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Preparing Students with Visual Impairments for Postsecondary Education or Employment

Added Feb 24, 2023 •

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Presented by Dr. Hilary Travers and Christina Muri Irland of Transition Tennessee on 1/24/2023 TN VIVA 2022-2023 Session Description: Transition Tennessee recently conducted a statewide study to explore the needs of educators who support transition-aged (14+) youth with visual impairments. The findings and implications of this study will be presented and discussed. Attendees will walk away with newly developed FREE resources to help them support students with VI as they work toward postsecondary education or employment. Resources: To request the latest VI-specific resources, scholarships, and accommodations documents email Transition Tennessee directly at [email protected]

Show Transcript

all right good morning everybody welcome to this this session of the visual impairments Virtual Academy I here in Tennessee Tennessee as we like to call it we're really excited for today's presentation I will preparing students with visual impairments or post-secondary education or employment at which will be presented by Ireland and dr. Hilary Travers of the transition Tennessee program over at Vanderbilt have everyone here today and so if anyone well at all I should say is just just just do know that we're very proud of the work that we're doing to put these trains together for vision professionals here in the state and anyone with the Jason sabet and so is dark topics that any of you guys might be interested in having covered in future sessions please let us know because we're in that exploratory phase for what we're going to try to recruit and put on the calendar for next school year old so please contact myself or dr. Rachel Celeste at Vanderbilt and I will be happy to look into those topics but once again we're excited to be talking about your conditioning education employment for in our our kids with visual impairments so without further Ado please take it away good morning everyone and welcome so as Allen said we'll be discussing a study that we worked on last year called preparing students with vision parents for post-secondary education or employment my name is Christina Ireland and I'm an educational consultant for transition Tennessee and I'll be co-presenting with Hillary Travers who actually I'll have a quick Cal Travers my Christina I work at transition Tennessee and where is really excited to be here today if you're watching this virtually or after the fact just know if you came to the unity presentation in person this is the same information but the resources were going to we want to make sure everyone in the state has access to them but that's why we're going to do this again to make sure it's recorded and available for future use. We hope that you enjoy and that these resources are helpful to you okay so before we get started we want to make sure that we get some information from you thinking about transitions Hennessy if everyone wants to go ahead and use their phone or on the Hillary bill will be sharing the link in the chat familiar are you with transition Tennessee it's just a quick yes or no question are you familiar with us some to give everyone about 15 seconds or so again you can scan that you are to take you to that question otherwise Hillary's throwing the link in and then we will ask questions throughout using the exact same to you are so if you just want to make sure you don't exit it on your phone will be easier than you don't have to scan the QR each and every time I'm going to go ahead and pull over results all right we have a hundred percent okay you all are familiar okay one person said that they're not familiar okay I'm going to give him maybe 15 more seconds or so all right we have about 8020 all right so one more question before we dive into today's country so of those of you who are familiar with transition Tennessee what resources have you used in your professional practice whether that be professional development that you've used to recite maybe you've used the student resource I'm this is a word cloud so you can just type in what it what you've used on our site because about 30 seconds for everyone answer that question what resources have you used in the transition Tennessee website for those of you who are familiar with a professional development resource stocks Community Resources great I see a parent the parent facing resources yeah we have some parent pacing resources icpd against in the Community Resources even the resources. The payoff solutely thanks so much thanks everyone for sharing and you can continue to add to that I'm seeing that more and more are coming through okay professional development it seems like people are using a lot of our courses quite a bit on our website thanks again for sharing all that back over go back to our present pink slides so transition Tennessee I know a lot of you all familiar with that but I'll just kind of give those of you who haven't used website some background information on it I'm it's a statement of partnership between the Tennessee education the Tennessee Department of Human Services the Vanderbilt use you said and Vanderbilt University and we're actually house on the Vanderbilt University so I'm major part of what we do is actually technical assistance for individual schools in desk drop the state however in order to reach as many people as possible we've developed a comprehensive website anybody can access this website it's free and it has three eight three main sections one section for educators one section 4 PCS specials for pre-employment transition Services specialist as well as students additionally if you see on the bottom right of the screenshot we actually recently just added a receipt me accessibility toolbar on our website which allows essentially our users to customize their experience so some of those accessibility tools include a screen reader styling options so if you prefer to get rid of all the color and just have plain black and White Sox you have that option there is reading support on there as well as we have translations important over a hundred different languages where to go a little bit more in-depth into transition Tennessee a little bit later in on the presentation so just hang tight so why exactly do we engage in this work out will this work is really important and I d a s clearly outlined its importance so in fact the stated purpose of idea in section D is to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free and appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related Services that's designed to make the unique needs of students and prepare them for further education employment and independent living so why do we focus specifically on students visual impairments well first and foremost we know that students with visual impairments often have for post-secondary outcomes persons with visual impairments are less likely Collegiate collegiate career and are less likely to be employed specifically 60% of students with visual impairments who attempt College do not actually complete their degree so that means that they're college-ready butts are there's a drop-off between graduating high school and actually starting their college career and employment rates for individuals with visual impairments have kind of hover between 25 to 40% for the last 30 years and of those Angels were employed 78% of adults with visual impairments are either under unemployed or underemployed meaning that they're working positions that don't necessarily meet their qualifications 3 p.m. highlights the reason we focus on post-secondary education employment is because we know that there are benefits to both for individuals with disabilities specifically for post-secondary Education persons with disabilities who attend higher education have higher employment rates Wichita equates to higher earning potential and the more money that you're making the last four lying you were on those government benefits and as it relates to employment we know that having a job equates to income obviously it also creates the social we know that we have networks within our schools within our you know companies and whatnot that we work with so we create that social interaction and then addition you get support whether it be from a mentor or other colleagues and you have access to this health and permit benefits so again being less reliant on those government benefits the hurt that there is that there are real barriers to accessing post-secondary education and employment for and individuals with visual impairments specifically for post-secondary Education we know that just even getting into college is complicated often times Recruitment and admission materials are not accessible I'm so we have to request specific materials and sometimes we might need to rely on support of other individuals to help us for that admissions process another thing to note is in the post-secondary education world all students with disabilities have to disclose their disability no one comes to them asking them what supports a need so often times as with visual impairments don't disclose early enough their combinations in the system technology might not be provided up to them in a timely manner so that means they might not have those Services right on the first day of classes we also know that professors off on time are experts in their field but they're not experts and visual impairments so they really don't understand best practices and how to invest this their suits with visual impairments and additionally there are social barriers to accessing, secondary education this is awesome first time that students have been away from home as well as you know just being around peers who maybe don't have visual impairments or have never interacted with an individual with visual impairments an implant as a police employment we know that often times been connect us disincentives I know all of your probably can relate to this but I often have parents who said I don't want my child to work because then they might lose their government benefits we know it's really important for some of them they might be relying upon that to pay for a rental to pay for the mortgage and when I do we know that ultimately working and getting that paycheck equates to more money in in your in your checkbook I'm at the end of the month Transportation also acts as a huge barrier for students with visual impairments especially those who are legally blind can't actually gain access to a driver's license so being able to get to and from work on a daily basis is extremely important for her seeing that job and then severity and visual impairment as well as having that additional Bill additional how to spell you can really act as a barrier cuz oftentimes accommodations maybe are not appropriate for that individual to be able to do their job independently so let's go ahead and go back to our our Slidell share with me what additional barriers have you seen for your students feel just go ahead and scan over that q r code again or any can join using that link that Hillary is checking the chat going to go ahead and pull over our next question so what additional barriers have you seen first students in accessing education post-secondary education or employment so I give everyone about 30 seconds or so timeliness of Peru necessary 80 absolutely assistive technology yes certainly Transportation transportation is often times a berry Christina we have a, in the chat for someone who may not have been able to access it and they said transportation and family Transportation family up sometimes family is it and it's often not because the family doesn't want what's best just don't necessarily understand navigating that whole adult service world and help getting a job is super important for a variety of reasons but also just coming off those benefits ultimately our goal is for students to make enough money that they don't have her life government benefits and players understanding of visual impairments absolutely Ada only you know it's not it's very broad it's doesn't really get into the nitty-gritty and often times and players don't necessarily understand how to support on their place employment employment opportunities and Claire will and willingness absolutely no family members have attended College they don't necessarily think it's necessary absolutely thanks for everyone for sharing and you can continue to ask that cuz we can take a look at those results after the fact and really use this information all right we popped back into so how do we overcome these barriers to best ensure that our best students ensure that the best chance of high-quality post-secondary education and employment outcomes for students will we know that outcomes improve when Educators provide high-quality transition instruction and services so essentially we know that it's just with visual impairments have post or per second education and employment outcomes and again this is often do to those barriers to accessing PSE and employment so we've discussed that we know that one solution to support better outcomes is to provide better condition Inspection Services so this is essentially where the study was born from we wanted to know what transition looks like right now for students with their Zone parents in the state of Tennessee and what supports teachers might need to better support students in improving this post secondary outcomes I'm improving transition programming in school so actually actually followed five different phases and the first base was proven the second phase was collecting qualitative data through survey after a survey the third face was collecting qualitative data three interviews and the fourth phase was actually reviewing this data so then move on to the fifth stage which was a resource creation stage we're going to talk briefly about each of these phases but again if have any questions about the methodology or the study feel free to contact us after the fact we're going to be sharing our contact information at the end of this and if you want a more detailed overview of the study so FaZe was recruitment so what's your preferred Educators we actually emailed all the special education directors in Tennessee and then we went through the transition Tennessee database and email to all registered members that resided in state of Tennessee I'm included an email to them and within that Nemo included the purpose of the study of inclusion I criteria which in order to be included individual had to be teaching at least one condition each student they were purchasing special education teacher rtvi in the state of Tennessee and again they were working within the state of Tennessee and we also outlined the benefits of the participation and for our special education directors we actually included an embedded email in the email for them to email out to their chibi eyes I'm from this recruitment process we had a total of 89 usable service so then we moved into phase two which was that a qualitative work that survey this was a sequential explanatory mixed method methodology so again there were 89 total participants of the participants 31 listed they were TV a TSB eyes are TV is 46 stated that they were special education teachers and actually two individual stated that they were both a special education teacher as well as a t v i n from these participants they found that they represented 41 of the 95 counties across the state of Tennessee the survey was made up of 122 questions that was categories into four different sections we're going to go ahead and discuss each the sections in the next to me couple sides but those sections were demographic transition related instruction professional development and then collaboration in transition so that first section was that demographic information so this is essentially created to help us understand who the Educators were themselves as well as the school community in which they worked so this included knowing the number of transition HD with a visual impairment on their case their school levels cuz we had some teeth to only Taunton High School song that tight in Middle School son that taught all grades are TDI so we're supporting multiple schools what their current role was how long they've been teaching and then the type of community in which they worked at whether they were working in urban-rural or Suburban environment the sectional set with the second section was a transition related instruction section on this included 33 different transitions Focus practices so some of these practices included developing high-quality eyepiece providing on-the-job support for students with visual impairments working the community and Anderson postal services and supports available to students with visual impairments the Educators and since they want to I'm reading their confidence and providing an addressing each of these topics using a four-point likert-type scale with one being not at all confident that their two for being very confident providing these supports and services are addressing these the third section was the professional development section I'm so we use the same 33 transition topics from the previous section and had the Educators identified their interest in receiving professional development of supporting each of these areas so I can only use a likert scale to indicate their interest with bonding not at all interested I don't want anything to do with training on that topic play 25 in hey I'm very interested in learning more about the specific topic and then the next section was collaboration so we focused on you know how often the Educators were collaborating with different people within their school as well as outside of the school so other school staff as well as agency staff certificate agency staff that support students with visual impairments during the transition years they read it in this case the frequency of how often they separated using a likert scale with one being named never collaborated with us individual all the way to four being they often separated with that individual so that's been moved us into this third phase of the study which was are qualitative it's where we conducted follow-up interviews with some of the survey respondents so we can talk to each and total interview so within the original survey you know the educator going to have them filled out that survey and then there was a question about if they were in completing a follow-up interview from those 18 surveys a tour TV SI and 10 were special education teachers on these 18 individuals were actually represented larger sample including the numbers of years of experience where they specifically talk and in the number of students on their caseload so what are these interviews actually look like well they took place a resume and lasted anywhere from sir 60 Minutes they were some restructuring so we had some questions that focuses on transition-related construction services supports and resources and collaboration so very similar to those questions on that survey but it said my structures we allowed them to tell stories about what it what what they were doing in their school you know talk to us about concerns that they had and what not and then they were recorded and professionally transcribed so we were actually ensure that we didn't forget what the participants headset and now I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Hillary great Sophie's for was the data analysis and finding this is where we kind of combined all the data from those surveys and those interviews to think about what did we actually find here so again if you want a more detailed description of our analyses I'm happy to provide that but for the purposes of who's likely in the audience I'll just say we use descriptive statistics to summarize those so we just wanted to know what were average ratings what were the maximum over the minimum and then we really wanted to see where their differences between the ratings of those TV eyes and special education teachers across all of those different to talk about their confidence implementing things there resource needs and who they're collaborating with when we were coding those interviews Muse the team-based approach so we had four total people and we followed this three-phase process so first to coders or independently the transcript and coding it then one coder separate of those two kind of reviewed both of those first quarter's work and identified any discrepancies so any times there were disagreements about how something should be coded and then all everybody basically came together to discuss those discrepancies and come to a consensus about what do we actually think what it what are they actually saying here I'm going to talk you through the results from each of the sections and again I am happy to answer any more specific questions but these are some of them. findings that I think are most exciting and hopefully will resonate with you all the first we'll just talk about the results related to those instructional practices so from the surveys overall there was kind of moderate levels of confidence and implementing each of those 33 practices so the mean with two 6 out of 4 items that had the highest confidence rating so Educators were raising them as somewhat or very confident in planting his practices were writing present levels of performance or Plex for the IP teaching self-determination skill keeping social skills and items or the three specifically that had the lowest confidence rating so teachers are reading these as a little or not at all confident we're developing career Preparatory courses developing community-based worksite for students with visual impairments and implementing campus job training experiences so continuing on with those start a finding we look at those differences between ratings of special Educators and teachers of visually impaired and we found that special Educators were significantly more so statistically more confident performing each of the following tradition practice is those were developing high-quality individualized transition plans with her IEPs it's just a transition tape of the IP developing post secondary College gold developing oblate Employment Development goals related to community involvement implementing a productive transition planning meeting developing a summary performance and conducting formal and informal transition assessment and what you might notice about all of these things that special educator talking about it cuz you have a click these are all related to the transition Focus iup so if this is not surprising to me it makes sense just knowing how are personal prep programs work special educators are provided training or they should provided training about how to write comprehensive compliant and best practice tradition Focus IEPs but teachers of visually impaired or not but doesn't mean they shouldn't be but the reality of our Personnel prep programs is that there's so much content that there's not enough time room for a train just a transition Focus class so maybe they're getting a little bit of information here or there but they're not really getting a comprehensive dive into how to write the transition IP and that makes it that makes sense to me all these items are transition focus it related still driving for the interview findings again just talking about those confidence in the 32 practices items that were rated as a little or not at all confident on the survey actually came up again in the interviews so for example when we were asking about work morning or Community work sides does a mention a lot 50 x across nine interviews but it was almost only referencing how cold it is difficult so it wasn't talking about in a positive way of all these great things it was talking about how the time of the study which was those were kind of shut down and they weren't able to get out to the community for peace learning was really difficult we heard a lot about on-campus job these coffee shops are carts are mentioned 20 times across five interviews that's great but this was the only on-campus job opportunity that was mentioned and there's no problem with students experiencing a coffee shop or card of course it's a wonderful learning experience there lots of job skills that can be acquired in the spaces but it's problematic if that's the only job experience but students are having in school and don't want to be a barista that's one that makes sense but for anybody who does not want to work in that industry only providing that one in school work opportunity is not enough to prepare students for their future career goals and then finally career prep courses or we think of it as Career and Technical education CTE they were mentioned occasionally but primarily was about talking about a lack of access to participation and you know that it's interesting we're actually at transition Tennessee and Gage been working with CT teachers right now so stay tuned I guess I'll look at our website if you're interested in space but we heard some really interesting stories from CT teachers about ways to accommodate their course to accept students with visual impairments including students were totally blind to our welders so we heard some really cool stuff but it was really rare I mean the majority of information was about lack of access and CT teachers did not know how to provide accommodations and they just didn't feel it was safe having students with visual impairments in their classes stars live got so let's talk about the professional development needs so from the survey findings the highest rated professional development needs across all of the teachers I need for understanding the range of postal services and supports available to students with visual impairments so we don't know what we don't know so just understand what's available what's out there for these students lots of teachers want to support their knowing the laws regulations and Paul these governing work experiences for young persons with visual impairments I think sometimes we think about off-campus opportunities or work we get nervous as Educators about like what's allowable what legal and we just don't have the information or answers so lots of quest news about what are the legal repercussions of having students work in these spaces and then also involving parents and families in career do and activities so I see that before was one of the people who mention that family can be a barrier I know someone else put that family Berry related to college so I think this makes sense how can we involve families in the process so maybe they're seeing some of the benefits long term of employment or post-secondary add Emily think about those lowest rated professional helmet needs to do things I did not need was writing present levels of when should I be teaching social skills teaching daily living skills that will be needed at adulthood supervising job coaches or paraprofessionals working off campus with students with visual impairments the overall and we think about those comparisons between the TV eyes and special educator special Educators rated statements higher than TV eyes for all of the different 33 item so for the most part special educator for wanting more support and someone it's not surprising TV eyes are specialist they understand the needs of this population they work with the students day in day out special educator might have one totally Limestone on their caseload in a lifetime it's a low incidence disability so I don't think that they feel equipped to support students and sometimes they think that soon so there's no parents need these crazy exceptional accommodations when they don't either just kids who are looking for the experience has to work and move towards their future goals we don't need to get crazy with accommodations we can talk to the student with their family let's figure out what works I think I meant that we don't be stressed about it but true statements where the TV is rated professional development needs hire those included implementing on-campus job training experience has developing community-based work sites for students with visual impairments and developing the your support plans for using the community so these are all kind of really nice item that would make sense these are not things that TV eyes are going to get in their personnel prep program this is kind of your only going to get it through live experience or if you have really strong collaborators in your school were already doing this and you can kind of learn job for the interview finding these were the bullets on the slide them off but these are the big items that teachers again and again said this is what we really need to be summarized it so the first is a list of organizations or resources that support post school Success of individuals of visual impairments just came across across most interviews nine different times and it also came across in the surveys if you remember it was at top item we don't know what we don't know so what exists out there in our state for students when they the second was resources or literature to share with families about transitioning post second again again this is one of those things that teacher said in the survey that we need to help with including the family in this process so what can we share with families to help them in this journey accessible transition assessment so we all know or hopefully we know that transition assessments are required part of the IP when students turned 14 and Tennessee we are legally responsible to assess their transition across the areas of employment as education training and independent living skills flash Community involvement assessment the people are developing assessment are not thinking about Susan visual impairments when they develop them right so we have questioned teachers about well it takes a long time to cry acceptable specimens for their picture supported whether I need to make them into Brill whether I need to enlarge the print it just takes time just like everything else and that takes away from some of the instructional time that I want to be given so if I could have support inaccessible assessment that degrade number for with an educator Mentor in your clobber Asian just came up five different times and I think this is really true mostly in the world communities teachers who are itinerant across multiple counties or across multiple schools where they are the only TDI in their area and they were new to the position so they didn't have anyone to collaborate with nobody understood what they were going through and they felt very isolated there was there are few teachers out East Tennessee who actually had kind of created their own internal Mentor program so if you're interested in kind of getting to know these and it was all women let us know what maybe we can hook you up with them but that you basically said if we find out there's a new teacher and one of the districts around us we try to link up with them and offer our support so there are informal ways of connecting and that's a wonderful example but something more formalized would great to be able to offer support to new TV is entering the field especially in the rural communities where they might be isolated number was he went five so thinking about things like scholarships understanding office of disability Services how are we preparing students to enter the post-secondary world and then lastly a traditional scope and sequence so this is something that we are working on a transition Tennessee as kind of part of a larger goal but it's hard as a teacher. I want to rewrite how we're going to provide transition services for all students or even just for this one student when you're working within a larger system that isn't kind of addressing this issue of not providing Equitable or comprehensive translation services so I recognize that there is a need say how can we re friend transition in school kind of like how PBIS was a big thing about reframing behavior in school it became a whole school approach we think that transition should be a whole school approach and so we're working to create that model and we hope to include to Sevierville course in that model but we're not quite there yet okay so the last week collaboration with our last section of the survey who are your collaborators and how often are you collaborating so for the interview we found that collaboration between Educators and other transition stakeholders we like to call him the card somewhat frequently so if we remember the scale was never rarely sometimes often so 2.4 out of 4 me somewhere between rarely and sometimes so we would love to see more often ratings we're not quite there but if not we're not never right so the statement with the highest percentage of operating basically who are most frequent collaborators are special ed teachers parents and other family members which we love to see because of course we want to be collaborating with family members and her professional the never ratings so basically who are we very infrequently collaborating with what are we seeing it's the local Chamber of Commerce the independent living centers and the local Civic or service group so these outside agencies who can be really supportive and supportive in supporting transition gold but working with these individuals and organizations could really benefit and almost nobody is connected when we look at the differences between TV eyes and special Educators we found that special education teachers collaborated significantly more frequently with other TV with the school counselors with transition coordinators with in schools and with the developmental disability service providers and then oddly TV eyes were frequently collaborating with professional and to me I felt like this to be explained when I observe itinerant who are pulling students with visual impairments for pull out Services when they're coming back into the classroom with that student it's often the paraprofessional who you're talking to or kind of delivering that information to because they're the one that kind of taking the kids back in while the teachers is dropping whole class it can be hard to have collaboration with teachers when they have multiple students especially in the classroom for students with multiple disabilities so I think that's probably how this is explain but we would like to look into this further so the interview fine and I think the big takeaway that we learn from this is that although the ratings from the surveys look like okay it's not never there is some clever agent happening the reality is that it's not happening that often but when it does it's rare I've ever said around transition so collaboration might look like hey I didn't pull a service we worked on these contractions see you tomorrow but that has nothing to do with transition or hey we worked on I don't know these tactile graph it could be transition focused if the students really interested in math and is planning on getting her degree in math I see that but the reality is we're not really specifically talking about employment about post-secondary Ed and about Independent Living Community involvement teachers of the vision impaired are rarely be open for the IP so scary think about that as a special education teacher is planning and employment goals but they're not considering the visual impairment and how that might impact on employment so we really need to be seeing more collaboration in these spaces so that we're making sure we're considering visual impairment as it pertains to all aspects of future life so just briefly I would love to know how these findings resonate with you as practitioners as special educator is a tvi here with us I would just want to know if this feels right to you if this doesn't feel right if you feel like nope I see collaboration happening all the time I would also love to hear that but just give us a little feedback about what our findings say to you I think Christy Hall pullover yes I do and it's that same link I posted before but I can post it again if that is helpful to you go to the link but someone wrote that their County collaborates with I regularly I love that that's not happening consistently enough and I do think actually VR is a strong they're strong collaborator. But in Tennessee we have some wonderful folks that we are who I think are really changing they're changing that in a positive way they're making extra efforts to say how can we support students as they're moving from high school out to Adult Services Kevin Kelly is the lead of that and I just think she's doing a wonderful job of connecting and really trying with their shortages in our staffing and all the things that every agency deals with I think she's a wonderful resource and support the coffee cart mentions 20 times really hit home with me yeah I mean I think that's the reality and that funny thing is that what is the bike there are jobs that can be built around the coffee cart so for example we talked to one teacher who support students with more significant support needs and she said well we moved on from that and we started helping out by doing the laundry of the coffee cart and I thought well Meagan Good I mean we do need to work on laundry skills but these are students have been doing the laundry for multiple years and the only laundry they're doing is the cloths that are learning how to fold a square a rectangle and I again that's a great Baseline skill but I asked about could they move on because the reality is if you're doing your laundry shirts are difficult to fold compared to a square pants are more difficult than a square what if we incorporated other clothing items at more functional for their Independent Living skills but we're still working on your laundry if that's what you access to and the teacher had said oh I never thought about that so just thinking early experiences are great but having students Full House for 3 years is not enough of experience to say we really prepare them efficiently or effectively for their future life someone wrote more concerned or it's concerning that more iup teams are not addressing or collaborating about transition I agree preparing students for school after life after school and Incredibly important completely agree I think the common complaint I've seen in the past with interviewing teachers collaboration District there's no time and I agree time is always going to be a barrier to collaboration but that doesn't mean we don't stop trying to figure out other effective means of collaboration maybe it's a once-a-week email and create a template where you have headers you understand what are the top I want to talk about in in collaboration and one of them is always transition needs for the student maybe it's setting up a weekly appointment or a monthly appointment but making sure the transition is always included in this collaboration will really help students someone else talk about the coffee card Play Creep Baseline job skills that are students are capable of so much more I completely agree and like I said there is nothing wrong with being a barista it for students were interested in that whether it be a first-time job or a long-term job that's wonderful I have plenty of friends in high school who worked at Starbucks at their first job I think normal for kids so why wouldn't we offer that to students with disabilities of course I'm just suggesting that creating that job as the only in school job experience is problematic because where do we go from there and then she said that collaboration takes time and time about a hundred percent it is but it doesn't mean we don't do it just because something's hard we just need to think about how can we be more effective in that practice okay so let's turn back to our side then cuz is the we're going to wrap up here but this is the most exciting part Phase 5 at Christian Dimension is our resource development so this is where we'd like to share with you some of those resources we created related to those needs are identified by teachers so we weren't able to meet every need within the scope of this project but we actually are working to meet every need is that all done so we'll share them with you today you'll have our emails and you'll have access to everything we share here if you're interested so this is a reminder that interview finding these were the findings that came out of the professional development needs that list of organizations or Reason what is that support post will success resources their literature to share with families about transition or post-secondary topics accessible transition assessments educator mentoring and collaboration College specific resources and the traditional scope and sequence so that's what came out of the and right now today we're going to share four of those six or seven that came out so the list of organizations for post school Success resources in literature for families accessible transition Batman and college Pacific resources let's start with that list of resources in organization so I have a screen recording but I'm going to talk us through it so across the top on a row we have is highlighted blue text that is about the name the disability they would support the focus area of the organization the web address and a note about them and essentially the name is a name of an organization here in Tennessee after the model in Tennessee most are in Tennessee but summer and I know but we can still access their resources for students with disabilities it could be General as in any disability or VI focused for transition to some of the focus areas Christine if you don't mind if we can play a video game we can look at some of the focus area as we have transition generally so 4024 is an app that came out of the national technical assistance center in Mississippi and all they do is support employment and post-secondary had four suits of his own comments do they have an app for transition use a job search skills with best foot forward we have all of the which is the best together podcast there's training programs at the Braille Institute teen program we have voc rehab support online employment training social Enterprise information to more employment training distressing and press interview videos are gray kids about how to dress appropriately for interviews so lots of different activities things you can take him to your classroom things you can share with family to do at home I think there's about 35 different organizations here and within each of those organizations they could have hundreds of resources for you I will say this is not transition Tennessee where the combat or anyone we work with this is not a saying these are gold star program the resources this was us doing a dive across the state of saying what can we find that out there this is not mean we have vetted each but instead this absolutely leads to success this is just tools for your toolbox if you're a teacher to try to say you don't know what you don't know how do I teach financial literacy how do I teach those interview skills will these are some programs that already exists so you don't have to reinvent the wheel but is your job as a teacher to going to look at it and say this will work my students or I need to add these accommodations or this is not going to be successful for my student so let me try something else that's my disclaimer to you so that was the list of organizations are resources that can help support post go fast so now we're going to share with you some resources in literature to share with families and if you've used the transition Tennessee website this may be a little bit so when you are on transition team at work but their website across the top you'll see for families it's a little box here it's supposed to have across the top if you're tapping and within for families I think we're going to do a little screen share against you see what it looks like when you open it it's little pages of family resources and then there's a nation that you can share with families there are these boxes that outline kind of the big important things to think about for transition so finances and benefit Healthcare employment independent living and family can click in to learn about organizations in tennis they are directly supporting those different day we also have family tip sheets so these are little tip sheets they're written at a fourth grade reading level you can print these off their two pages Max come home front back that you can share with family so understanding SS I understand he's your choices understanding how to get excessive assistive technology after school because lots of families think if the school provides a TV that it will continue with the student when they graduate and it won't if it's a school property it stays with the school if it's their property the families through Insurance of course it comes with them but lots of students in our state are using school-owned 80 and so it's important to communicate that to families understand we also have on the right-hand column I know that he was a little quick but there are lots of organizations will play it again has a shins to connect families with what are there legal organizations organdies organizations that will help with school outcomes so as the video was scrolling and we'll look at some of those okay so Tennessee disability Pathfinder is an exceptional resource that will look up families anywhere in the state with local resources so if they live in rural communities it will hook them up with local rural resources the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center one of our partners at the national and international leader in the development and implementation and dissemination a work-related student ID the Pacer Center understood rights laws wonderful for families Educators and Advocates to understand special at law so just really this broad space to understand like who do I need to get hooked up with who can I share with family and Christina mentioned the beginning and this is really important and we're really excited about it our website is now accessible in multiple languages as well as real and features so if you're working with parents were visually impaired themselves or pair do not speak English as a first language they can still access our web site and any of the download of resource is can also be translated so the parent tip sheets they can still translate into their own language Spanish or knees are Kurdish there's over a hundred languages menu How To Read Aloud feature I will say if it if it's a link out to a separate website like rights law that may not necessarily be translated because we don't have ownership over someone else's website so I put that again a little disclaimer we can't control what other websites do but many of our agency partners do you have access to websites as well okay accessible transition assessments so this one there's not too much to share I think we'll go to the next slide so as I mentioned actually we do have two options so as I mentioned before we need to be given a transition assessments for students to build their transition plan how do we know where they want to go if we don't know where they are currently or we don't observe them or we don't interview them or survey them we need to be working with extremes to figure out how how can we identify the dreams and goals you have for your future and then let's work backwards to figure out what can you do right now to get you there so assessment we have two different option on the transition Tennessee website once again in the second tab over for professionals under the column of resources we have something called an assessment database in this assessment database there are just under two hundred different transition assessment and that sounds a little overwhelming but you can use filters to try to narrow down into what you want so I think Christina if we if we Advanced I think a little so the little videos walking us through that process you go to for professional assessment database and when it loads you'll have a little bit little intro video about the importance of if you're interested in that and then you'll see the filtering options filtering options are by the transition domain so things like Community participation quality-of-life self-determination Independent Living skills you can choose the assessment Focus their preferences there need their strength the assessment approach the language if it's offered an English band for other if it's picture supported who complete the assessment and then the cost there are I think probably over 100 free assessment so we provided things that are free if there's a cost your school might already have access to it and then once you filtered it'll give you a list of Assessments and you can click on any one so in the video where clicking Casey life skills assessment is just one that we enjoy but we're not sponsored by then we're not the number to the greatest man and it tells you a little bit kind of summary information about the assessment as well there's a link to the assessment directly so everything on our website again you can access that in your accessibility preferences in your language preferences once you link outside to the assessment we don't have control over that because it's somebody else's website but that's one option to just find assessments now we understand like I said before that it can take time to make sure that assassins are available in multiple formats for students who might need an umbrella or students who might need it in large print so we've gone ahead and said well what are some of the assessment we really like and use frequently internally and maybe let's just do that for teachers so on the screen we have nine different assessments that we've gotten publisher permission to basically say can we make this picture supported can we make this Braille accessible and can we make this a and they all said that they would love for more students be able to access these assessments so the ones we've done so far are the cite learning styles instrument the Casey life skills class that we just clicked on the Comprehensive High School transition survey a guide to assessing college readiness the student interest survey for career clusters there might be another word after that the pictorial interest inventory job tips the career interest survey and the Adolescent autonomy checklist again this is not endorsing the nine of these these are just 9 that we've seen used throughout the state as well so that we use in our own practice as former Educators so this is where we started if there's an assessment that you know your school uses or an assessment that you're interested in but you know that it's not accessible for your students please reach out to us and we'll be happy to try to work with you and work with the pub try to make sure we can get permission to do that okay and then neither Alaska resources or doing okay on time is there a college specific resources the first one is a me a list of scholarship college is expensive and lots of families are stressed about will even if I got into college how would we afford it so we went ahead and said well let's create a list of scholarships that are specific to individuals with visual impairments because there are actually quite a few so in the Farley column is the organization named Thanksgiving then the next column over is the name of the scholarship the next come over is a state or District summer Nationwide so nfb the national Federation of the blind they have nationwide ones but then we had other organizations like the Bluegrass Community Foundation in Fayette County in Tennessee that has a specific scholarship so depending on where it is being listed at the amount of money that they offer to call him for other notes some scholarships have other requirements do for example. Bluegrass Community Foundation a 2.5 GPA is required to Arnett fellowship and there's a link to the website if you want to learn more about it my only disclaimer for this one cuz there's a disclaimer for all of them it's just that we'll try to keep up to date with this it's very possible scholarships go away that new scholarships arise that links are broken we don't have control over those things we just want to kind of start that process for you so your students have somewhere to begin to say what Financial opportunities might exist for me and I will see that the video scrolling there's quite a few I 4043 different scholarship option so that's that's pretty great and again they range in price sum from $1,400 for the East Tennessee foundation and I mean one up here from Google online connect for students interested in pursuing a computer science what degree does a $10,000 scholarship can also be combined so this is just a place to get started you can share this with families to just let them know there are opportunities out there for students with visual impairments okay and are very last resource has to do with the office of Kelly Services and this resource is not yet complete it's a working document but essentially I would suggest to all teachers out there at some point in the students junior or senior year if they're interested in post-secondary education whether that means a four-year degree a two-year degree tcat Community College am I missing some trade schools any type of school if they're interested that's not on the job training it's important to understand what accommodations are available to meet in this stay Beyond just ADA requirements go for 4 years that means talking to office of disability services day one not month one not later in the day one they should be going to pop that office and figuring out what services can you offer me and I would suggest he was a practitioner if your student knows where they want to go or if they're between two School have them get in the habit of calling office of disability services in advance to say I'm a prospective student I'm visually impaired what services can you offer what can I expect not all Disability Services offices are equal so this is important that you do this with your students. and what are the availability that you school so we said we'll how can we start this process for others so we just started with some private and public universities across Tennessee and interview is about some of the what they're doing and we did this more generally so it's not just received the visual impairments it's for students with disabilities. And then there's a separate column produces visual impairments for all these categories so we have the collagen University name the total student serve per semester this is kind of anecdotal we didn't ask for very specific data but just averages the number of students of visual impairment they normally serve per semester General 80 they provide or 84 students of his own pyramids General instructional materials provided and instructor materials for students result in additional combinations or Pro Justice clothes and then anecdotally from someone in their office what is a common reason for failure Christina talk way back in the beginning about how lots of students are getting into college but 60% of students division parents are not completing, there's a disconnect here so we won't understand what do you think from the office of disability services perspective what's one of the reasons that students are not successful anecdotal again this is not hard research they're not coming at us with data they're just saying this is what I see so as you all know as I wrote in the video here there are some roads are completely filled out there some reason or not because this is a working document it's hard to it's hard to connect with people you know we're trying our best they're trying their best ever is busy so if if you and your students want to participate in this project an interview somebody and get stopped and information we have in it play script you can use if a student has two types of questions that they might need to know of course deviate from the script add your own questions but it's encouraged students to get comfortable with this office if they are considering post-secondary I'd because they can be a wonderful resource if used appropriately and I think with that that is our last resource so on the slide we have our contact information for Christine and myself as well as the info a transition tn.org is our kind of the email that we do respond to I see you in the common Alan says what's the best way to access these XL list like I mentioned their working documents and we are hoping to have finished products that we can put on the transition Tennessee website in the meantime though feel free to email any of the three emails and we will send those to you Allen alternatively I'm happy to share what we have with you and they can get stored with the presentation or items stored internally in some way but we're happy to share their part of why we're doing this again not just that in person Unity is we want these resources out there we want teachers using them in ways that are so yeah if if there's any other things that you need we're happy to what happened Creed other resources and kind of expand this work and looks like Jasmine had the link for session feedback in the chats and make sure you fill out if you are present and I told her the 10:59 for right then but if there are any last-minute questions Christina and I can't stick around to answer anything you got I have a quick question at this is Anita Henderson how does in college how does the dropout rate for students with visual impairments compared to other disabilities is that high medium or low I think that's a good question what I can say from the national longitudinal Transit survey to do for digital impairments are attending college at higher rates than other disability categories so that's a positive but the negative is that there's an extra dropout rate so the dropout rate actually came from Perkins the Career Connect they pull that information separately it wasn't related to the longitudinal survey so I don't know what the Dropout rates are four other disability categories we just know about entrance but I would be interested to know that if someone else if someone else was that information I would love to know that as well I'm going to jump in real quick and stop the recording and then we can continue to discuss with any other questions at you guys might have

56:27 Social Emotional Learning & Crisis Support for Visually Impaired Students Featured
Presented by Andrea Word, MSW (TSB) on 9/1/2021
Unity Virtual Academy 2021-2022
Session Description:
This session is designed for TVIs to learn more about SEL (social emotional learning) for students with VI, learn signs of when a student is in a mental health crisis, and discuss appropriate resources in and out of school to support students.
Uploaded Sep 07, 2021
1:46:30 Essential Assessments (FVA) Strategies for Students with Visual Impairments and Complex Profiles
Presented by Suzanne Dinwiddie (TN Deaf-Blind Project) on 2/18/2022
Unity Virtual Academy 2021-2022
Session Description:
Project will share tips and
Hear about strategies that TVIs and O&M specialists can use when conducting functional vision, learning media and expanded core curriculum assessments with students with VI and complex profiles, including students with CVI.
Uploaded Feb 22, 2022
51:27 Lightbox Stories & Literacy Programming for Students with Complex Profiles Featured
Presented by Dr. Adam Wilson on 2/17/2021
Unity Virtual Academy 2020-2021
Session Description:
Looking for ways to integrate literacy and lightboxes? In this session we will take a deep dive into the creation of lightbox stories and digital books, adapted so they are accessible for students with more complex profiles that include VI. We will also look at opportunities for meaningful engagement for learners so they become part of the story!
Uploaded Oct 14, 2021
1:21:12 RCVI Welcome Back to School! (2022-23) Featured
Presented by Allen Huang (TN RCVI) on 8/19/2022
TN VIVA 2022-2023
Session Description:
Welcome back to school! Join us to hear about exciting RCVI updates and what is planned for TN VIVA in the year ahead. Updates regarding the 2023 Federal Quota census and a review of the RCVI textbook ordering process will be provided as well.
Uploaded Aug 22, 2022
1:53:44 Hindsight is 20/20: What We Wish We Knew Sooner & Lessons Learned from Experienced TVIs (Panel Discussion with Q&A) Featured
Presented by Dr. Karen Blankenship, Nancy Toelle, Mary Ann Siller, and Amy Covington on 10/21/2022
TN VIVA 2022-2023
Session Description:
In such a unique, sometimes isolating field, TVIs may not realize what they don’t know about working in the profession. In this panel discussion seasoned TVIs shared their experiences, knowledge, and tricks of the trade, passing along their wisdom from one generation of TVIs to another.
Uploaded Oct 24, 2022

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Preparing Students with Visual Impairments for Postsecondary Education or Employment

More videos in RCVI(Resource Center for the Visually Impaired)