick it off to the next person. OK, Mackenzie.

00:15:34
Awesome. Hi, my name is Mackenzie Steve. I am a speech therapist by background, and I work on the Augmentative and Alternative Communication team for a large urban school district in Central Texas with two of my favorite people in the entire world, Danny and Kendra.

00:15:50
Hi everyone, I'm Danny Walgie. I am also a speech therapist by background on the AAC team with Mackenzie and we're excited to be here.

00:16:01
I'm Kendra Everett. I'm also a speech therapist and I'm also on the AAC team with Danny and Mackenzie.

00:16:09
So let me ask my first question. Are the three of you the AAC team or do you have even a larger team? How does that work?

00:16:18
I can take this one. So we are the bulk of the AAC team, but we do have an academic AT team that sort of assists in like things like curriculum access. So they'll work a lot of kids with kids who need like text to speech or speech to text. And then we have an occupational therapist on our team half time who supports us with access concerns.

00:16:43
Awesome. Awesome. How long have you existed?

00:16:47
I joined the team in 2020 and that was sort of there was always an SLP on the AT team until what, 2018 or so, and then the position was vacant for a year and a half and then I joined in 2020. There's a lot of leadership changes happening at that time, and I'm sure we'll get into all of this later. But we really did a paradigm shift in our district for how we were delivering services. And as we did that, we needed more and more and more help and we had some excellent people in supervision supervising us who added Danny and Kendra to the team. So then Danny joined last year, she was full time and Kendra was halftime.

00:17:28
And then this year all three of us will be full time supporting AAC users through capacity building.

00:17:33
That's so exciting, right? Is that? I mean, Kendra and Danny are super excited.

00:17:38
Yes, Yes, we are.

00:17:40
Yeah, it's been really cool to see where we've started with just Mackenzie and we've been able to grow, so we're excited for the school year. We've got lots of cool ideas and we have more help now, so.

00:17:56
Awesome. So let's talk about it. So what I mean, I know we. So let me tell the story. We were at Atia and you came up and we started chatting about what your experiences have been from listening to the podcast and the work that you're doing.

00:18:08
And I was like, you got to come on the podcast and that was back at Atia and here we are in the summer. I knew it was going to be some months to get to you, but I knew I was like, I got to reach out to them because you guys were doing such awesome. You were what you were telling me seems so exciting and so awesome. So let's jump in. What's some of the stuff that you're that you want to share with the world that you've been doing?

00:18:29
I think I can kind of give a broad overview and then maybe Danny and Kendra, you guys can explain the projects in a little bit more detail. OK. So when we started we were the district was relying largely on like an expert model where there was an AAC specialist who would go in and do one off evals. And then once I started, I was kind of young and like I was quote UN quote good at AAC, but I was more or less voluntiled to take this position. And it was in the middle of 2020.

00:19:00
So I was doing like going for really long walks and just listening to like all of your episodes of talking with tech. And like I realized very, very quickly that we were kind of using that gatekeeping model at that point. And so I proposed to my boss that we shift to building capacity. And so from there, we have lots and lots and lots of programs to support all of the various stakeholders. And we kind of operate using a mission statement that we did right.

00:19:30
And I kind of want to say like read it out to you because I think it is what we always come back to whenever we're deciding if we're going to proceed with a different project or not. So our team aims to provide equitable student service, excuse me, Our team aims to provide equitable student Centered assistive technology services to non speaking, minimally speaking and unreliably speaking students across the district by building the capacity of communication partners to provide high quality, responsive, respectful and evidence based AAC language and literacy intervention. So any time we're building out a project, we're going back to that mission statement and seeing how it aligns some of our favorite projects. We definitely, you know, we could talk for hours and hours and we have hours and hours of content about all of them. But some of our favorite projects are Danny has really helped to create a very, very robust.

00:20:23
Caregiver Education program and I'm sure she'll wanna talk about that. And then Kendra has built out a really robust classroom support coaching model using something that we're calling AAC Book Club and I'm sure she'll wanna talk about that. And then I really kind of hold what we're are like structured lectures and like professional development opportunities. So I'm doing a lot of the teaching stuff and then they're doing a lot of the modeling and coaching stuff. So we really try to follow that teach, model, coach, review paradigm and so all of that plus we as of yesterday actually are rolling out a multi tiered system of supports for our students in the area of communication.

00:21:07
Again inspired by some of your wonderful ideas and definitely influenced by our conversation at ATAA. So that's a very broad overview of all of our projects and I'm sure Danny and Kendra would love to go into more detail there.

00:21:19
This sounds super exciting. All right, Danny, let's hear about the caregiver education program.

00:21:24
Awesome. So yeah, our team, this idea kind of came from just seeing a need in our district for caregiver education, specifically for AAC. Like Mackenzie mentioned, we weren't really doing anything like this before. Our speech therapists were kind of the experts, and some of them weren't even really comfortable with AAC to the extent that we would like them to be comfortable. So there was just a need for it in our district.

00:21:54
McKenzie and I both also went to Graduate School at the University of Texas and they emphasized caregiver education and they had some programs there. So McKenzie actually had the idea of partnering with graduate students. We have several programs in the area to kind of support this caregiver program. But essentially what it is, is we are able to provide one-on-one individualized caregiver Ed sessions over zoom. It's offered to all of our families who use or who have a student or a child who uses AAC and their 15 minute sessions and we've been doing them where that we do it for six weeks.

00:22:36
So the graduate students will kind of leave the sessions and we'll supervise and kind of we debrief after and talk about what we're going to do with them next week and talk about, you know, topics maybe to bring up next week with the parents. But yeah, it's just been an amazing thing to see and it's been awesome for our district. We've been able to help 57 families so far, which for us is amazing starting from zero. So we've seen just some really great growth over time and just we've got an incredible feedback from parents. And essentially the feedback we've gotten is wow, I wish, you know, I had gotten this five years ago and my child first got their device or this needs to be offered, you know, beyond just this.

00:23:31
Like I'm wanting to learn more or you know, this is something I want every parent to have access to. So we're kind of continuing to build off of that. And yeah, it's been awesome do.

00:23:44
You mind if I ask a follow up question here? I think something the listeners might be thinking is with those sorts of services, are you putting those into the IEP or is it sort of just like, Nope, you just get it. Like we don't have to write into the IEP because this is just how we do it. What's the OR people who are listening go well, even if we just do it that way, Chris, we still need to write it in like how do you handle that?

00:24:08
So it's a courtesy service offered to all of our families. So it's not written explicitly in any of their Ieps. We've also kind of trained our speech therapists. McKenzie is probably going to talk about the professional learning stuff in a little bit, but we've trained our speech therapist to kind of replicate what we do in our sessions and kind of given them some information about caregiver education. So hopefully they can then carry that on at the campus level.

00:24:38
So then it becomes kind of a campus level decision at that point?

00:24:42
You mentioned some of the the feedback. Can you elaborate on that a little bit because it sounds like people love it.

00:24:49
Yes. So we sent out a survey after the second time we did it. So because we wanted to see like you know what appearance think about this like we're kind of just doing this as we go really, you know, So we sent out a survey and of the people who responded to the survey, 90% of the parents reported feeling confident in their knowledge and skills related to AAC them before the training, 70% responded or strongly agreed to that question about if their child can learn to read and write and then 100% responded to strongly agree to, I would recommend this training to other caregivers. So overall, it's really positive results. And I think the piece about literacy kind of showed us like, OK, we we need to focus on this even more than we thought we did.

00:25:43
70% is not where we want to be at for that answer. So again, we're kind of taking the data we're getting from parents and kind of figuring out how we can make it better in the future.

00:25:55
It sounds like you really leaned into using the graduate students. What kind of feedback have they given you? What kind of, I don't know, either qualitative or quantitative experiences have they shared with you?

00:26:09
Yeah, I mean I think a lot of our graduate students are just thankful for the experience there. A lot of them are coming in with very limited, if any experience with AAC. So they it's kind of like I know I did not have a class about AACI didn't have anything like that. I was kind of like we had to learn as we as we started the our jobs and things like that. So they're just kind of amazed that we even have a program like this and they're just excited to be there.

00:26:39
And I think they really enjoy like hearing the positive feedback from parents. Do you guys have anything to add? Because we've all kind of worked with the graduate students.

00:26:48
Yeah. Oh, Kendra, go ahead.

00:26:51
I was just going to add that I think that they all left feeling empowered to go out and, you know, start a job, work with students that have AAC and feel confident in what they're doing. So just knowing that their skills grew that much and it seemed to really spark an interest and a lot of them to continue working in AAC and working.

00:27:18
In education, like that's what I want to say from this is that two of them we've actually hired to come on ACS this year. So we're very excited about that. And then I think at least three more are working in different school districts and one of them is like, there's we, I want to do what you did in our district, 'cause this is incredible. So I I do want to say that, like, we build really good relationships with them and we want to keep in touch with them and like hear from them because our hope is ultimately that even if they don't come work for us or our district, that they'll go somewhere else. And just kind of it's a ripple effect.

00:27:52
You know, it starts from wherever, whoever heard it first. And it's really incredible.

00:27:58
Let me ask just some follow up questions here. So when the graduate students were working with the caregivers, which I think some people might use the word like communication partners, it sounds like it's parents and siblings and people who are not parents but that are caregivers. Other other caregivers. Was this, were the sessions in person remote? If they were only in person, do you think they could be done virtually?

00:28:25
How? How did it actually work?

00:28:28
So our initial, like the first time we did it, they were held in person and over Zoom and it was over the summer. So we were kind of able to do the in person because it was the summertime and our district had the funds to pay us to do that over the summer. And then during the school year, we wanted to be able to offer it during the school year and during the school year, we are offering it just over Zoom, just because we don't have the capacity to offer them in person during the school year unfortunately. But we do offer the zoom sessions.

00:29:07
So the graduate students are doing zoom sessions with the caregivers just want to make that right? And you're also doing zoom sessions to help the graduate students learn? The content is I do I have that all right?

00:29:18
Yeah. So I would typically so since I'm holding the professional we we just recently created specific buckets for who's doing what because we're all doing a little bit of everything. So everything's really been a collaborative effort but like we so we're doing it again this fall and our plan is to have two full days face to face hands on technical training with graduate students in addition to they have like a weekly assignment leading up to the caregiver education sessions that they need to do And then we also do a lot of video consent. So like last semester we we provided the education to the graduate students over Zoom once a week for an hour and then we had one full day of technical training. And then in the school year, since the parents are coming over their lunch hour, it's the we we didn't have the kids there.

00:30:12
So really the modelling was done sort of asynchronously. So we'd get video consent and then maybe once or twice the graduate student would meet with us and we would go to the campus video, the graduate student working with the student and the parent would video the if they were comfortable. So not all of them wanted to to show off on video, but but they would and then we would sort of review the videos in the session. So that's sort of how that like modeling and coaching piece came in. But Danny, I don't know if you want to talk more about how like the actual sessions were structured.

00:30:45
Yeah. So like McKenzie mentioned, we train the graduate students on like basic AAC fundamentals, literacy, you know, and then tech stuff based off of like what students they're assigned to. So they kind of know what they're doing when they go into it. And then we provide some materials for them to pull from. So we have some slides, you know, we have some videos that we've used, but we really put it on the graduate students to come up with what they're going to do in their sessions.

00:31:14
So a lot of times they will create their own slide ducks and kind of individualize it based off of the kid and you know where the caregiver is AT and and their kind of knowledge about AAC because some of them know a lot and some of them were starting from from nothing. So they kind of individualize those slides and topics based off of who they're working with. And so usually what they do is they'll do the teach, model, coach, review type of format. So they'll teach a concept to the parents, and then they'll do some sort of coaching activity, whether that's watching a video and talking through it. Or like Mackenzie mentioned, maybe we have a video of the actual student and they'll kind of talk through that with the parent and then they'll kind of review the concepts at the end of the session.

00:32:04
So I was recently at a conference where graduate students helped Kind of put the conference together and then volunteered there. And I got to talk to the professor for a for a hot second afterwards and was like, do they get something for doing this besides just, you know, the the, the work? And she was like, yeah, they get their certain hours that they need to accomplish was there, besides their own learning and feeling more comfortable and feeling more confident when they go, so do it just for those reasons. Was there anything else like well, actually they got credit for something.

00:32:40
Yes. So again we've kind of changed it as we've gone, but we've done it both ways where we our team has actually had our own two graduate students. So we would take them to campuses and support, you know, direct that way and then they were also doing the caregiver education sessions. But we've actually now what we're doing is we have several speech therapists in the district who have a graduate student on their campus and we basically say, hey, can we borrow them for a couple days a week to help us with caregiver sessions. And our district is so supportive.

00:33:17
Our speech therapists are so supportive. They are like absolutely. They also realize this isn't kind of a unique experience for their graduate students. So they get supervision hours, it goes towards their externship.

00:33:30
Awesome, awesome. Now one of the other reasons I was asking about virtual versus in person is I can imagine someone listening to this podcast going well. That's great, but I don't have a university near me, but that it sounds like a lot of what you're doing is through virtual means. So it's really time zones are the biggest barrier. You could really find any university and try and partner up with them and do what you're doing.

00:33:53
So what sort of advice if people are listening to this and they were like, yeah, OK, I'm in, I want to try and get something like this started. What sort of advice would you give them?

00:34:02
For me, I would say just start. Like don't be afraid to just start and do it. I think it can seem really intimidating when we're thinking about working with parents and the logistics can get complicated and all that. But really, just start. Even if you just start doing them, if you're one person in your district, even if you just start doing them, you know, that would be my biggest piece of advice.

00:34:29
Do you guys have anything to add?

00:34:33
I think just like really trying to take the perspective of the graduate student, because I know I would have loved having an experience like this before I was set free. So it's so someone could give me feedback and I could learn and not have to make as many mistakes when I start my CF. So I think a lot of our graduate students really valued a very like the debriefing sessions at the end. So we would maybe all three of us would be supervising one or two students hopping between the different zoom sessions. And then all six of them would come back together at the end and we would say OK, what went well in your session, what would, what would you do differently?

00:35:10
And then sort of having that community even though they're all at different campuses all across, you know we have 120 some schools in our district. So they're all over the place, but having that community so they could get to know each other and sort of support each other throughout that process was very, very helpful as well. Anything else, Kendra?

00:35:34
No, I think you both covered it.

00:35:37
Well, let me ask this. And you said like you, OK, this is your first sort of first foray and doing something like this, right. So what are some, what are some next steps, what comes what? OK, we, we feel excited about this. Here's where we're going.

00:35:53
Yeah, I think we're always thinking about that. That's something our team does well. We're always like, OK, that was awesome. What? What's next?

00:36:01
I think we want to continue to offer this to all of our families first and foremost. And I think we want to just keep figuring out what's working and what we can tweak and make better. But some of the things we want to do in our now to support parent and parents and caregivers is we want to offer AAAC parent to parent night this school year. So that's kind of in the works. We have not done that before.

00:36:28
So we'll see what that looks like a year from now. And then we also are wanting to send like quarterly parent newsletters to our caregivers and families. So that's kind of some of our ideas. And then for our caregiver add sessions in general, I think we've we've kind of got it down. I think for the most part the, you know we have learned how much training is needed for the graduate students.

00:37:00
We've kind of learned OK most parents need about six weeks to kind of really get some of the key concepts. Some of them require a little bit more. We've figured out that Fridays are not a good day to hold them because absences and out of town and all of that. So yeah, we're just excited to be able to offer it to our to our school district again.

00:37:22
Well, let me ask. It sounds like that's a lot of work, like building a website. Newsletters have to come out or usually come out and on a regular basis organizing the parent night. Do you feel like that's the three of you plus the part time occupational therapist, or is that something you're going to invite the graduate students to participate in? What do you think?

00:37:44
Who do you think is going to build this stuff?

00:37:47
That is a great idea. That's a great idea. We should use them to do that, Danny.

00:37:52
I know, I yeah, we had not thought of that, Chris. This is why we love talking to you this ideas. But yeah, no, that's a great idea. I think they would actually really enjoy that. Something we did do that I have not mentioned is during one of our professional learning opportunities for speech therapist, the one that we did about caregiver Ed, we had a panel of some of our parents who participated in the caregiver education program.

00:38:21
So our speech therapist and related service providers got to hear from the parents themselves. So I think that was huge for them. I think it was really impactful and I think it would be really cool for our graduate students to be able to have like that kind of experience and maybe planning and attending an AAC parent night that would, I just think be awesome, so.

00:38:42
That would be awesome. Recording a conversation with parents would be awesome. Inviting parents to write some of those newsletter articles. So then it's OK read this because it's from an actual parent perspective. Who's listed?

00:38:53
Who's living it, you know. Well, those are all great. All right, let me ask. OK, So that's the caregiver program. But Mackenzie, you mentioned at the beginning that there was also a book club.

00:39:05
So I don't know. Kendra, do you want to talk about the book club?

00:39:08
I do. I love, love, love the AAC book Club. I think it's our second iteration of kind of campus coaching, AAC implementation, you know, in the actual classrooms and we learned a lot from the first iteration of of campus implementations that you know, I think book club is the way to do it. It gets everybody really excited. Expectations are kind of set before and it's a lot more structured than just going in and trying to coach maybe the teacher Tasmania like we did initially, but AAC Book Club is it consists of six weekly campus visits where like the a ACSLP will go to the campus for a for a set shared reading time.

00:40:05
Kendra, wait, can I pause you here for a second? OK, when when Mackenzie said AAC Book Club, what immediately jumped in my mind is that there was some sort of professional book that you were reading about AAC and then you were having the graduate students or you guys or the parents reading a chapter of a book, coming back and reflecting on it. But that's not what you're talking about at all. You're talking about having a shared reading experience with kids, right. OK, so it's a book club for kids.

00:40:34
OK, Sorry, I needed to to really reference to to frame that for myself.

00:40:38
That's OK. Thanks for the clarification. I'm sure somebody out there was thinking the same thing. Yes, the AEC book Club is for the kids, it's solely for the kids. But what it does for the staff is it really helps them, gives them a model of how to model core comments how to you know do the really good, I would say modeling on the on the AEC system itself.

00:41:10
And So what happens is like the SLP goes to the campus for that set time and the ATSLP will read the book the first week and be the leader and during that time like I'll model the chords demonstrate phonemic awareness and alphabet knowledge. During the reading, we use a visual schedule to help the students, you know, know the predictable sequence of events that are happening. We mentioned shared reading that we also work on predictable chart writing too and sensory activities are included also to engage the students actively and be an extension of that book. You can kind of maybe think that where this is going, but we use those PRC literacy planners to do all these things and they have been a real game changer. Danny did a donors choose and wrote she raised the money to develop literacy kits so that we use the literacy planner.

00:42:17
We bought the books, bought the boxes, you know and the book and the all the craft materials, the any of the sensory activities that are listed along with that book are placed in that literacy bin. And so, SO PS can come to our where our offices and they can check those out for six weeks.

00:42:41
Kendra, let me ask. Let's imagine somebody listings like the PRC Literacy planner. What's that? Can you give us a brief description of like, you know, OK, so it's a thing that you open up on your computer and it helps you do.

00:42:54
And so you have the name of the book, like one book that we read this year was Giraffes Can't Dance. I think that one is pretty well known book. And so I have the picture of the book. So you kind of have an idea of what that book looks like. But then it has core comments already planned that you would say when you're reading the book.

00:43:16
And then it has extension activities like I think one maybe, yeah, I think it was Giraffes Can't Dance. The one of the extension activities was was using musical instruments. So you're not just in the schedule of we have to do this reading, we have to do the predictable chart writing. We want to really actively engage all the students and that's what shared reading is all about, right? Having fun, increasing the kids, just overall motivation to read.

00:43:51
And so we really get into this. So you know, we have some students that aren't able to sit there the whole time for shared reading, right? They're off in the corner kind of you know, trying to meet their own sensory needs and so, but we might have a small group and so we try to meet every kid in the group where they are and you know we have the the teacher is involved in this. The campus based SLP is involved in this in the classroom. All the, you know, instructional assistants are in their modeling too.

00:44:26
So it's not just you know, the ACSLP but and what it's doing really is right, you know, coaching the teacher, the campus based SLP, all the instructional assistants and that modeling and what core words are and like, OK, this time we're going to focus on the letter F or and when you see F we're going to raise our hand or and we really you know just make a big deal out of those things, right. And we give the kids a chance to you know make comments back and and then we've got the whole group sitting around talking about giraffes camping. And then you know, if if the kids can't, you know, we. And this has happened, right. The kids are done.

00:45:16
I might have gotten through half the book and I look around and I'm like, well, I everybody is not having this right now. That might be when we stop and do one of those sensory activities, kind of reboot, you know, kind of regulate that sensory system and then try again with maybe predictable chart writing or something like that.

00:45:37
Andrew so we're sorry I wanted to I wanted to ask before we get I do want to ask you about the predictable chart writing but let me ask you real quick the literacy kits you so we're we're trying to teach Gerald how to dance right and you bring you have this literacy kit that you use. Is the literacy kit built around the book? Is it built around the core vocabulary words or is it built about around letters or all of the above. Chris, how how did you structure your literacy kits?

00:46:05
All of the above, Chris, because it really goes along with what the PRC literacy planner has written out for you. It takes away all of the planning. You don't have to think about it if you use these planners. They're just really amazing resources. So that you buy the book, you just read off like what the core comments are and like, OK, that's what I'm going to use this week.

00:46:32
What we have gone to is really like putting sticky notes inside the book so that we don't have to think about those core comments ahead of time, so that we're reading the book and then we're like, Oh yeah, there's the comment that I want to say right now.

00:46:46
And is it? Is it fair to say that the idea there is not necessarily that you're trying to teach the kids so much? Well, there's a little bit you're really trying to model for the the teacher and the teaching assistants and anyone else in the room so that they can go, OK, now I know how to model when when Kendra's not here.

00:47:03
Most definitely we're you know we're working on the the modeling hierarchy too as we're going along. So we're trying to take all those basic AC tenants of, you know, modeling, but also like the prompt hierarchy and making sure that everybody is feeling comfortable with that and we're not getting, we're not seeing staff over prompts or under prompts, yeah.

00:47:34
Well, and then you started to mention predictable chart writing. Tell us about that.

00:47:38
Yes. So we, you know this is we hold the AEC book club for six weeks at the time. So it's not just a one and done right. We're not just going to go in there, read a book, it's over. But we also each additional week somebody else takes over as the leader, as the reader, so that teachers get experience reading the book and doing these literacy activities without, without the being dependent on the SLP, the campus based SOP.

00:48:12
If they're not as familiar with shared reading, they get that experience as well. Yeah, so even some of the Tasmania have taken over some of that reading leadership so that they get that experience with shared reading and doing it themselves. The idea is really to make them independent with doing it when we leave.

00:48:34
You got six weeks to kind of learn how to do this. Of course we'll continue to support but we are the the structure that we're starting with is here six weeks. So it's not a hey I came in and I told you about predictable try writing or I modeled once it's and see if you got it right see the sticky notes. OK, I'll see you. You got six weeks of support, heavy support, structured support with ongoing follow up after after the fact is how it sounds like.

00:48:57
Is that fair?

00:48:59
Yes, after every AC book club, there's generally like at least 1015 minutes where we can, you know, the the kids have been actively listening, so the teacher usually gives them a break or they might be doing something else. And I use that opportunity to talk to whoever read the book or the teacher about how they felt about what happened. Did they think that the class was engaged, what we need to do differently, Do they feel like they need support, more support in one area or the other and just seeing their comfort level so that we can best follow up. So the next week we make a plan for the next week. So we're all prepared to do whatever the plan is when we come in for the next week and.

00:49:48
Kendra, can I just add, I wanna say in those literacy kits there's also a binder of all like the PRC literacy planner that Kendra described, but then also all the implementation resources. So like a couple A1 pager on what is shared reading, 1/4 pager on what is predictable chart writing and what is independent writing, what could what does that look like? So that we we're not just going in and like modeling it for them and hoping they catch on, We're really doing some structured teaching. Then we model it. Then the following week the speech therapist takes the lead and they model it.

00:50:18
Then the teacher does it and they they lead the activities and this is really born out of me doing a horrible job with implementation training when I first started. And Kendra has really, really fine-tuned what this looks like to where it's very structured and everyone kind of is on the same page, very collaborative and creative and we're all designing it together. But I do just want to add in that piece about the binder because I think it's important that we're not just showing up to a campus. There's a lot of organization and planning that's happening here. And Danny did all of the work on like building out.

00:50:55
I I like one day bought all these books. I was like, look, I got these books and Danny was like, I have an idea.

00:51:01
She.

00:51:01
I wanted to mention too if anyone's interested in fundraising or maybe you guys have the money in your district to do these literacy bins on the PRC Planner. It has a materials list for each one of these things. So I literally just looked at the materials list and that's what I added to my cart so that they make it really easy. And it wasn't like we spent a ton of time having to do all of that. It's listed on there.

00:51:26
You don't have to think about it, which is awesome.

00:51:29
Do you find this is happening mostly at elementary schools or is it happening all across the board?

00:51:34
Yes, it's mostly happening at at elementary schools. I had on my What's next kind of thought is that hopefully we can develop literacy kits geared more towards secondary. And I think that's been our goal all along is to get you know progress from elementary to secondary and so want to develop those literacy kits to focus on emergent literacy activities for secondary. And by the way, we all three have a secondary background. We love secondary.

00:52:11
We want to see those secondary emergent literacy initiatives in place and we all have that heart for it. But I I think Elementary was kind of an easier spot to start. But we definitely want to go.