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>> Hi. Welcome to the webcast, Looking Towards the
Future, Using Person-Centered Planning Tools Pre-K through
Adulthood. My name's Teresa Cogar. I'm a training staff
at the Virginia Commonwealth University Autism Center
for Excellence.
During today's presentation I'd like to talk to you
about the person-centered process. I'd also like to
introduce some tools you can use with individuals with ASD
and intellectual disability to help you through that
process. I'd also like to talk to you about how to
adapt those tools so that they're important to the person
using those tools as they go through the process.
Currently our students have many open doors towards
their future. It's important that as we take them through
the person-centered planning process that we keep those
doors open. Sometimes in education we get wrapped in all
the things we have to do, the IEP's, transition planning,
and oftentimes some of those doors close and we
make decisions for our individuals instead of with them.
What if we could use the decision-making process and
look at all of the alternatives, all of the uncertainty in
our student's life, looking at consequences, their
interpersonal relationships, all of the complexity in
their lives and really sit down with them and look at those
on a personal level, looking at the -- looking with the
people in their lives and saying how does this impact the
people around them, how can we build a positive and possible
future for them. We're looking at everything in their life
and making a road for them to be successful. And that's making decisions with them, looking
at when things are happening in their life, who are
the important people in their life, what is going on around
them, how will that impact what happens next to them, where
are they going in life, the relationships, their employment,
what's happening to them in school, why is that so
important to them and how is that going to impact them?
And not taking decisions for them. It's really important to understand that individuals with
autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disabilities
have the capacity and the capability. It's their right
to make their own decisions and we should not make
them for them. We should help make decisions with them.
Let me talk to you a little bit about what is
person-centered planning. It's a decision-making process
to plan for their future. You may think to yourself we
already do that in schools. We have IEP meetings, transition planning meetings. What I'm going
to talk to you about through the duration of this discussion
is how we can make even those processes more person
centered. It's going to take some time on our part and
dedication, but it's well worth it for the individual
in the long-term for us to do so.
It's going to increase the individual's quality of
lifelong term by developing a plan to support their hopes
and dreams and passions. We must remember that all
individuals, especially our individuals with autism
spectrum disorder do have hopes and dreams and passions.
It's our job to find out what those are and promote those
throughout their educational career so they can become
successful adults in society and in their community.
It brings together a support network of people to help
support individuals to reach their desired outcomes.
Whether that's friendships, to have a relationship, whether that's to have some sort of employment
once they transition out of school. It's our job again
to help bring -- to get the support network of people,
not just the people within the school, but the people that
are a part of their life outside of school help achieve
those outcomes for them.
So it involves a dedicated team and I know so many of
us in the schools are already dedicated to look at what we
do for our students and, yes, it takes extra time and a lot
of involvement on our part to make sure those teams come
together. And especially during planning meetings it
takes a lot of effort on our part to get all those people
to the table. The main person that needs to be at that table
is the student. And I urge people who are out there,
and there's a lot of people already doing this throughout
the state, no matter the person's abilities -- and I
like to use the word abilities rather than the deficit model,
include them at the table even at their earliest age. I
know even at Pre-K we do have why you think individuals
as early as four that we are including in meetings. If you
don't feel it's appropriate at that age, at least you let
them know you're talking about them. People understand more
than we give them credit for. From early on let's make
sure our individuals we're working with know we are
talking about their future, we understand they have hopes
and dreams, and that we want them to succeed. And that's very,
very important.
Think about what you're currently doing in your school
system. It's a paradigm shift for us to continue to
include students in IEP meetings and transition, even
though that's the law and it should be included. It's
still somewhat a paradigm shift. We want to continue to
shift that paradigm in encouraging people all across the
state and outside of the state to include individuals in
their own person-centered plans and also as part of those
meetings within the school. And if you're already doing that, a big kudos
to you because I know there are many places that
are doing that and we encourage you and give you big kudos
for that. Thank you.
It's really about changing mind sets, which is
difficult. For a long time in school divisions we've had
the mind-set that children in special education students,
we're going to have meetings and we're going to make
decisions for them like I said before. So we really -- if
the only truly failure is when we walk away we assume
incompetence. And we have to presume competence for our
individuals with disabilities, especially individuals
with autism spectrum disorder. No matter what their
cognitive functioning level is or their communication level is, whether they're nonverbal or verbal,
we have to presume competence and include them in what
we are doing and making sure that they understand what
we are doing and that we're taking into consideration again
their strengths, interests, preferences needs, hopes,
and dreams.
Dr. Beth mount, she's written several books. She
wrote a person called person-centered planning, finding
directions for change using person-centered change. This
will be at the end of your PowerPoint presentation so you
can get this book if you like. It's a great book. But
Dr. Beth mount talks a lot about person-centered versus
system-centered. So, again, in schools we are a system.
That's totally understandable, but sometimes in our system
we focus on labels. We emphasize deficits and needs
instead of what are students' capabilities and gifts. We
rely on professionals to make the judgments instead of
bringing in more of the family and people who work directly
with the individual outside of the school to help us build
good descriptions of who those individuals really are. We
also invest a lot in standardized testing and assessments
and we also have a lot of -- generate a lot of written
reports about our students. So lots of times when our
students come to the table, their picture is -- their
liable might be a student with ASD. Here's all of the
things I need. Here's all the testing that says what I
need, and so let's make some decision business me. And all
of those things we do need in the school system. What we
also need is, well, who is this individual? A person
should always be a person first and not their label.
Instead of an individual with autism, they should just be
an individual. The label should always come second. What
does that individual need as just an individual who has
communication needs, social needs, who maybe has some
behavioral needs. Just like anybody else we should see
that person as a person and not as their label. Spend time getting to know that person. Some
of our individuals with autism, actually all of them
I know, are some of the most amazing people that I know
and they have more capabilities and gifts than I've ever
thought of and that I have. So getting to know them, their
capabilities and gifts and how we can use those instructionally
and how we can use those to benefit them and their
future, what that might look like for them in employment, in
relationships, in social skills if they're ever in a TA program,
if they're going to go out into the community, how we
can use that even in school on our on our trips and in the lunch
room and all the things we work on with school, it's really
important to get to know the person, just like we would
get to know any other individual.
Again, looking at the individual in the context of the
family and community they live in. And I understand that
sometimes those are a little harder relationships to have
and we have to have boundaries within those relationships.
But person-centered planning is let's bring all the people
to the table, not just the parent guard I can't know. If
we have a grandparent or a neighbor who really knows an
individual well, knows what reinforces them, knows they
have this great gift, they're a great guitar player and
every Sunday they play the guitar at church, let's know
about that so maybe we can get that child involved in music,
maybe we can foster that gift so some day that can be either
leisure skill or even a career. The importance of person-centered planning,
there's many things but it really again I think I've
emphasized helps to focus on seeing the person as a total
person and our students in special education go a long
time, up to 22 years. So it's really important early on,
and this is why I mentioned Pre-K, that we get to see the
person for who they are from the minute they walk into school
at an early age by the time they leave us and really focus
on that total person. As they're going through their time
with us, things change and we take that person-centered
plan and continue to tweak it as they change and grow
so we're growing with them and we see the total person
as they grow through the years.
Person-centered planning, the importance is to really
recognize the desires. Even our desires, hopes, and
dreams change; theirs will as well. We don't want to peg
or put someone in the track of this is what they're going
to do when they graduate or this is going to be our
transition plan we're going to stick to this and nothing's
going to change. All things change. The person-centered plan is what is happening
to our student, what are their hopes and dreams,
have they changed, and is it reasonable for them, is
it reasonable for the people around them, just like anyone
else and how are we going to help them get there?
And there's several ways to think about the individual's future.
Again, there's lots of things we have to think about
with any individual student we're working with, but
especially a student with autism spectrum disorder and
intellectual disorder, there's lots of things we have to
think about as we go through life and what is their quality
of life going to be overall, especially when parents are
caregivers have gone. Who's going to educate them, who's
going to take care of them, are they able to express their
want and their needs. What's working for them, what's not
working for them? Are they able to have a quality of life
that they want that's important to them? Outcomes from person-centered planning should
be first and foremost that the individual really
knows themselves. Again, we can foster that throughout
the years by using some of these tools I'm going
to show you in a moment, but really having them know themselves
so they can advocate for themselves. The biggest thing
we know in the disability world is really, really important
for our individuals, especially on the spectrum, to
be able to advocate for themselves. That way they're
not in danger, that way they know, again, what do I want
for me and how can I express that in a way that I won't put
myself in harm's way, that I can do that in a way that's respectful
to others, respectful to myself?
Being able to express what they want, they like, and
what they don't like. Again, having that just better
quality of life overall, to be able to have those
employment. Do I want to work at Walmart? Do I want to
go on to get a college degree? Many of students with autism
spectrum disorder go on to college and so we should
encourage that. Relationships, boyfriend-girlfriend, partner
of life, are my relationships with my friends,
coworkers, very important, and living arrangements. Again,
what are living arrangements going to look for me down
the road? Something that we should really be looking
at not just at the high school level but maybe even just
a little earlier, getting that person-centered planning team
ready for how to not only help that person understand what's
going to happen but that team as well.
So we really need to think about what our students
need, especially our students on the autism spectrum. I
had the luxury of working for the on determine project for
many years and we would travel around the state and I'm
going to show you some tools from that project in just a
moment. I'm going to share with you the Web site at the
end, but I want to encourage you to always think about what
your students need. As we were traveling this state and
we were presenting tools, we would present tools and
oftentimes people from the crowd would say, well this won't
work for my student, my student has intellectual disability
or autism spectrum disorder, and I thought to myself, but
it will. One day I said to my friend who's the director
of the project also, John McKnott, I said these will
work for these individuals. We need to add pictures, objects,
we need to add those things because this is the way that
they learn, this is the way they communicate, this is
the way they respond to things. So he granted me permission
and we made it happen. So we started presenting these
things across the state and it really took off. So many
of you are probably using these in your schools already
and the reason I mention these person-centered planning tools
is because self determination is one of the keys to person-centered
planning. You have to have problem solving skills, you
have to have self advocacy skills, you have to have the
ability to make decisions. So these tools are just a piece
of how to make something person centered and I'm going to
explain to you a little bit later how we're going to
incorporate these person-centered tools into the system
that we already have as the school system. So, again, just thinking about how do our
students learn, many, not all, of our students with
autism are visual learners. Very kinesthetic. Again, adapting
the tools I'm going to show you using pictures object,
making them tactile so they can tape the board maker or
the real picture off of the tool and handing it to something,
it's very important to them.
How do they communicate? Again, not all of our
students are verbal, but it doesn't mean they don't know
what's going on and it doesn't mean they don't have hopes,
dreams, desires, interests, and preferences. It's our job
to make sure we have a tool and a way to communicate with
them and they have a way to communicate with us.
So we need to respond accordingly. How do she they
respond? The tools I'm going to show you are a way for them
as well as us as well. It's a way for them to communicate.
Again it's a way to communicate those strengths, interests,
and preferences, needs. Again, we really need to think about, especially
with people on the spectrum, who are the important
people in their life. People on the spectrum really
do form strong bonds that are useful. It's those people they
form the strongest bonds we need to be in touch with
because they know those students and individuals the best
and so when we find out who are those important people
in their life and what awesome capabilities they have and
what they learn from them we can really have a person centered
plan. I'm going to talk to you about some person centered
tools. The good day plan, the one-pager the goal setting
are all from the I'm Determined project. And MAPS and PATHS,
talk to you a bit about those, are tools that have
been around in the person-centered planning world for a long
time. Let's briefly talk about the good day plan.
Again, this is kind of good day for me when I have
lunch, when I get to talk to my friends, and when I get
my Starbucks coffee.
So this is what the good day plan looks like originally
when you go on the I'm Determined site. I'll briefly give
you that site. Like I said, it's going to be at the end
of the PowerPoint. WWW.I'm Determined.org. This is what it looks like originally and
this is what we were going around and showing people and
I said this is great. You can write, draw on this, you can
do whatever, okay? So it's what happens on a good day.
Does it happen now? What needs to happen to make it a good
day, and who with can help me. So, again, very person centered
because we're asking the student, or the individual,
what happens to you, instead of us saying this is what
happens to you on a good day. And at the beginning of teaching
this tool you might have to help that student.
Remember our students with ASD do have some issues with
problem solving. They might not know if you ask them what
happens on a good day, remember it's those problem-solving
questions that they do have difficulty with. You might
have to help them understand that process at first. Once
that process starts rolling, we want them to start to come
to their own answers. Does it happen now? Here's where
you can write anything. You can write yes, no, you can
write sometimes, always. What happens to make at that good day? This
is where the problem solving really comes in and they
be who can help me.
So in the person centered planning world, my friend
Mack McFarr, she works at TTAC in blacksburg of Virginia
tech -- or sorry, she works at Radford. Sorry Mac. We
came to the decision that some of our students, that was
a little difficult for. So we had to go to a person
centered tool which is called what's important to me and
for me. We had to take a step back. This does come from
the person-centered planning world. We put it on the
template and decided what happens on a good day, what's
important to me and what's important for me. So what might be important to me is listening
to my music. What might be important for me is taking
my medicine. Helping students differentiate versus
what's important to me versus what's important for
me. Here's one that is differentiating. You can
see it has pictures. Very important in the world
of autism is checklists. Write when something's finished,
I need to check it off. If I had my hot cocoa, what
happens on a good day, I had my hot cocoa. Does it happen now?
Once in a while. What needs to happen to make it a good
day. So basically what needs to make it happen every
day. I need to put a hot cocoa packet in the must go by
the microwave each night before I go to bed. That's that
problem solving. Imagine this if you are in school
and you're having an issue with a student and you're
just trying to get them through the day and you wanted to
make it about the person. So here's where we start to bring
person-centered planning into our school system when we
say, hey, we want to help you get through the day. This
is about you. This is not about our forms, our -- it is
about our proceeds, but it this just isn't about a form
filling out saying you had a bad day and we hope you come
back tomorrow and you get it together. This is about let's
make it person centered, let's make it about you. You have
trouble on the bus and you need headphones. Every day when
you come to school you're having problems getting off the
bus. So instead of you're having problems every day on the
bus, let's take it to the person, let's find out what is
going on with you. Let's talk to the bus driver. Let's
talk to mom to figure out what happened before and let's
actually put it on a piece of paper on a plan so that every
day the individual with autism was very individual. Who
needs to see that, who needs to be reminded of that. Can
have a successful day because it's in front of them.
Remember, our individuals with autism, we're feeding them
all of these things we're trying the auditory process
auditorially. It floods their brain and I've heard many
individuals with autism say if you say something to me I
have to stop and process it and then I have to think about
it again. The individual and adapting it in a way that make
sense, is key is to making it person centered so it makes
sense when they're planning. Who could help me, we have mom, case manager,
again, the goal at the end is always to be the individual
and that's -- if it's not the individual at first,
that's okay. We want whatever support system is there to
be there. Here's just another one. You can see at the
beginning they have a couple visuals. Again, with some
kind of like a task analysis underneath, what happens on
a good day, I put my coat in my locker, I use the bathroom,
I clock in on time. Does it happen now? There's a thumbs
down. Another great way to communicate. It doesn't
always have to be words. Again, how does that individual
with autism communicate? What do they understand? What
do they respond to? Again, these can be Velcroed icons
on the sheet where they can then hand it to you.
Remember, it's not just a communication tool for you
to give to them, it's also for them to communicate to you
as well. And then you can see they talk about setting the
timer would help and then who could help me? Dad. So just
some things on that one. I'm sorry, before I go on to the next one,
I do want to just mention that each of these tools that
I'm showing you, there's a whole video on the I'm Determined
site about these different rating tools, and it's called
different rating, for instance, this is a good day plan.
So if you go on the WW.I'm Determined site and you go
under good day plan, there will be a video -- there's many
videos, but there's a video called different rating the
good day plan. What I want to you see under there is there's
how we also differentiate the tools using objects, using
board maker pictures and other variety of ways, how these
tools were used. When I say Pre-K through adulthood,
you may be wondering how do I use this with Pre-K? It
might just start with one column. We often to say to people
you don't have to present this whole thing at one time. You
just might say what happens on a good day? And you might
have that little coat icon object on that -- in that
square. You might present it to the kid. And then you
might have does it happen now? You might have a thumbs up.
But you're teaching the child what makes them a good
day. You're using the person as the center of what their
world is about and you're teaching them what is important
for them, what's important to them and how their world is going
to be successful, but you're making them the center
of what is going to happen to make them successful.
This is just an example of the one-pager. Again, I
know lots of people in Virginia are using these tools and
I know that the state is so appreciative of that because
it's really changing lives and it's really changing lives
of people with autism spectrum disorder. The one-pager, this is just an example of
some things that you can -- maybe some questions, examples
of what you might put underneath. It says my strengths,
my interests, my preferences, my needs. The great thing
about these templates, for instance, you can change the
titles. If you wanted to change my interests to something
else, you could. Sometimes under my needs they put my accommodations.
So the one-pager has been a great way to use
in the present level of performance in the IEP. I'm going
to talk about that a little later. But you can actually
change the titles of some of these things to meet the
student's needs if you'd like. But again, always promote it
in a positive way, always about what capabilities, gifts,
strengths, preferences.
So I wanted to show you an example of one I actually
made about myself. My strengths are that I'm a visual
learner, that I'm very good about appointments and
reminders. I'm very good about remembering on
June 30th I'm actually going, you know, to see someone I
have an appointment with. I'm very good at remembering
those things. My interests are listening to music. I
also write music and I love to play instruments. My
preferences are I actually live in a very wooded area three
hours from here but I really do like coming to the city.
I like working in the city, I like going to Washington,
D.C., to jazz clubs to listen to music. My needs are I need
a lot of sleep now that I'm getting older. Again, you saw
friends in my good day plan. Here's kind of another
reiteration of this. I really need to be around my
friends. It's really important. I'm a people person and
I like being with my friends. And I need my computer when
I'm not at work. And I need help with computer needs. So
it's just something I put together. These are board maker
pictures. You can put line drawings in here, right? You
could put real pictures in here. You could put objects in
here. So the -- again, the limits -- it's actually
limitless. So I really want you to -- as educators and
people who serve individuals on this spectrum, we are
creative thinkers. We think outside the box. I want us
to continue to do that as we think of these tools.
Again, if this is too overwhelming for an individual,
start with one thing. Start with my strengths. Build
that individual up and think about -- again, think about
the person. Just start *** are your strengths and every
day go through that with them, here are your strengths.
Then start with, hey, here are your strengths and your
interests. We don't have to do the whole thing at one
time. We can start building it up because the whole
part of a person centered plan is to build that person and
build the total focus around that person so they know who
they are by the time they exit our services so that when they
are in adulthood and they actually do person-centered
planning, we've given them a heads-up, we've given them
a gain, we've given them the ability to already know who
they are so they don't have to figure that out later.
Here's a great one. You can see there's real pictures
in here and there's always some -- there's a thumbs-up in
here. I love this one because this is from Joe. Joe says
here's what I'd like to do. You can see how the titles have
been changed. Use what works for you and the individual
you work with. I like to recycle. I like to deliver
paper. If you think about our students with autism, this
is a classic one, right? We're going to get these kind of
answers and I really love this. Accommodations at work, hey, verbal praise.
This is really important because when you make it
a person-centered plan and you're thinking about what works
for the individual, hey, verbal praise works for me,
or, hey, I like a high five or I like when you take me out
into the community and we go for a walk in the park. Those things
are really, really important. If that individual can't
say it to you, the importance about the person-centered planning
is having that team of people who know that individual
who will be able to say it to you about that individual.
So those things can still be put on this plan and that's
why it's important to get that team around you who
knows that individual.
Accommodations my augmentive communication system.
Things I want in the future. To graduate. To attend
senior breakfasts. To attend prom. So some things that
maybe individuals didn't know about Joe but because Joe had
a team around him who did know those things about him we
were able to put it down on paper. Goal setting. Everyone does goal setting.
But, again, we're talking about the no just at
the IEP or transition time. We're talking about early
on in kindergarten. Which what is a goal I want
to do. Maybe I just want to sit in circle time today. Maybe
just sing a song with my group today. So that's going
to be the goal. Maybe I want to go on a CBI trip and in order
to do that I need to have calm hands and listen to directions
and follow the teacher. So you have -- or make
a picture icons. If you look at the differentiated video
that's actually one of the examples that I gave.
You can think outside of the box and those goals and
what those students need and you use it as a teaching tool
for students with autism. Again, if you ask them what a
goal is, may they come up with it right away? No. It's
our job to help them understand what goal setting is, how
you can get there, what he thinks this you into he had to
do to get there. So hence the goal setting template. In the
middle you put what that goal is.
Right there in the middle of this you can print these
off from the Web site and what I always used to do is
laminate them, slap some Velcro in the middle of there and
put a board maker icon or a picture or object and put that
in the middle. So my goal is like I said to go on a CBI
trip and that picture would go in the middle. The rays are what are the outcomes going to
be. It could be I make friends, I get to go out in
the community. You don't have to fill every arrow. It could
just be a couple of things. But teaching students what
are the outcomes, what are the great and positive
things that could happen for you and the people around you because
you got to go on that community-based trip.
And then what do I need to get there, and those are
the steps. And, again, along the bottom I just put three
board maker, and it was calm hands, following the teacher,
et cetera. Here's one. Again, comes from my friend Donna
Radford, and her daughter, she wanted to move out. This
is when we talk about the person-centered plan. They had
done a plan and said to themselves, well, she's just going
to live with us and the daughter was like, well, I really
don't want to live at home. And it was kind of a shocker.
But they worked through it. They said if you want to move
out we need to goal set and do some things. This is how
they adapted this. I love this. They put the icons as you
can see in the middle. She was a reader. They used words
as well. You could see one of her goals of moving out, one
of the outcomes she hoped to get was a man. So, again, very
volunteering jobs but very real-life things. These are
things we really have to listen to, consider, be aware of,
and respect about our individuals with disabilities, because they are like you and I. They still
have the same wants and needs and desires. And so we have
to take them seriously. And knowing these things, knowing
that roommates, hobbies, a man, there's some other
instructional pieces that go in there. So we have to talk
about safety and *** safety and all of those kinds of
things and so keep working on that. But what do I need to get there? So they adapted
this by making boxes. Okay, so you want roommates?
Here's a checklist. Remember, teaching individuals
with autism, let's make a checklist of things you have
to do in order to have those roommates. And the same with
some of the other outcomes as well.
So, again, the great thing is this is very person
centered because this tool was very much adapted for this
individual alone and it was all about her wants, needs, and
desires. So I think this is a great way to show the
person-centered piece. So let's just talk a little bit about MAPS.
I couldn't do a person-centered planning presentation
without mentioning MAPS, which is making action plans,
which was created by Marsha forest and jack Pearpoint
from inclusion press. And they really were the creators of
this person-centered philosophy. And they have
wonderful materials and you'll see there's a lot of
similarities to the things that determined project uses. MAPS
are great things, tools that you can use at your fingerprints
tomorrow, just like the I'm Determined tools. For
instance, they have a working and what's not working. So
again, you can sit down with the individual and you can say
what's working for you and what's not working for you and
really find out from the individual what is -- you might
be surprised by their answers. And be prepared for those
because some of those might be something instructionally, might not be working for them in your classroom.
Remember, especially with students with ASD, it might
be the lights are too strong for me or there's a smell in
the back of the classroom that I smell every day, could we
work on getting rid of that or could we put a different smell
in place or there's -- remember our students with ASD have
different things that happen to them that may not happen
to other individuals. So that could affect how their
behavior, it could affect what they're doing instructionally, how they're engaged in a
task. To really sit down and engage with them and find out
what's going on is very important.
You saw the important to and for not for in what I'm
presented to the I'm Determined tool. This is very -- in
the adult services world, if you're watching from the adult
services world, this something you do all the time. This
is on the ISP. This is something that I see pretty
regularly. This is what you start with. What's important
to the individual and what's important for the individual
as you go through. What's great about MAPS is there are all kinds
of MAPS. There's a your story map where you find out
what the story is of the individual from their birth to wherever
they're at right now in their life. There's actually
a nightmare map as well. This individual put my nightmare
is to be lonely with no support. Again, you have ready
to hear what these individuals are going to communicate
to you, whether that's verbally or nonverbally, correct? Something
we just always need to be thinking about, because,
remember, it's not just our verbal students who are
going to be engaged in these person-centered planning
process; it's going to be students and individuals who are
nonverbal as well. So whether they're communicating through
us through a device, through sign, through pictures,
through whatever that means is we have to be able to be prepared
for that. There's dreams. There's a relationship map
where you draw the person in the middle and you draw
the important people around them in their life. There's
so many maps. And you can find them through Marsha forest
and Jack Pearpoint or in the Dr. mount book that's
going to be at the end of the PowerPoint.
The whole point with MAPS is you can bring them
together and see that total -- again, person-centered piece is seeing that total picture of the
individual so that I can know, oh, this is so-and-so's nightmares
but this is also their dreams. So I can start to put a
picture. I can start to plan instructionally better for them.
I can start to plan what our next IEP meeting is going
to look like because I know a little bit more about them.
So I know this is where we really need to focus on for our
behavioral goal. This is where we really need to focus on for
our social skills goal or this is where we need to focus
on for this goal because now I have a better picture about
them. It's just not about the system and what we have
as our curriculum, which we need to follow, but it's
also about what the student, what their real needs are.
It's individualized education plan for a reason.
So that's why we need to look at the person first and what
their needs are so that we can incorporate that into what
we're doing in the system.
Planning alternatives, PATH is planning alternative tomorrow with hope created by Marsha forest
and jack Pearpoint. PATH is something done a lot in
the adult services world. You really should be trained
to be a PATH facilitator. But I want to mention it to you
because it is a great way. PATHs have been done in schools.
There's people all over the state who do know how
to do PATHs and have been called into school systems, especially
when there's a little harder cases and we're trying
to get families together on the same page so we can
put a successful plan in place for individuals who
are going to graduate, go out into the community and we're
trying to plan a better quality of life for them. But it's
a great thing, especially for students with autism, because
again it's a graphic facilitation of what your future's
going to be. It's highly effective because it puts those
supports and services in place and it develops that plan
for your future. You set a goal and then as part of the journey,
the path is a journey, you set actions and achieve
those goals and record them.
So let's take a look at just kind of what Marsha and
Jack put in place as their template. The star at the top
is the long-term goals and ideas and the outcomes. You can see that step two is by this time
what we're going to do next year. So maybe have a student
-- maybe just have a short-term goal of driving. So
you put the steps in place. So, for instance, No. 6 is
putting the strategies in place for that progress towards
striving. Then you go through the first steps, the action,
the goals, who are you going to help, who are you going
to enroll to help you with those things and No. 3 where
are you currently. Maybe not driving at all. Maybe
you've never even taken the driver's test. So would enroll
Driver's Ed instructor, maybe also help from your parents,
et cetera, et cetera. But the great part is you actually
draw that out and you talk about it and you include
the person. So we're not just talking about this at some
transition plan meeting and we say, oh, we like driving, maybe
you can't drive or do you have the capability to drive,
maybe driving isn't for you right now, we really talk about
it and we say, hey, is this something that's really going
to happen? If it is, we've got to map it out and say here's
who's going to help you, here's the checklist of what's
going to happen and by when. And where we're going to record
these along the way and you're going to be accountable
and we're going to help you be accountable but you are accountable
as well. And that's part of what's important about
person-centered planning. It's been really successful with
transition because we can have a meeting before the meeting.
And I know, again, that takes time. I understand
that, I really do, but time up front is worth it so that
we're not sitting at those meetings, the IEP meetings and transition
meetings going over things. We've already built and
established relationships with folks and the individual.
We've already established those relationships and
already decided who the student is, what their needs
are, what their capabilities are. Hey, you are capable of
doing this. So let's really sit down and map out a plan.
We did a PATH and decided hearsay things we're going to
do so here's what we put in the transition plan. Or here we
did some MAPS and we decided here's what you're really afraid
of but here's what you're capable of. So we're going
to put this as part of the IEP or in the transition plan.
This is how we take person centered and we make it work
in the system. And I understand this is a very, very brief
overview, but I just want to encourage us of thinking of
taking person centered, listening more to the individual
and what their true needs are and really incorporating that
into what we do.
During the person-centered meeting, if you have a
meeting outside of an IEP, so this is me really saying this
is a meeting outside of an IEP meeting or a transition
meeting. This is a meeting where you say, again, you have
a dedicated team and maybe you've done some MAPS, maybe even
looked at some of the I'm Determined tools and you just
talked about them with a dedicated team of individuals and
you're just getting to know the person and their team
outside of the meeting, outside of the school meetings.
What assistive technology might that individual need
during the meeting? Do they need an iPad? Do they need
the audit com device, textbook? Remember we're talking
about individuals with autism who have communications needs. Do they need a notebook? What do they
need? What type of prompts may they need during the meeting.
Remember not all of our individuals with autism are
going to speak up. Do they need the prompt to say so-and-so,
what would you like to contribute to the meeting or now
it's your turn to speak about this, what would you like to
say about this? Just like any good educator would we need
to continue to remember to include them in the meeting by
including those prompts.
Is there a visual agenda? A lot of times we go into
meetings and we forget the individuals who are in the
meeting may need that visual agenda to follow along with
us. And a lot of members of the meeting might benefit from
it as well. And have they practiced ahead of time?
Remember, our students with autism, sometimes they need
additional time or practice to say what they want and to
say it where they feel comfortable. So sometimes practicing those pieces that they want to
say is really beneficial to them.
Again, looking at the assistive technology piece, I
already mentioned iPads and AUD devices. Here's an visual of a visual agenda. Just
knowing who the participants are, again, you can get a
piece of paper and write an agenda on it and maybe just put
who their participants are and what's going to happen
that day or maybe you draw pictures. Again, just a visual
representation of what's going to happen so everybody's on
the same page in that meeting. Again, I've spoken a little bit about this
throughout the presentation, but how do we incorporate
the tools I've talked to you about today into the system
center world, which is the schools? Again, IEP planning,
the one-pager especially is a great way to incorporate a
student's strengths and preferences into that present
level of performance. Actually, in a lot of counties
across the state we've had special education departments
actually include that as part of their present level
of performance. So when anyone gets that right off the bat
they know something about that student and it actually
includes a student picture. We've also had counties take
video of that student along with that template and send it to
teachers as well. So that's really fascinating. It has
worked really well. Again, you establish -- again, very
person centered. You establish relationship with that
student right off the bat. You know something positive
about them and it's about the person. FBA BIP meetings,
functional behavior assessment and behavior intervention
plans, we've had people all across the state take the good
day plan and actually use that to be a part of their
functional behavior assessment meetings. They've sat
down with the students and said, okay, here's the problem
behaviors that we're finding. So how could we deter that,
what do you think would help make it better for you? They
used the good day plan. Again, being person centered,
again, it's not about the form. We do have to fill out the
forms in the system. We do have to go through the process,
but we're including the person, making it person centered.
It is about them. It's about them. And the interventions
aren't going to work unless we know what works for them.
So it has to be person centered. Transition planning
should be all about the person. We should be having as many
meetings before the meeting that we have before transition
planning to understand what works for the person and what
we want their employment to look like, their living to look
like, and we have to bring all those players to the table,
those outside agencies. We should be having conversations
before we get to the table about that. Having those
person-centered planning meetings is really, really
important in doing that. Parent conference night, again, I think about
the younger folks, those Pre-K kindergartners
earlier elementary folks, the IP planning is good
but also those parent conference and those parent nights
are a great way to bring the one-pager of what's working,
what's important to me, for me to the conference and saying
I did this with your child and here's what I find out about
them. And then the parent can say, oh, that's great. Here's
something else that you should know. And just showing
off the individual and that you're taking interests
in their child and you're really making their quality of
life in school person centered and that you're taking interest
in them of what's not only what's going on in school
but what's going to happen to them after school as well.
Just quickly I've talked a little bit about this but,
you know, I think having -- being person centered, again,
I know there's lots of schools out there that are person
centered that say, yes, we do care about the individuals
and we are taking strides to be more about the individual
and really taking time to build better relationships with
all individuals, especially individuals with autism that
we -- understanding their needs better, but you can really
build a better relationship with the student. Again,
especially with our students with autism, knowing their
strengths and their interests, I had a student who was
fascinated by fans and he was in elementary school and he
would run to every door in the elementary school building
that had a fan. And so finally me and a lot of teachers
didn't really like that. So finally one day I had went to
a few Touchers and said do you mind if we stop by your
classroom sometimes and check on the fan. So I also talked
to the individual and said on these days we're going to stop
by these classrooms and we're going to check and see if the
fan is working, we're going to say hello and then we're
going to talk out and we talked about what times we were
going to do that in the morning. It wasn't easy at first,
but throughout that time, the teachers that we stopped in
those classrooms and the administrator finally understood
what I was doing. I was building relationship with the
teachers and with the students and in an ability to
understand that my student with autism wasn't weird or
didn't understand what was going on because he had this
fascination with fans, that it was really about who he was.
This individual could take apart a fan and put it back
together better than anybody I knew. And this individual
was in the first grade. He knew more about fans -- he knew
everything about a fan, every part about a fan. As
reinforcement a lot of time we would get on the computer
and he would look at fans. Instructionally we included
fans in a lot of things we did. I'd love to know where he
is now because I'd always say that he would be the best
salesman at Lowe's in the fan section. I truly mean it.
This was his passion. Those things are very important.
For our students with autism, that's being person centered.
I know with his strengths it was definitely his interests.
Knowing that he could do that with fans means I could
translate that to other thing. If you could take apart a
fan what else mechanically could he do. What else could
I put him in a math class or a science class so he could
understand those things and I could be a better teacher for
him? So not only did I strengthen my relationship; I
strengthened my relationship with administrators. And
administrators can build relationships with our students
by understanding those things as well. We can
understand -- administrators can better strengthen and
understand relationships with parents and guardians if we
have those person-centered meetings outside of our regular
school meetings. And you can have your instructional time
back. You can have students have their instructional time
back because they're not in your office because they went
around and looked at fans. We realized that was something
they needed. We gave it to them a few times a week and
incorporated it into their instruction. We made it about
them. Again, benefits from the staff are really
the same. Again, those individualized instructional
interventions, yes, we had a curriculum, yes, we followed
it, yes we did the IEP goals but I definitely used his love
and his preference and interest of fans in a lot of
things that we did. And it just bettered his quality of life
in school. For him it made him enjoy coming into school
better. It made -- again, I would love to know where
he's at because hopefully he has a job somewhere working on
fans or selling fans or doing something mechanically, because
that was his -- one of his major strengths.
And for students it's really all about the student or
the individual. It's, again, building and improving
relationships with pierce and the school staff. Getting
to know that, again, it's not just that individual with
autism who has these unusual interests or strengths; it's
about that total person. It's about knowing who they are
and that they do have amazing capabilities and gifts and
how can we use that to their benefit? It's about improving their behavioral outcomes
again and it's about setting short and long-term
goals and ultimately it's just about improving their
quality of life: If we give them the communication tools, adapt
things, the learning style, the way they learn, the way
they communicate and we give it back to them we
will improve their quality of life, but if we say they're
nonverbal, they don't have the cognitive ability to do this,
then we're doing them a disservice. Please know all of
the individuals, no matter where they are on the
spectrum, have the ability and the capacity to learn, to
communicate and have the right, better quality of life especially
when we make it person centered.
>> This is a quote from Ben Franklin and I like. Tell
me and I'll forget. Teach me and I'll remember. Involve
me and I'll learn. I thank you again for joining me today. This
is something I'm very passionate about.
For more information, again, I've probably mentioned
I'm Determined a million times now, but it's a very
important project and I just can't tell you enough about
the wonderful people that work on that project and the work
that they do. Please contact them. Please visit that Web
site. Also, you can go to inclusion.com. On the
left is the person-centered planning book I was talking
to you about. Beth mound. I love the way it's detailed and
just very -- the ability to be able to read it
quickly. It tells you some great ways to do maps with individuals
and build a profile so you've got a good way of looking
at the individual. Then of course MAPS and PATHS
by Jack Pearpoint. So that's really important.
Again, please contact me if there's anything you'd
like to know more about. Today was a brief, brief overview
but I really appreciate your time. Again, my name is
Teresa Cogar. I'm here at VCU ACE. Thanks so much for
your time. Thank you.