 Hi, Norfolk Middle School. We're going to begin in just one moment. We're getting a phone call and we think it might be a school who's having a hard time connecting, so we'll be right with you. I think some of our schools have snow days today. Can you believe it? It's craziness. How is the weather in Norfolk? We'll unmute you. There we go. Sorry. I thought I had it muted. How's your weather for you guys? It was a little dicey this morning. It's not bad now. The roads look okay. We heard that it's really blowing when it get out in the country right now. We know Boyd County is usually on with us with three different sites and they have a snow day and I told them that they could still tune in in their pajamas, but I don't think they're going for it. Yeah, I don't know about Stewart and some of those schools out west. I don't know. As far as I know, they had school, but who knows? It's just you and us. You really don't have to mute. I don't think so. It'd be great for conversation. You guys ask questions and stop us and interrupt wherever. We're recording so everybody can watch the recording later. So I'm going to hop on and I'm going to share my screen with you here. So today's topic of conversation is assisting students with special needs. I'm Steph Wannick and I'm Tina Souser again with you today. So hey ladies in the room, are you guys special ed paras in? Yes. Well we're not sped. We're just the regular classroom, but we work with sped. So okay. So the majority of your day you spend with your sped students or students with special needs? Yes. Okay, awesome. Well, you know Tina and I were regular ed teachers and so we will ask you to please type in wherever you feel like you want to and we really appreciate that. We've gone out to some experts, expert websites to try to find some information for today. And by no means are we experts. In fact, yeah, we just built in a little few places where we lack, but we did go out and we got some very useful resources for us, which are all within these slides too. So if you find them useful, please jump in there and grab those for yourselves as well. Oh, I see what you did. Okay. So I just joined on Zoom also. Okay, there we are. So we have both of you can see us and we can see you and go. Okay, you could probably see us anyway, but we couldn't see. So now we're all good there. Okay. Can you guys see our slides? Yes. Okay, awesome. Okay, so this first slide. In fact, I absolutely love this quote. It's every student can learn just not on the same day or in the same way by George Evans. And that applies so much when you're working with students. I bet you could say that for every day you can have a list of students that maybe got something out of the day and maybe didn't. And so I think that's just a wonderful quote to get us started. And with the idea that all students are very unique, whether they're students with special needs or just regular classroom students, we as teachers and educators have to focus on the individual student no matter what situation we're in. And I think that you would agree, right? We can say that a student has a certain disability, but really you have to get to know each certain kid to find out their abilities within that and what makes them tick. And so we'll talk about that a little bit later, but we'll talk about general categorizations instead of what we see in absolutely every kid. And I think we have a rock star that joined us on a snow day from home. That's pretty awesome. Thank you for tuning in even on a snow day. Bonus points, gold star. It's great to have you. And one thing, as we go through these slides and as we were putting them together, I could associate each of these situations with a student that I had worked with in the past. And so it was kind of interesting to put together some of those details and how I could have done things differently for the students that I worked with. And so I think it's a good opportunity for you guys too, especially in the timeframe that we're in right now, where you guys have had some opportunities to spend some time with these students and to really get to know them and to start identifying their strengths and weaknesses and things that make them tick and make them learn. So I'm going to jump out of this screen and share a really fun little video with you here. Our links for the video or insets for the video were not working, so we're just going directly out to YouTube here. Dear teacher, I know it doesn't always seem like it, but I really do want to listen and learn. Just my brain is kind of different. So this is what I'd like you to know about me. I have to move or I really can't pay attention. Even though I'm not looking at you, I can still listen to what you're saying. If you tell me, sit up straight. Now I have to use all of my brain to do just that. It makes me feel sad when you tell me to try harder, even though I've already tried as hard as I can. I actually listen better when I'm rocking in my chair. When you give me a bunch of directions, I start to think I will never remember all of this. Sometimes my mom or dad ends up doing all of my homework. So here's how you could maybe help. Let me get up and move while I'm learning. Let me look wherever I want when you talk to me. Let me rock or slouch in my chair. No matter what, please don't take away my recess. Give me hope I could do all by myself. Make sure I change. Very sure. Just ask me, what does your brain need right now? And one more thing. My brain might be different than yours, but it's still amazing. Sincerely, your student. Your student. Your student. Your student. So from that little video clip, could you guys relate to some of the students that you have currently or that you would like? Be your teacher. I know it doesn't always seem like. There we go. I know I have a few students that I could totally relate to in this video. I had a student that who couldn't sit still and couldn't pay attention if he was sitting still. He had to be doing something in order to actually to apply what he was learning. And it took me a while to learn that about him. But once I did, he I would let him draw. I would let him move in his chair and he just flourished throughout that whole year. And I think that's something that we have to be cognizant of with our students is allowing them to be individuals and allowing them to learn in the environment and the situations that they need to be successful. And I love the boy in the video who said, just ask me what my brain needs right now. I think we don't do that enough as educators. We just assume we know or go on and think that they should do it like the others. But if we asked them more and asked them to communicate, we would get farther. And so one of the best ways to kind of be able to relate to your students is to build those relationships with them and familiarize yourselves with the students strengths and challenges. And that goes all the way back to the environment that they're comfortable in the things that they need to learn and the challenges that they face. And we're going to talk a little bit more about the challenges and issues that some of our students face that we may not even be aware of. But it's important for us to build the relationships with them. And we talked about that at the beginning in our first session with you guys about how important relationships are. And especially when you're working with these kiddos and you're one-on-one or even as you go into the classroom working with others, you have to know them and know them well. And so many parents have those tight bonds with their students, I think, over the years. If you work with the same kids, especially, they get to trust you and that's a really amazing and powerful relationship that you build. But just to know that you really do, even with the hard kids, build those relationships and they'll communicate with you and you'll learn how they learn better. And then this is a quote that someone said to me recently and it was don't steal their struggle. That kids actually the learning process takes place while we struggle. If it's too easy, we're not learning anything. And we know that our special needs kids oftentimes have lots of struggles, right? So we have to monitor what's too much and what gets the frustration. But if we step in and do everything for them, then that learning process won't take place. And I think it's important too that that we, especially now that we build a foundation that failure and struggles are okay. It's, it's something that helps us to learn and to learn in different ways. And sometimes I think, you know, as a teacher or even as a mom right now, if my my kids or my kids, as they struggled, I just wanted to jump in and help them out and fix it for them to make them feel better. But in the end, that's actually really hurting their knowledge process and their building of understanding when we want to fix it for them. And it doesn't make us a bad person. It just makes us, you know, we're wanting to help. That's why we do what we do. But in reality, when we do it for them or, or when hindering them a little right, we're hindering their knowledge and hindering what they can learn from their failures and from their mistakes. Um, and also, we need to discuss any learning goals for the students with the classroom and special ed teachers. I think that we found out at the beginning of the year that a lot of you don't have IEP shared with you. And that's fine. You know, there's a lot of confidentiality around them. However, you might just go to those teachers and say, now what thing should I be working on with this student? And or, you know, if we have an extra five minutes here or there, what would you like me to be learning on working on? And those might be things that the students need for some growth, some maybe skills that are missing. And also areas for extension. So is there a topic that they love that they could learn more about if there's a little time? And even just, you know, inquiring about some apps or tools or resources that they use regularly or that they enjoy learning from would be helpful just for you to have something additional for them, not not as a game per se, but just even a something that can help calm them if they're getting stressed about something else. Well, and I think, you know, if those those extra things that you will learn through relationships that they love should be goal oriented, you know, we want them very educationally focused. So so we have some different supports to promote that independence. And we talked about this at the beginning of the year, some to how we we want to help them not do it for them. Right. And so then, you know, the definition, the true definition of independence, and this is from the Webster dictionary, I believe is is is freedom from control or influence of others. And I think when they are allowed that freedom of control, that's when they start being more innovative and discovering things on their own and learning that really, you know, things can be hard sometimes, but I can I can do it. I can do this after some practice, I can get there. And I think sometimes that's where they fall short too, because often it's in the past, you know, for them, they've had maybe a lot of additional support where we're supposed to be trying to wean them off of that support and get them to do that themselves. And just like my three year old daughter, she in the morning, I need your help, I need your help. Well, you know, if I continue to help her, she's going to continue to ask me if I if I encourage her to do it on her own, she's going to build that understanding that she can do it. And she can she can make things happen for herself. And I think the same thing goes for our students. I definitely know that I would have done things differently in my classroom in in respects to this. With some of my students where I could have fostered a lot more in independence than I did. Oh, we all think about that as our first year. Um, so one thing to focus on is some less intrusive support. So, you know, maybe not having to go in and write it for them, or maybe not having to do those things that are so intrusive where you give them the least amount of help that they need to make them be successful on that task. And I think these components are things that you're not evaluating your kids, you're evaluating yourselves in these components, like, you know, being less intrusive is back off from hovering maybe a little bit or your odd audible supports less audible supports, let them try to work through some problems or or verse through some problems on their own. And I think some of our kids get used to having their name called out to them all day. You know, Johnny, stop that Johnny do this Johnny get in line. You know, if we can do some of that with like even just a visual cue, like they know if you point that they know to come get in line, or if if you give them a little bit of, you know, a quiet symbol, and they can get it that way instead of when it's audible, all the other kids here too. And it can be a little bit embarrassing for the teacher look. Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm sure you guys all have a teacher look. I think we're born with those as teachers, aren't we? I think kids really feel respected, though, when things are less audible. Yeah. Yeah, and facilitating facilitating the peer to peer interactions is really important to some of our kids with learning challenges also have challenges with social interaction. So if we can foster them working in a group and maybe stand back and let them try to work in the group, or maybe they need a little bit more support at the beginning of group work, but then start to back off as you do lots of group work during the year. And I think this is one of those things where you're actually teaching them social skills behind the mask of your curriculum skills and whatever else is going on in the classroom because as Stephanie said, we're going to talk about this a little bit later, some of our students really struggle with social interactions and really have a hard time maintaining relationships with their peers. And so I think it's important for us to facilitate that wherever and whenever we can. So these are some cartoons that kind of exemplify some of those supports for kids. So this first one Joey noticed a mysterious force field around his assistant that children could not break through. And so this is, you know, creating those barriers where oh, don't touch or don't come near or don't facilitate the same interaction as we have with the other students because you might break them, right? So let them in and let them all work together just as the rest of the classmates are. And as sometimes it gets to be a kind of a hovering that it isolates that kid from all the peers, you know, and so we want to really make them feel part of the class and not isolated. And here's another one where we were talking about is it helping or is it hovering? And this one, I kind of like that the whole outline of this being a guardian angel protecting them, the super magnet where, you know, you don't let them get two, two inches away from you or, or you're stuck to them like glue everywhere they go, you go and again, the hovercraft. So everything that they do, you're watching over. And I think this is epidemic of all kids lately. We talk about helicopter parents and things like this. Coming in to save the day, we don't give enough kids enough practice and solving their own problems. And so, you know, yes, you're there to jump in when they need you. But let them have a little bit of room and a little bit of space to do it on their own. A little bit of a lot of independence. And the funny part is as we were putting this together, and I was looking through these cartoons, I could tell you a moment I did that in every piece of my teaching career. And in fact, you know, I do it now with my kids. And so being aware of that, hopefully, Well, and it's you don't want them to fail, you don't want them to have a hard time. So you want to jump in and be there to help. But And that's that whole idea of going back to that failure is good and failure is okay. And it's just learning from those failures that is where we grow. But also having somebody believing in you that you can handle it on your own is so powerful too. So And so there's times you're working with a student maybe in the corner of the room and you don't mean to be a distraction. Sometimes it gets to be a distraction because it's so loud. So those those audible cues that we need to have a little quieter. And I mean, that is a balance, isn't it? You have work that you need to get done with your student, your student, the class has work. Maybe they need to get down with the teacher. And if you're doing something separately, it's a battle for that voice. Or maybe you're working with a student who's particularly loud back in that corner. So that can be hard. When it's a full class, everybody's doing the same thing. It's probably a little bit easier, but definitely a balance there. Yeah, and I think it's important for for us to note to when working with them, you know, what exactly are they supposed to be paying attention to? I found myself a lot of times when I was working with one of my kindergarten kids, I would repeat the instructions as the teacher was giving the instructions, right? So did they really get anything out of the teacher's instructions where as hindsight, I should have waited until the teacher was done asked the student what they understood and then we could maybe write out the instructions together, rather than me repeating them in the middle of the teacher's instructions. And I'm not saying that you guys do this all the time. But sometimes, you know, we again, it's the independence of making sure that we give them the reins and then have them maybe regurgitate what they've heard and then we can fill in the blanks later. And some of that is also the class might be distracting to the student you're working with to and they might be more interested in what others are doing than what they're supposed to be doing. So Okay, here we have Rodney learns not to make a move until he's told. And some of our kids get so reliant on help that they don't do anything by themselves. So we really do want to, you know, force that independence and have them kind of come up with what they need to be doing. So kind of in special ed talk, we have modifications that we can make for kids and we have accommodations we can make for kids. So those are two very different things. And if you are one of the pairs that gets to see an IP, you'll see these words there. And teachers might use these when discussing goals that they have for kids. So if we go on here, we're going to highlight the differences between the two. So if you think about a modification, it's really like a tweak or a slight change to the work that the whole group might be doing. It's an adaptation or an adjustment. So for instance, you might be working on, I don't know, I'm just pulling it out of the air, but math worksheet with facts on it like a time test or something. So your student would have a modification if instead of doing that page in one minute, they got five minutes to do it. Or maybe it was untimed or something like that. That would be a modification. I always go back to the Saxon math because I mean, a lot of people do Saxon math and they have those time sheets. And I know kids that that just throws them for a loop because they can't think about that because all they can think about is the time that they have to finish it and knowing that they're not going to get it done. And those are the kids that you allow to do it on your own time and get it right. And usually what happens is if that is a distractor for them, they will get all the answers right. It just takes them more time. And I'm thinking about those Saxon time tests. When I was in the classroom, I had a student who was actually a very high ability kid, but the time just threw him. And that's a sign that every kid has strengths and challenges. So we just simply folded his paper into those sections. And he would rather do the four minute time test in four sections, one minute at a time, than all together just threw him. And that's just another example there is to adjust the number of practice items. So if you're working, well, we're on the math topic. So if you're in a lower elementary classroom and you're working on simple addition facts, a student who's struggling might need more practices. An algebra student in high school might need to do less problems because it's frustrating to go through the whole process for more. So you just don't know what you're going to modify that to ensure success and ensure that they retain their information. And one thing, and you would definitely have to okay this with the teacher because sometimes they have specific things in mind. But one thing that I tried with students in the past is they had to do, you know, there was 30 problems but say they only had to do 10 of them. I would give them a choice of which 10 they wanted to do it. Now, again, like Saxon math, that's kind of hard because some of the problems are you have to have one of each different kind. So you definitely want to okay that with your teacher, but giving them a choice in what they want to do to kind of empowers them and fosters, again, that independence. So when we look at an accommodation, this is a change for the kids. This is something very different. You might even be in a different location than the rest of the class. This is when we were talking about that picture where there's a pair of working in the back of the room with a student on probably, like the second bullet says, a completely different skill or assignment. This might be the classes working on fractions today, but our student is working on basic condition. Okay, this is something very different that their learning needs are different from enough of the class that it will be, you know, completely different. So I said different enough there, didn't I? I'm sure you guys are asked to do many of both of these all the time with students. And so you probably have a very good perspective on which each of those those address. And I think that in general, our thought is we want to do as many modifications rather than accommodations. We'd like to keep it a modification and keep kids similar to what's going on with the whole group as much as we can. If they can't be successful that way, that's when we get into an accommodation. That's when we change what we're doing. But we want kids in their least restrictive environment, which means they're with their whole group as much as we can possibly keep them there. And I think one of the most important components of this is to be in constant communication with the teacher and with the special ed director, whoever else is in charge of the student IPs and things like that and to communicate well with them. Not only with what you should be doing with them, but even like an assessment from your point of view, I think is important. And as a teacher, if I had you working one-on-one with a student or individually with students of mine, I would definitely want that report. You know, if not daily within the week and knowing how they're progressing and what is working for them and what isn't. And I think that's an important point of all of this. No matter what area you're addressing or what students or how you're working with them. So let's just take a minute before we go on and turn to the people that you're around or think on your own about what do you mostly do, accommodations or modifications, and maybe you have an example of each of those. We'll give you a little talk time here. Okay, who wants to share something that they are talking about? I know this group and you all want to go first, but somebody has to wait their turn. We were talking about we always usually pull a group of kids out for like worksheet time or tests. So that's an accommodation. Modifications, we use a lot of like maybe there's an answer choice eliminated. So there's only three choices instead of four. Absolutely. And then to like time tests, going from like three minutes to maybe we give our group of kids five minutes. Sure. That helps. Awesome. Good examples. Sherry's group, did you have anything? Dr. Scherer? I was telling the two that are in here with me that I think like here I would say I probably do more modifications with our high school kids and with elementary there's more accommodations and that's just the difference in the age level. And they're probably you're probably working with them more right in the classroom where elementary kids sometimes you pull out and that kind of thing. Those flexible groupings. Good idea. Anybody else? Well we're going to move on here and in our topic of you know assisting kids with learning challenges, we are going to address some specific disabilities that you might see in schools and like Tina and I said we don't feel like the complete experts in this but we went out to some websites that offered a lot of good information and really I guess as a classroom teacher if I heard that you know like at the end of the school year I got my class list for the next year and I was told I have a student with autism that would be coming into my classroom all summer I'd kind of gather information and read and things like that and I would know that no two students are alike there's no molds for this there's no every kid with autism acts this way but you know I'd like to have a few tricks up my sleeve a few strategies planned out that I could use get to know my student like we said build those relationships and find out about all of their amazing abilities. So in these lists here it's kind of like prep for hate this might be something that you see when you're dealing with a student with autism or a student with ADHD and we'll go on from there. So we hope that this list is helpful we also have links on each page that you can access for more information from these great sites but we do have a nice quote and it says fair does not mean that every child gets the same treatment but that every child gets what he or she needs. So I had a little activity that I had done with a few of my classes I'm sure that you get kids I remember being a high school kid and we knew you know we knew as a class that this one student got a few of their answer choices marked off and it was one of their modifications and someone complained about it that's not fair that's not fair we should get that too and it is fair but so what I did with one of my classes or a few of my classes is a little lesson at the beginning of the year and you know somebody would say oh I need a band-aid you know one of my students would need a band-aid and I'd say okay everybody line up you know so-and-so needs a band-aid so everybody line up you all must get a band-aid it's what's fair and kids would be looking at me like I was crazy what are you talking about I don't need a band-aid you know and I'd say oh yes you do it's fair everybody gets a band-aid and you know then when they come to the realization I was trying to teach them a lesson I'd say listen I'm going to get to give you each what you need this year it's just you're each going to need it in a different way at a different time and but guaranteed you will get what you need this year and I think part of this goes back to that little video we shared with you earlier and what is the harm in asking your students what do you need for me to be successful and what do you what is it you need from me to help you do and if they say everything then you say well great I understand that I need to help you be independent right because they might say that but I think it's important that we ask them because they might they obviously are going to have a better insight than than we ourselves and even when you guys go to work on with them one-on-one you know they that opportunity to talk to them about what they think they need or what works best for them is huge I remember having a student who often missed his doses of his ADHD meds and you know he'd have a rough time and one time we went a stretch of a week and normally he read his math tests out loud to me and we worked on him as I sat there with him to kind of keep him focused and he was just struggling and all over the place and his eyes were wandering and I finally looked and I said is it just all jumbled right now and he said yes and I said we will do this test later you know he just needed to tell me I can't focus right now because I haven't had what I need so um just talk to your kids and get one-on-one with them and they'll trust you enough to tell them and you guys have the opportunity to build those relationships independently yeah so um we have ADHD yes and honestly I meant to say earlier we by no means can cover in this short hour that we have everything or all the the ins and outs of what you can see or what you might be seeing in your classrooms what we tried to cover some very broad topics that a lot of you might face too so and these resources if you have an opportunity or if you are struggling with a student these resources are amazing resources all the way down from giving ideas on how to work with these kids as well as understanding where they're coming from so please make sure that you access those resources and if one area is a particular interest and you have more questions that might be something that we hit this summer as we work together for a day or next year so please let us know if if you think ADHD is the thing that you want to spend a lot of in-depth time on let us know that on a survey or an email we'll be surveying you next month on what you'd like to see this summer and let us know so we can add to this yeah and do some research on getting more informed people than ourselves obviously but get you some more information so please feel free to reach out so when you have a student with ADHD of course every student is unique but these are some things that you might see in your students some might demand attention by talking out of turn moving around the room we know that they tend to be just a little bit more impulsive with that kind of thing so that's something that you might want to develop a nonverbal cue with about sitting down you know you might just do this with them and that means to sit down or to calm down um uh they might have trouble following instructions especially when they're presented in a list um you know long long um directions can be hard for kids and the girl in the video said that we need to break it up one step at a time and then add in okay this time we're going to do it two steps but it takes a long time to learn those processes and and it takes patience and work and that's where you start folding the papers or covering extra stuff um whatever you got to do to help with that piece um and they often forget and this is more than I mean this could extend to a lot of students you probably know but they forget to write down their homework assignments um or to even do them um and they can't bring it completed to school because they just that's it's not that they can't do it but you need to help them with processes in order to get it done and that's part of successful yeah that's part of executive function that we talked about I think in December um one of those skills and I was just sharing a story about with Tina about a family member that I have that little sixth grader who was struggling with some of these things and boy we got on a few strategies about circling things in an assignment book and he's had all of his assignments turned in for about a month now or we're super proud of him so he had a he had a reward this weekend and I think that next bullet point leads back to why or maybe how um they they're not able to to do this because they lack the fine motor control and it makes it hard for them to take notes or to write things down now does that mean if we go back and go back to fostering independence does that mean that you should write everything down for them no I think it just means that you help them make accommodations or make modifications where um they can get the information that they need without writing every word or or even drawing pictures I know I had a student who um was really good at drawing pictures so instead of writing down what he needed to do he he drew a picture of his math assignment and just would include the lesson that he needed to do and and that worked very well for him and some kids with note taking difficulty and handwriting issues they actually type their notes and that can be really successful especially as they get older um also there's some note taking strategies with um having blanks maybe the notes are are copied from what the teacher's giving and then we just leave blank words here and there that they have to fill in that can help them a lot and those of you who use or have access to technology there are some great resources text-to-speech resources that um writing google documents you can click text-to-speech and they can just um record either record their voice uh with the assignments or with the notes or record their teacher giving them the assignments and it will type it for them so that they have a list already so these kids also another executive function skill that they might have trouble with is um doing those bigger long-term projects that have multiple steps and maybe you're working on it with them over a week or so or maybe even longer um those kids need to break it down they need to talk through each step with you and have a plan before they get going so um you can definitely be a help there and help keep them on track and these kids also struggle with with group work and i think some of this goes back to their social skills and and not knowing or being able to build those social skills like they should but they they oftentimes are not they don't work well in groups but because they can't um they're they're not socially adept and so it's hard for them to work within a group or even to pull their own weight in a group and so sometimes i think that's where you um come in with assignments for group members you are assigned to this part of the group you're assigned to this part of the group and so that that gives them a better direction um but they also may be a little bit disruptive in a group because they can't um focus on what they're supposed to be doing when there's multiple instructions for the group they're multiple tasks to be handled within the group and this is believe it or not another example executive function that kids have social skills so that you can be a really good help there to help guide them sometimes when we let kids loosen a group and they don't have that correction when they needed need to be corrected right away then that bad behavior gets learned and they can and they repeat it so you can be right there to guide them and help keep them out of those tricky situations with other peers without hovering yes hovering too much but sometimes they need that guidance so we were talking a little bit about executive function those are some of those skills that's the brain's queuing system up here in the front of the brain and that we talked about in December um and um actually about 75 percent of kids with ADHD have executive function problems so I think that that might be a good area to focus on this summer as we talk more about executive function absolutely those are the kids you will see all the time too next we have autism and of course um one reminder that we had as we started to work on this is we always want to say a student with ADHD or a student with autism because autism is not who that kid is it's not my autistic kid we catch ourselves saying that I catch myself saying that and I have to remind myself no this is a student my student with autism my student that has autism the disease does not own them mm-hmm and so autism is a spectrum disorder they call it in a spectrum disorder means that there's different severities and there's also a lot of disorders under that umbrella of autism we see um kids with Aspergers who oftentimes have very high IQs and are high functioning academically um and we see kids who are verbal or nonverbal um we see kids with sensory disorders in there so there's a lot of differences um but they're all under kind of that umbrella of autism um so we have a list here um from this great website that um help guide at the bottom um on some things that you might see in kids with autism um and so first this talks about the social behavior and social understanding and again the social interaction it can be very difficult for children with autism um they can use inappropriate body language or facial expressions where this is where they may be they may have a facial expression that completely does not match how they're feeling or or what they're actually saying um and they have lack of interest for other people and other people's interests in them or what's going on around them and on that note I think that sometimes we have to teach them those facial expressions that match but for us as educators to realize they're not just being naughty or defiant in laughing when we are kind of scolding them or something um it's it's that that's just their body's reaction um or in the same way with those social situations they might act like they don't care about anybody else but maybe we have to draw that out of them a little bit and and try to make them see what the other person's going through and I think and that's a big one for the social behavior um and autism because they really don't understand or even process how what they're doing may make other how other people feel from what they're doing and so I think with those kids it's important to stop them and say how do you think that makes this person feel and they may honestly depending on the the level that they're at they may not be able to tell you at all and that might be something that you have to help them um evaluate because they they have no sometimes they have no sense of how other people's people feel based on their um reactions so think about Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory Sheldon oftentimes doesn't know what the other people are thinking and feeling yeah and and again part of the social piece of that they they don't like to be touched and that this is generalizing again that's not everyone but they don't like to be touched and they kind of have their own little space bubble that they they live in um and they don't often have friends especially children their age um and that's just because of their social um just being able to interact with them or interact at that level and I think as we talk to Paris you Paris out there um you work with all ages of students so those of you who work with preschool you can see we're pretty good about being around and helping facilitate those social times and hopefully um you know things get better for students as they get older but I could imagine in in middle school and high school that maybe um kids start to drift apart a little bit again um but you know kids I think are learning um about kindness and about how to include others and so you know if we can um encourage that as much as possible that'll help these kids we might see um some speech and language issues for our kids with autism so um they might go speak a speech teacher also they might be pulled for that um so they might be delayed in when they start speaking so if you work with those little guys um you might see that they're behind there um some kids speak in an abnormal tone of voice maybe a high pitch or a rumbly pitch I I definitely had a student with autism that um talked in a different way and it was just who he was and how he worked and our class was really accepting of that um they might repeat words and phrases over and over if you think about rain man is another um character that we've seen in film with um autism um they might have a trouble starting a conversation or keeping it going with someone you might have to facilitate keeping it going or maybe you make them a little cue card for when they're sitting at the lunch table and want to keep conversation going of some questions that they could ask other people sometimes it needs to be a little bit artificial like that to to get them comfortable with it to encourage the communication yeah and I think one of the big parts of this and I've seen this happen before where they're they're unable to communicate to you their needs or their desires what they actually want and it I've it's interesting because you they get so frustrated because they can't communicate that to you but but you should know right and and that on your end could be extremely frustrating frustrating as well but they're just literally unable to communicate that to you and I think that next bullet point works right in that that they don't understand simple statements or questions and we as the teachers and I need to know that we can't just say it over and over in the same way for those kids we might have to model it we might have to act it out we might have to use some different words for them so that they'll understand and like those picture clues sometimes sometimes pictures or even photographs of someone doing it the right way can really help a video or something like that to show them so we need to remember that you know we we can't do this thing the same way over and over you know that whole if I'm louder and slower they're going to understand now doesn't really work here we need to do it differently and continuing on with autism they have some restricted behavior in play so the repetitive body movements like hand flapping and I know Stephanie had an example of that as well student who gets gets excited and they flop their hands and those are things that kids can learn over time to to watch a little bit but at the same time it's not hurting anyone and I also think you know again referring back to the video we watched earlier the the rocking and the spinning or the constant movement for some of these kids actually is not it it's not a deterrent for them it's it's what they need to do in order to focus and I think that's important to remember but they also may have an obsessive attachment to unusual objects in and the one that caught my eye in here and I'd be curious to see where this come from is is they mentioned in here light switches I'd be curious to see if if anybody had an example of that but I you know any kind of unusual object they may have an attachment to or just like to fiddle with it kids with sensory issues like many with autism have maybe they'd like to pull that rubber band over and over and over or I've had students who like to have velcro underneath their desk sticky velcro and just playing with that velcro helps them just calm it down and they they make some of those sensory resources that you can get for your kids and and some of them are handheld some of them are you know you just things that you spend there's all kinds of things for that one of my schools we had sensory boxes for each classroom we just had them sitting outside the door and honestly it was mostly dollar store fines it was kush balls that you could pull the elastic on and things like that that had a texture touch so I think about a pillow that my daughters have that you you make it go one way in the sequence or one color in the other way and that that to me is like a calming thing just because I can sit there and do that over and over again so that's something that they probably need more of and one of the things on here that really stands out to me is the idea that they need sameness they need routine they need order and I recall a kid I used to work with several years ago and if one little thing was out of order in his day it just threw him for a loop and he couldn't concentrate for the rest of the day so I think you know if if those kids if something's going to change in their day they need to know that ahead of time before that object or before that event comes up otherwise they're going to have a complete meltdown and I had a student who if I forgot to put the agenda on the board he was up asking me for that because everything was very black and white and he needed to know what was going on and um also they you know we talked about some fine motor skills but there's some gross motor skills too those bigger um so those bigger movements um it might lead to a little bit of clumsiness or different posture um so it all this also affects how they play you know and so we need to be there to facilitate those friendships when they're young especially that some of that free play time that I think about centers and um recess and things like that in the elementary and then as they get older some of that free time with their peers yeah and it's the way that they play you can watch them to the very limited and make believe um it's everything is as it is and so that's interesting when when they're playing okay um did I skip one no I think you got it okay all right so moving on so we've talked a little bit about sensory issues um basically all their five senses are heightened so something sounds loud or shrill to us it's a lot more loud and shrill to them so we um really need to watch those times that the senses are being um you know uh stimulated yeah um I was telling Tina I had a student who um you know he was very sensitive to noises and so he had a set of headphones and he would put on his headphones if we were going to allow the situation he had them in his desk so if the fire um the fire drill alarm went um he would put those on right away you can think about how loud that and uncomfortable that is for each of us and it was 10 times for him um and one day we had steel drum bands come to our school um and they were um performing and I asked him is this something that you want to listen to and he said I have my headphones and I might never get this opportunity again so I loved his um outlook on that and um he really said you know I can overcome this uncomfortable nature because I want to experience and I like the idea too going back to you gave him the choice you know you gave him the choice to not go or to choose to go and again fostering that independence not just assuming that he shouldn't go because he's not going to like it and with um this I think a lot about touches and textures that bother students I I really had a student that uh wouldn't follow along finger track while we read because the feel of the paper underneath his finger just totally bothered him um also we see this with little kids with textures of foods so you might see it in the lunchroom some or you know there's all those um activities with like spelling out words and in um shaving cream on desks that that can really bother kids so we just have to be a little bit more sensitive to some of those things and again it all goes back to knowing your kids and knowing what makes them take in life what bothers them and go ahead yeah emotional difficulties too there that they say that sometimes um there's some aggression there and sometimes even harming themselves and so there's some uh a resource there that you can access if that's something that you see with students and then um some students have uneven cognitive abilities so one area of their academics they might be really high and another area might be lower for them right and that's true about all of us right right and and their verbal and non-verbal skills can be you know one could be really heightened and one could be awful it's just depends on the individual or the person so as we move um from autism and now we just talk about um learning disability so this might be um lots of students are labeled with a uh learning disability of reading or math and some with both um so um and this this one this screenshot of course is from this website again and I really like how it outlines the different levels so we have the preschool age ages five to nine and ages 10 to 13 um difficult learning disabilities and how they might present themselves and so as you're working with your students one thing that you just really need to focus on is communicating back with your classroom teacher or the sped teacher and asking them a lot of questions because of course we see different things at different ages and maybe you're seeing something that you know that maybe there's something you could do to help with but needs some ideas go back to those teachers and ask them for some ideas there so and I think it's important for you to I guess when you're working with a student in communicating with the teachers you know it doesn't hurt for you to to take notes to go back to and discuss with the teachers because then you've got everything written down and you can go back and have an intelligent conversation with the teacher about what happened that day or again like I said I always like to hear if I couldn't do it daily it would be weekly that I wouldn't hear to go over the progress of the students and I think teachers rely on you so much because you guys do so much hard work with those students and you are seeing those little things that are happening and they you're just a wonderful resource for them so we have another nice little video here to remind you that what we do really does make a difference the teacher and a teacher got teached by another one so all kinds of teachers teach other teachers sorry about that it was started they got teached by another teacher and a teacher got teached by another one so all kinds of teachers teach other teachers how to teach kids when you think you've got the job down that's the time to be nervous as teachers we have to learn how to adapt children learn different ways they learn by touching they learn by doing they learn by seeing or hearing the teachers always make it fun for us into games for us weird to say quizzes are fun but yeah he makes them fun good teaching is performance their job is to inspire you to do something with your life and I love that blow in their mind the goal is to make them better for whatever that's worth and that's the biggest reward ever it's really cool you touch one child's life I mean that's everything it's everything so hope you guys all feel that way that you love your job and it's fulfilling to you as it is to all your students but I know that if we had your students in the room they would all say thank you so much for seeing me as an individual for helping me with everything that you do you know Paris are amazing people absolutely that's why we're here with you today because we know that so we want you to just think ahead to next year a little bit can you believe we're doing that I've like had my calendar on December of next year already which makes me a little anxious but we definitely hope to see you all this summer when we spend a full day together like we did last year so for most ESU 8 schools all schools except for Norfolk Public we will see you in Neely on August 10th we're calling it Camp Para ESU 8 this year we had a skydiving theme we're gonna have some fun with our theme this year yes and we'll be at Neely from 9 a.m to 3 p.m at our fairgrounds building and Norfolk Public will be coming to you on August 15th which is maybe one of your first contract days it was last year at least and we're not sure the location yet but we can't wait to see you too so we're really looking forward to continuing the learning we will meet you with you in May also so don't think that we're over but we just wanted you to just save that date and put it on your calendar because we hope to see you now speaking of next session in May it's a technology session for you guys and there is kind of like today's session there's just so much that I could cover but I want to make sure that I'm meeting your guys' needs so on this slide if you go to this slide on this website there's May's technology session form I would like you to give me some feedback on what you'd like to see in relation to technology and what we can talk about for that hour that I get to present with you so please make sure you go to the site and fill out this form and I will guide my hour with you towards what you need and what you would like to see and we have most of your emails so maybe Tina could email that link out too I will email it out to the addresses that we have we don't have everybody it's some bounce back to us but we have a lot so we'll have those there and I will get that to you within the week so please make sure to give me your feedback because I like I said we want to engage it to what you need in respects to that so and as always we're here for you so if you need anything just email us or give us a call here at the ESU we're happy to help any time and just thanks for what you do for kids every day yes and thank you so much for joining us especially the person who is at home that is amazing and again if you have any questions our emails are always available so please do you guys have any questions or responses for today's session that you'd like to share also if we see you in May and it's snowing we're going to know you bad luck for us okay we missed last month due to snow and now it's snowing again so no more snow but does anybody have anything they'd like to share all right thanks for joining us everybody have a good rest of your day bye bye everybody bye