July 6th,2016

"Meet Tyler" video -- three "aha moments"

1. Family support -- so involved! Parents advocate for their child when he is young, leading to his advocacy for himself. Also a strong social group -- family, EAs, specialists, teachers, friends . . .

2. Assistive technology -- easily manipulated buttons allow for more independence; computers that recognize what Tyler is looking at. Teachers and educators have a responsibility to make as much of this available as possible, so that the student can be independent. 

3. Self-advocacy -- it is our responsibility to presume competence and not speak over the voices of those whose selves and issues are at stake. This issue really struck me; I feel like many people who are involved in social justice work have a tendency to see themselves as saviours, rather than assistants or aids who are responding to the expressed needs of the people we work with. 

*The things that work for our students with physical disabilities (such as digitizing, read-aloud notes, etc) work for all students. Everyone in the room benefits from these kinds of technological adaptations. Actually, all our students benefit from the "non-tech"aspects of this story: parental advocacy and self-advocacy,a strong community, and a strong friend group. 

I wonder how issues of poverty and racism would impact a story like this? What are the "typical results" (are there "typical" results?), for children with physical challenges, who are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and/or minority backgrounds?  The children who do not tend to get early interventions or early supports in any areas (literacy,numeracy,etc) are often those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Often minority students are "profiled"-- our society sees their behaviour issues, for example,  as willful misbehaviour rather than the results of, say, comprehension issues. 

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List at least 15 different ways to communicate/modes of communication

1. Gestures

2. Direction of gaze

3. Facial expressions

4. Sounds -- not words

5. Spoken words, face to face

6. Writing and reading words in the form of traditional texts

7. Indicating symbols that represent ideas

8. Indicating/creating symbols that represent sounds (such as our alphabet)

9. Indicating pictures of individual concepts/actions (such as the PECS images)

10. Spoken words through an intermediary device (phone, text-to-speech, or similar)

11. Touch

And . . . that's all I was able to think of! Some of these could maybe be broken into two (like #6 and #8). I will add more as I think of them.

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This useful article gives tips on how to avoid everyday ableism in our schools and in our society: http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/6-common-forms-of-ableism/