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Inclusion is Belonging: Promoting Peer Engagement and Relationships for Students with Multiple Disabilities, Including Visual Impairment

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Presented by Dr. Elizabeth Biggs (Vanderbilt University) on 10/4/2022 TN VIVA 2022-2023 Positive peer relationships are important for all students. But, it can be challenging to know how to provide supports that lead to students with disabilities being known, accepted, and befriended by their peers, particularly when students have complex support needs—such as students with multiple disabilities and visual impairment. This session will offer practical, evidence-based strategies to equip educators (e.g., teachers of students with visual impairment, special educators, general educators, paraeducators) to promote inclusion and belonging for students with disabilities in their general education school and classroom communities through peer relationships. Shared links: * Creating communities of belonging: https://tiescenter.org/topics/peer-engagement/creating-communities-of-belonging-for-students-with-significant-cognitive-disabilities * Implementation Guide for Peer Support Arrangements: https://publications.ici.umn.edu/ties/peer-engagement/practice-guides/peer-support-arrangements * Implementation Guide for Peer Network Interventions: https://publications.ici.umn.edu/ties/peer-engagement/practice-guides/peer-networks

Show Transcript

oh well welcome to today's topic which is really focused on the idea that inclusion is belonging specifically promoting Karen gateman and relationships for students with multiple disabilities by means of action my name is Elizabeth Biggs I'm an assistant professor in the department of special education at Vanderbilt University and my work focuses on Children and Youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities who have complex needs and students with multiple disabilities who often have sensory disabilities as well as such as visual impairment I hope you'll be able to talk about why their relationships are so important and not just important in general but really important for the idea of belonging I hope that you'll also be able to engagement and relationship questions that you know so you'll be able to understand some of the views and experiences of kids themselves so I'll share some findings from research where we interviewed young children on their friendships with classmates with disabilities and I hope you'll also be able to understand two different intervention models that you can use to support your engagement and relationships so a bit of orientation first who are students with multiple disabilities and visual impairment brings you our students who have a vision impairment and one other disability on. Maybe cognitive-developmental on physical in nature and often students with multiple disabilities quite literally have multiple disabilities so more than 2 and social interaction and relationship can really be in acted for these students in a lot of different ways one of the ways is that students with multiple multiple disabilities often communicate in ways that are different than their peers so they may be less likely to use verbal speech to communicate and may used forms of augmented and alternative communication or a AC this can include things like gestures or signs also devices such as devices and while all these forms of communication are valid and a courage ways of sending messages I'm making make it more challenging to foster a strong social interaction and relationships with tears when she hears themselves aren't familiar with those ways of communicating an addition sentence with multi disabilities and visual impairment may not process visual cues a really understand their surroundings in the same way as beers and that can also impact social interaction and relationship and many of these students have other developmental differences for example that they have autism it happens Alachua disability that also impacts the ways in which they interact and relate to their peers and just a sort of cat for the idea of how many students are certainly is a low incidence population meaning but there are a lot of students with multiple disabilities and visual impairments compared to other disability categories for instance but many many students who have significant intellectual disabilities do you have lunch with visual impairment I'm just one study here this is really just an estimate not a true prevalence count the sort of estimated out of those students who have a pretty severe intellectual disability two out of every three of those students might have at least a functional functional visual impairment so let's get started with a population in mines by thinking about the importance of friendship and peer interaction so take a second and kind of think even to yourself what does friendship mean to you why is friendship important for you hopefully you come up with lots of reasons that friendship is important for you I know for me when I think about my friends and think about how they have both taught me things but also how they make my life better my children and the same is true for children with disabilities friendship is important for a learning for our growth for our development but it's also important for our well-being and yet for students with disabilities especially students significant intellectual and developmental disabilities in multiple disabilities these friendships tend not to happen very naturally so they're somewhat limited data I wasn't able to find a lot of Statistics specifically around students with me disabilities and visual impairment around students with complex support me in so in this study they observed secondary students with intellectual and developmental disabilities including students with me disabilities just not limited to them what they found is that even when these students in middle and high schools were in general education classrooms one out of every four days they went entire general education classrooms without a single so no interactions to them and no interruptions from those students to their tears and that to me feels quite dismal that were sticking people in these classrooms and the students really aren't experiencing the same sort of inter and the belonging that we hope to get out of inclusive placements another study looked at the communication acts of elementary students specifically who were using augmentative and alternative communication so I got in this who did some students with multiple disabilities but not focused exclusively on time but even in that broader population only 3% of the times that these kids were communicating throughout their day wear with peers so 90s 7% of those interactions were with adults moose typically a one-to-one paraprofessional assigned to work with them so if we think about kind of how these interactions in friendships really are for with multiple disabilities what does it mean for them to be truly included in their school communities and will frame or talk today around the idea that inclusion really means to belong on this figure from the tire center a colleague dr. Eric Carter and I developed this figure along with the collaboration of the ties Center and also several resources around what it really means to create communities of belonging of War disability is that if you're interested that you are totally just takes you directly they are but the idea of this is that we've used the word inclusion so often that is almost lost its meaning when we say you want students with multiple disabilities to be included what we really mean is not just that their presence in these classrooms this is sort of where this we all start but that they're invited into day-to-day interactions that they're welcomed and known if there no not just for their disability label but for who they really are and that they're accepted and involved in the day-to-day life of the classroom or on the school that they're given the support they need to have type of involvement that their herds that they were really fostering self-determination and the chance for the students to use their voices weather for through speech or other means it will smell me that their boyfriend didn't need to add so you can see the core focus of friendship in facilitating these aspects of belonging and inclusion for students with disabilities I also want to frame our talks today by thinking about some truths about children French adult should know and this really comes from kind of some Child Development literature also just from our day-to-day interactions with kids and these things won't feel surprising but hopefully they really bring them to the front of your mind so the first is it friendship can't be forced I think is Educators we want to create friendships right we want that for our students and we want to really help them build friendships and healthy. But the thing is we can't conjure up a friendship friendship at its core is about choice I choose you and you choose me and so because of that we really can't force it but friendship can be so even though we can't conjure a French or force a friendship what we do as adults really matters and either make spear interactions and relationships more likely or less likely and so I like to think of this as a sort of like creating fertile soil and what I mean by that is a friendship is going to be more likely to grow if the environment that we create is conducive for it a friendship is less likely to grow if the environment that we created is not conducive to the things that we do adult whether we are teachers and students with visual impairment or other special Educators or general Educators or parents or peer Educators whatever our role as adults and interacting with children are attitude and actions and talk with kids really matters for how they build relationships I'm also friendship to be hindered so inadvertently adults have been creating and reinforcing helping relationship between students without disabilities and students with disabilities and often we even praised or are happy about these types of relationships but I think if we start to slow ourselves down and really think about the outcomes that we want for our students multiple disabilities including visual impairment is not that we want them to have a bunch of peers you are there helper is that we want them to have a you are there friend and do we want to be careful in the work that we do that we're not accidentally eating a reinforcing something that looks a lot more like a helper relationship than a friendship and finally I want to mention that friendships can take different forms so not all friendships have to or going to look the same you might even about your own friendships especially your friendships as a child and recognize that you had different types of friendships that that benefited their lives in different ways and so I think sometimes we can feel like if a friendship is not going to what we think might be typical and that will just never get to the point where we have reciprocal Mutual friendships among students has significant disabilities and their peers and that type of thinking I don't think is very healthy because it causes us to come in your hands up in the air and say oh we're never going to get there college that Mutual reciprocal healthy friendships can look a lot of different ways so let's take a second and talk about some barriers and facilitators to Pier he's right in relationships I hope that these things connect with what you see and kind of your own day-to-day work with students in schools so there's been some researchers going into these classrooms observe and watch what happens and what is really clear is that all of these studies sort of converge on the idea that being in the same physical space is not sufficient for students with disabilities especially significant disabilities experience positive interactions and relationships with peers so even when you kind of get kids together on the playgrounds in the lunchroom in the general education classroom it doesn't inherently mean that it will snow how's it going to actions in friendships with peers and I like to think about the different pieces acting as barriers are Priscilla Teeters to these interactions and relationships as falling in these three categories related to students with this how do you stem cells related to the way that we structure our school environment and then related to peers themselves and so let's take a closer look at each one of these independent student social and communication skills we've already talked a bit about how students with multiple disabilities have many differences in their social and Communications development that impacts the ways that they interact with peers and so we can and should support positive fractions with peers by teaching students new helpful ways of interacting so we can support these kind of student related factors that may act as barriers our facilitators by teaching students social communication skill meaningful natural contacts this means really leveraging costume contacts for building up those social communication skills we can do this by ensuring that students with multiple disabilities have reliable ways of communicating so I've already mentioned many of these students don't use verbal speech to communicate at least reliably or may have difficulty I'm either all of the time or some of the time using verbal speech and so we can support reliable ways of communicating through sign I'm through a today he's be too many other means as well we want to make sure that there's a z supports are set up for peer interaction and relationships I always like to think about the stories that I've seen where someone we've given kids act two words that fears are actually using and of course it's going to strengthen and help their relationship they need access to those words that kids are actually using in their day-to-day interactions and also we can support students by identifying fears that the student actually wants to get to know that they actually like her that they actually want to spend time with women that there's kind of three sets of barriers and facilitators that were thinking about we've already tackled barriers and facilitators related skills and sounds but what about the school environment you may notice that students with multiple disabilities that you know at schools that you know don't really have a lot of opportunity to be in the same space or involved in the same activities as their peers without disabilities and that obviously acts as a barrier for peer interaction and for a relationship and so when we think about students with multiple multiple disabilities who may be using types of equipment for Mobility you have visual impairment which impacts their orientation and Mobility we need to make sure that we're ensuring the accessibility as basis for all students including students with disabilities and visual impairment we also want to make sure that work for you doing and supporting opportunities for students with and without disabilities to actually do things together and see if you think about how you became friends with someone who is important to you it is probably that you either had something Shaman or you had a shared experience or you had those and so their shared experiences are so important for really saw string healthy fear interaction and yet very often we see you soon as with multiple disabilities segregated by Mary years even when they're in the same classroom or room perhaps because of accessibility of the space perhaps because of I'm just difficulty problem solving equipment that they need for Mobility or four functioning aspect of the school environment is avoiding relying too much on individually assigned adult support so I called his sometimes the velcro paraprofessional the idea being that the paraprofessional simply follows around the student with a significant disability and actually never leaves their side and a trick of this is that many of our students with multiple disabilities need intensive adult support it's true they need support for day-to-day functioning or for their learning but if we relied too much on that one to one individually assigned adult support that creates a lot of inadvertent barriers for peer interactions that otherwise might flourish and then similarly to the idea of activities are shared opportunities really finding a cavities that both students and their peers enjoy and which can be both a challenge and an exciting opportunity when do this with disabilities have different types of preferences or interest than their peers so we're talking about those three categories about so it's heaters and barriers if you're not in a relationship we talked about student for the accessibility of our spaces other set of factors that can either facilitate or hinder. Our actions among students with and without disabilities relates to a particular things like their attitude or the ways in which they interact with their confidence what can Educators do first they can really work to promote a school-wide culture of inclusion this means that we need strong social emotional learning for all students and that that social emotional learning needs to tackle aspects like except and friendship and belonging and inclusion and even getting to the second Point disability and the idea that disability is a natural part of human diversity here in a bit I'll share some just I guess findings from work that we've done with children who were thinking about disability as a bad word and what I mean by that is if we think that we can't say the word disability with a disability is inherently a bad thing that's going to hinder friendships for those you children who don't know how to talk about human differences in a way that can celebrate those differences or at least accept them and so I'm part of promoting that school-wide culture really is helping make sure that we talked about ability and clearways using strength space models we thought we wanted to teach about narrative versity and disability too. And really a quick site adheres to know how to be effective communication partners with their classmates who have multiple disabilities and visual impairment so we're going to switch a little bit to thinking about how to find his warm and in particular a Ministry or some findings from some research that really focused on understanding the . says I've children themselves and specifically children who themselves don't have disabilities so I want to start this part of our conversation with this quote and this was nine year old Anna that's a pseudonym talking her friend Joanna also as you never do and I happen to have autism in until actual disability and her quote was spending time with you and it makes me feel good because she's funny like a lot funny so I've been up orientation is work and I promise I'll make this practical not just talking about the research we interviewed these kids I didn't count them out basically all the kids here around the outside of the circle and these were all elementary-age you had friendships with a classmate I'm with an intellectual or developmental disabilities none of the classmate but they all did have multiple disabilities also were using very limited verbal speech to communicate so how to line common with other students with multiple disabilities but didn't actually have the sensory impairment so our goal was understand how these children without stability is understood their friendships with friends including friends with disabilities and friends without disabilities who in these sociograms are kind of depictions of friendship we've got the students with disabilities in those Center Square so all pseudonym Sarah Jeremy Grace Juliana we didn't actually interview these children we interviewed their friends surrounding them unto these were all kind of 9 and 10 year old can do what we did out of there interview was really create a framework for understanding from a child's perspective how does a friendship develop and I'm not going to get too in-depth with this whole conceptual figure the way you can see from again using the stories to understand how children themselves think about friendship and think about friendship development we saw them talk about things that likely resonate strongly with you as an adult working in the school so things like how environments are really critical entry point to Friendship they talked about the different Spirit environment so that was a classroom or a club that really helped them have time with their classmate with a disability so that they could become friends sort of these varying depths of friendship that are shown here by the gradients so I mentioned earlier that the idea that friendships don't all look the same and that was true for these children as well some friendships are really marked mostly by affinity so they enjoy each other they admire each other they think each other are cool they have some sort of shared interest or characteristic and then only some of these friendships really got to the level of intimacy the idea of loyalty and commitment under ending being down honesty and trust a few things to think about what the Friendship one is that again we were interviewing 9 and 10 year olds and if you know any typically developing I got some pretty varying places in their social so some of those nine and ten-year-olds are really starting to create more intimate friendships and others only aren't yet I mostly have sort of play made based friendships or Infinity based friendships I thought was so interesting from talking to these was that their friends like disability status so whether or not they had a disability are not wasn't the thing that determine the depth of their friendship there were a few had friendships with classmates with disabilities we're Affinity base friendship but also who had friendships that were really marked by intimacy as helping care here's this continue on this really detecting again from the views of these children in the snow recently told us what we learned was that as intimacy grows it really helps children better understand and then provide for the needs of a friend and that's what kind of helps friendship not just look like a helping relationship really look like a more reciprocal friendship but the things know that I really want to talk about today or what we called key agents so these were the features that kids themselves helped us understand where what what helps them develop or deepen friendship and also these agents could sometimes prevent challenges so why try to understand these agents will it be easier to things that kids themselves are saying help them become friends or create challenges for the these provide the greatest opportunities for adults to develop interventions and ways of really supporting positive peer interactions among students with and without disabilities you can see some of these listed here people Cactus heat agents are there that was other peers or adults but also time doing things together communication and interaction and learning about one another so I'll talk those here up on the board I'm just to help you really think about these things these are kind of the key components that we need in order to release Oster pure interactions among students with multiple disabilities in their peers we need to make sure that students with disabilities in their peers get time doing things together that they have valid and reliable ways of communicating and interacting whether that's what is verbal speech for with any other means and we need ways for them to be able to learn about one another I also thought I'd highlight a few quotes about the rules of these people so this boat comes from 10 year olds we are at talking about her friend Jeremy and she's talking about the role of other peers and helping build a relationship she says I became friends with me when I met Iris it started when we were at recess and I didn't really talk that much with him because I didn't really know him but Iris wanted to play with him so I just went and I went with her and I started to like being his friend and so then I just wanted to be friends with him I love this boat because it helps me think about than the networked nature of children's relationships I'm here is an incident where one child iris is already friends with Jeremy and how to connect Bridge Foster these connections with new friends but also children talks about the role of adults and one of the things that I was really fascinated by in hearing children's stories was that they often struggle to think about the roles of adults and tell we really pushed them and this was the most true when children had the best swords of friendships with their classmates with disabilities and let me explain why I think this is so interesting it's almost as if these adults I'd like the magical handrolls they were doing all these interesting things and facilitating their ghs time together strong communication and interaction chances for kids to get to know one another but they were doing it all in behind this but that they weren't really inserting themselves into the social life of these children but that they were playing this behind-the-scenes magic and I like to think of it roll and this tells me really kind of confirms what we've seen another literature but if adults are too intrusive they're going to inadvertently hinder relationships but adults are needed we need them to play the sort of behind-the-scenes or magic hand rolls and to Foster this other key agents chances for students to spend time together chances for students that Foster greater communication and interaction and chances for students to get to know one another and their ten-year-old Ciara was talking about a paraeducator and how the parent educator helped Foster Greater Community patient interaction for her and Jeremy she said sometimes it takes him beer me a little while to understand something so the educator taught us something and if he still doesn't understand her isn't talking crazy to different way is the iPad 2 to talk to each other she's talking about an AC device there it's fun and the last thing that I want to highlight and kind of this section of our talk is thinking about how children themselves. about disability and if you recall back to my recommendations around peers and your attitude I mentioned that I think Educators need to have really profound rolls and fostering a culture of inclusion and that this teaching about disability and inclusion and diversity and my kind of strong diction in that area came from these conversations with children and what we realize we're that the children again elementary-aged children think about disability and Incredibly different ways some chill it'll be just actually highlight these quotes to give you a sampling so eight-year-old Daniela talking about her friend Grace often paused for long times in the interview and didn't know what to say she'd say things like I don't know I'm still thinking and then long long pause has because it seemed as if she felt very nervous to talk to us about our friendship ability and this is the first time that I have the special-needs person this just indicates that those were her specific words as a friend and so I might have trouble talking another girl Aisha have talked about this ability much more fluidly she would say things like not on my friends need special care so he's different than them but he's really fun and artistic not everybody's the same because not everybody's good at the same thing is it what we noticed was that the Wade yours thought about this I'm really impacts their relationships with classmate with disabilities but they sort of on the spectrum of intimacy and more help face relationships year on the left and and more intimate relationships here on the right and the key difference seems to be that students understand disability is a natural part of human difference but human differences are good not bad and that people with disabilities are not defined by their disability but are Define by their individual personalities and characteristics to set up this contrast again we see Anna here who who felt she was doing his friend and called it a friendship and in fact many ways as you might think of friendship look under all you see this focus on helping so well I knew Joanna had a disability and I just wanted to help because when I get older I probably want to help disability kids all around the world contrast that with Iris who has this more intimate release chat with Jeremy and really sees his strength not just his need for help so Jeremy is always funny and stuff whenever he sees me he shouts my name and I'm like hey Jeremy I like that he's funny he's caring for me to my teacher should know that it's a real a strong relationship that we have I just feel safe around you or me for some reason start a kind of conclude this part what we've learned is that children have to have more intimate reciprocal friendships with their classmates with disabilities cheer for their friend rather than held and what I mean by that is that here comes from a place of really understanding of that classmates not just areas of need but also their strengths they focus on their friends strengths not just there. they have some strong way to communicate together even if it isn't words I'm a few of these friendships that were quite intimate the children with disabilities really weren't using words at all and yet they found ways to communicate together they have things that they like to do together and they do them Austin they learn about their friends and out of learning the as a friend sometimes change their thinking or behavior they often other have other friends in common than Kris this network. effect and they also receive support from adults to be able to navigate their challenges and so I would I would pose an argument to all of you working in school that what we're really hoping for is this type of incident reciprocals 7 Long Hill Drive with multiple disabilities including visual impairment and their peers not just helping relationships and so how do we do it not just over into this part of our talk we're going to talk about really how do we no communication and engagement with years and I'm going to provide a brief orientation to different interventions I'm excited here at work that I've done in these areas but I cannot claim these interventions for my own my work is only building on at the work as many other colleagues and researchers who have come before me other we're going to talk about here Network interventions and then something called to your support Arrangements I don't want you to contact Steve be some sort of their focus and wear their hair so if you're not working or ventions are very social in nature really the only goals are social ones we hope they're pure Network interventions to Foster pure Elation ship and peer interaction and we do this out side of the classroom so that's what sort of defines this circle here on the left contrast. Then with your support Arrangements. Support Arrangements take place in general education class and so because they are classroom-based other than not I could stomach face because their classroom based interventions we hope to see both social outcomes and academic outcomes so through with your support and rangement we would hope to Foster greater pure interaction and friendships also hope to Foster greater academic engagement and access the general education curriculum for example so let's talk first about peer support Arrangements remember these are classroom-based intervention specifically in general education classrooms so times were students with multiple disabilities and visual impairment are included in those general education classroom the idea it is I'm that our goal is to promote greater communication you're not going in the classroom by first creating a strong button plan about what different stakeholders can do and I'll show you examples here in just a minute and then inviting and supporting a few years from that same general education class to provide different types of Social and academic support their goal is to provide natural support it's not to be a teacher it's not to be a tutor and rather to provide the sort of natural support that we all get from our peers everyday and then as part of this intervention and we also have the role of adults support two adults are supporting not just that Soca student with a disability but the holes were improved their the student and their peers often this is a educator who could provide the support I'm especially of a paraeducator is already providing inclusive services in the classroom but it could also course be a special education teacher or really any adult who can be in the classroom setting so again we're going to look at how to create these pure support Arrangements in general education classrooms the first who was involved will we have an educational team they hopefully are involved in collaborative planning and really thinking about all of this we also have a student's on for the context of us today let's think about this being a student with multiple disabilities and visual impairment but this could be literally any students a support Arrangements have been evaluated with students with many different types of desert developmental disability visual impairment multiple disabilities they also have carepartners I'm somewhere around 2 Piers from that same general education classroom tends to be the best composition and too many peers and that can make interactions quite a bit more distracting in the Gen Ed classroom to few peers like just one create really just a lot to put on that one beer or if they're absent then there's no one there so kind of two or three is usually a great number this is someone who can really provide the most support to the pier partners and the focus student is an often a paraeducator can do a very nice his job in this role so I mentioned that ears are providing support but they're not acting as teachers or tutors so what do I mean by this will you might have a garage as the supports that. I didn't the kind of Social and other support and then academic support these are just example as they're not comprehensive at all but as you scan through these examples you can likely see that these are things that typically developing a r doing for one another anyway and the ones that aren't like that are not really teaching rolls they're just sorts of rules for a are providing more natural support to things like Bridging the Gap for introducing the students to others encouraging and supporting their communication initiating interaction walking with them from one place to the next especially at the secondary level maybe they're modeling the use of an AC device but not necessarily like prompting the used stop to buy is that would feel much more like a teaching or tutoring roll but really just using the device as a shared means of communication and we're peers themselves can also use it to communicate with their classroom or maybe they're helping this you learn how to spell tomato star on behaviorist academically it's often about thinking that access especially for students with visual impairment and students with multiple disabilities who might forget ample have an intellectual disability how can a serve as an access you're really helping this to access that general education curriculum and be involved in the class and engaged in the class so perhaps the pier can highlight key points from lectures our class discussion and they could work together to complete guided notes they could work together on an assignment or an activity or cuz the port access in other ways maybe through technology or something else so how do we create these pure support Arrangements will the first step is to plan collaboratively then you my peers you provide an orientation for Piers you arrange their eating and then begin implementing and then as with any other practice we want to evaluate its impact support arrangements are and evidence based practice for supper think your interaction in general education classroom but even when were using evidence-based practices we want to understand what is the impact on our students when we Implement that here's an example of of these lands and I'm I can reach out to dr. slice even to share some of these and in physical materials based on the zoo registration at folks are interested in that and the idea of this first page is just stay on how the student with a disability is communicating to thinking again about a student with multiple multiple disabilities many of these students are not reliable using verbal speech to communicate they may be using other means of aec hear a team has really sort of thought about how the student is communicating in that dented classroom and then how they're communicating and other settings and and typically we see pretty big difference this year we're maybe the communication in the Janet costume doesn't look like strong as the students communication and other types of settings on the next page of this plan this team is really thinking about communication goals where that student with multiple disabilities and then they're really brainstorming how peer can become the effective communication partners for those goals so you can see here the team has Pitbull the round providing information about sauce content that the student could be the one to request helper assistance that this initiate greetings and a student could answer questions about themselves or their interest so again it's not to say that these exact goals would be the goals for a student that you know of this plan is to create something I yeah individualized and specific to the student and classroom and it's part of the meat of this plan is to segment the class into different sections on think about the rhythm of the class so if you tried to create an visualize plan for every uni day this would take too long a team could not be easily to it but most haunted classrooms have a particular Rhythm maybe they get to class they do some kind of early don't work maybe and the teacher does some large group instruction maybe that's a small group instruction and independent work and then they leave those components are what I mean by like the rich or the flow of the class so here we pulled out the component is like Wednesday surviving class imagine the secondary setting here cuz they're coming into the classroom we identify what everyone is doing and then we're going to that kind of breakdown what the student should be doing hopefully as well aligned with what everyone else is doing us also what communication goals they might be working on that really can't rebuild that's your interaction what peers can be doing to help support this communication goals what the adult can be doing to support to yours and to support the student we might need related to a see if that's relevant for the student so here's one arriving or at the beginning of the class I'll flip through these quickly but here's lectures our whole group instruction the idea is that each of those kind of components or rib Lowe's of the class gets its own specific plan and then at the end as a caters brainstorm what peers are going to need to know so especially thinking about students with visual why do they need to know not about the students diagnosis that's not helpful but what a need to know about what they can do to Foster stronger interaction this year none of these things that peers need to know really to the students disability label or diagnosis instead they really related to the day-to-day interactions that yours might be having with that student so that's sort of the implementation in a nutshell pure support Arrangements but I also mentioned just how important it is to evaluate the effectiveness of any intervention or any technique you're using and so when we're supporting pure options we went to also look at it affected I'm one of the best ways to do that is to observe in the classroom we can graph data about how to do miss communicating in the classroom their progress on communication goals maybe their academic engagement or their engagement with peers or example but we can also actually interview these key stakeholders I'm interested in learning more about peer support Arrangements I got a QR code here and I'll show this again on this line at the end when they pass for questions will have still a few minutes very quickly then let me just summarized your network interventions and also get you connected with some resources if you're hoping to learn more so I mentioned it to your support arrangements are happening inside of classrooms to your networks are happy outside of classroom so this can happen at the elementary level at recess at lunch during centers this going to happen at the secondary level at lunch during an advisory. Or after school that work is again social focus and needs her so we're inviting the student and some peers usually about 3 to 6 in total to form what we call the peer Network and then we're really just helping that group have regular times to me and playing in Iraq but also encouraging interaction to take place outside of the regular meeting and like a support Arrangements we do have adult support to help the network you can probably see several of those key agents that I'm in and earlier taking place here so your time so lots of shared opportunities and chances to get to know one another and fostering greater communication and interaction again these are the things that we believe and have evidence the Billy report greater pure interaction and friendship include which appears to be invited recommendation is definitely to ask the students were that your input about Piers they enjoy spending time with the older to look for shared interest because again that's what really builds that cohesiveness identifying what will be this year in social activity what Elementary grades this can be toy play and secondary grades will you play is not really very common to man said it can look like what time they made it to yours are doing for fun but maybe listening to music maybe during a Service Pro maybe playing a board game it can be any number of things but the idea is that it should be fun for the students and the tears and something that everyone can access and participate in identify who can be the adult support and when those networks can take place and adults provide lots of different types of support inside of these networks and they might be suggesting roles for how students can actually engaged together in the shared activity they can be modeling and teaching ways of interacting I'm checking in with the student a to see how they can support them or maybe embeddings and social communication teaching for the student with a disability with the end goal is that there is it's a kind of feeding their physical proximity and involvement overtime letting the group of kids themselves have more ownership over them here Network I like to think about this is like just right supports and some other researchers have used this language adult thing of all to provide support in a way that really avoids inserting themselves too deeply or directly into that separates social world of children do children need adults and they need us to help support opportunities for them to get to know one another ways of communicating shared activities but they also need time to have the separate social world and just like with peer support Arrangement is strongly encouraged Care Network ways of really evaluating the effectiveness so observing students inside and outside of the network for things like their communication their progress on communication engagement with peers or the way sandwich Piers interact with them and I'll share this q r code again at the end but if you're wanting to learn more about implementation of Care Network interventions and these are similar resources in conjunction with the tie Center that my colleague are Carter and I developed so to summarize just a few stops hopefully today your head is kind of spinning with some thoughts around why friendships are an important goal and they're an important no call this really falls into our scope of practice as teachers of students with visual impairment a special educators are students need friends and so we need to help think about how to support. But I can feel overwhelming if you have a I said to you so I encourage you to start one step at a time and also to use a collaborative team to really identify what priorities need to happen first I also encourage you to really think about your students and peers and the kind of wealth of knowledge that they have for students they want to find out who they want to spend time with or get the chance to know and for a we want to understand how they already think about friendships and how they think about their interactions with athletes with disabilities so I'm here before we take some questions hopefully today you learned the importance of here engagement and relationships those things that my taxes facilitators are barriers hopefully also games insight into what children think about friendships and how they form and at least a quick overview at to intervention models and so I'll just pause here for questions and Rachel you can let me know kind of what format you usually use for that yeah anyone is welcome to either unmute themselves and ask a question or comment in the chat a lot of good information I asked a question yeah Jasmine your quest with these girls typically be brought up and I IP meeting I would say yes they should be so it teams are tasks under i c e a with writing goals that align with the general education curriculum and then that align individualized support needed and so although friendships are not a general education curriculum issue the certainly relate Dunes individualized needs and so if your interactions your relationships are not already. brought up that i e p meetings I would encourage teens to think about why they aren't and whether they should I also find that parents often do bring these parents care about these things and so if you let apparent kind of talk about what's in Port them for their child very very often. They ships come up so I just would encourage ipg and to recognize that this is in the scope of practice so to speak and these aren't sort of like extra things but students communication with. their interactions and relationships with peers are apart of what educational experiences should involve any other questions well I'm Elizabeth emails on the slide as well should anyone have any follow-up questions later and we just appreciate you guys presenting today just was with and for let me just put the link not again for anyone who needs it I'm again for a cbrn peak credit the opening code was inclusion be closing code is engagement and I'm going to stop a recording

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Inclusion is Belonging: Promoting Peer Engagement and Relationships for Students with Multiple Disabilities, Including Visual Impairment

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