In my first blog, I discussed how important it is to “bloom where you are planted” because it doesn’t matter where you live or teach. Anyone can make a difference in whatever situation or classroom they are placed. My instruction is different from that of many of the Kenan Fellows because I teach students with severe disabilities and deaf/blindness. I am happy to ‘bloom’ and create adapted methods for my students to participate in science-based activities while integrating literacy, communication and other academic areas. I love what I do. The Kenan Fellows Program has encouraged me to research methods and ideas to teach my students more effectively. I really enjoy listening to things other Kenan Fellows are doing and to figuring out how I can tailor it for my students with multiple severe cognitive and physical needs.

This has been such an eventful year, especially due to the Kenan experience. What a time to be involved in this great organization, with so many political issues right now related to the teaching profession. This experience has made me very introspective of where I am and where I want to go. So many of the younger Kenan Fellows have such a great future ahead of them. As I have 24 years of experience behind me, I am getting closer to the retirement age. 🙂 I am not ready to be done with what I can accomplish for students though. The Kenan Fellows Program has inspired me to make plans for the future in my professional life as related to students with disabilities. When Eric Gukian visited the Kenan Fellows group last fall, I came away feeling that years of experience didn’t have much respect, as if we were all done with being interested in learning new techniques and methodology.  If that is indeed the thought of administration, I am here as an example of a “seasoned” teacher who still loves learning and growing in my instruction. I plan to continue to fertilize the garden and bloom for my students as long as I can.

First of all, I would like to say “Thank you!” to the Lenovo company for being so kind to share their product with us!

I have used my Lenovo tablet in my classroom through individual activities. Since my students are limited with communication, the use of apps on my tablet help to address this area. I also use sensory apps for those students who are blind or visuall impaired.

In order to keep the tablet in one safe, I had to create a way to keep it from moving off the table or wheelchair tray while the students are accessing the device. I created a cover to go over it while still allowing them to access the screen. I used black foam board with a hole cut in the middle to show the tablet. The use of the black background helps those students with vision issues. I attach the tabet down to the table with Velcro then attach the foal board on top of it with Velcro. It has worked well so far. I have attached a picture of the handy invention. 🙂

The tablet has been of help recently with a new student in my class. He was very nervous about coming in to the classroom because he had never been to school before. He would not come in the class any farther that a few steps inside the door. In trying to get him to come more into the classroom, I went to him and showed him the tablet and turned on one of the music apps. Little by little, I was able to convince him, with the help of the tablet to come into the room and find his new seat in the classroom.

I am in the process of finding a grant to get a projector to pair with the tablet. It will be of help when we do activities together and for those students with low vision to see the information from the tablet on a bigger screen.

Thanks again to Lenovo for their kindness in donating the tablets to the Kenan Fellows!!

The process of creating my unit was very labor intensive but as I look back, I am very excited about everything I learned and the potential of sharing my creations throughout the state.

Just this past week, I was able to visit some teachers, therapists, and parents in Washington County, NC.  As a member of a statewide Deaf/Blind Teacher Support Program, I was visiting their classrooms to provide technical support in how to teach students with severe disabilities and deaf/blindness. It was an eye-opening experience to see how some areas of our state have so few resources. I wish I had the financial means to get them what they needed for their students. The staff in that county are to be commended for how well they do with the limited resources they have.

One thing I can do to help them is to share my lesson plans, teaching ideas, and videos from my Kenan Fellows Unit.  Sometimes you can see things on paper and they don’t have much of an effect but sharing the videos of the lesson implementation really makes a difference. The unit plans give examples of how they can incorporate individual communication, literacy, and math goals into the science unit. My Kenan lessons will give them a basis from which to begin to write science lessons for their students.

I am in the planning stages now for presenting my Kenan plans at an NCDPI Summer Institute this summer for teachers of students with severe disabilities and deaf/blindness. I am also working on presenting information at the NC DPI Exceptional Children’s Conference in the fall.  My work with the Kenan Fellows Program will be a large part of the information that I will share. I am very thankful for the opportunities that my Kenan Fellowship has provided

There are not many resources out there for teaching science to students with severe disabilities. I am excited to be a part of helping that area to grow!

My Kenan lessons, which were related to Matter, Property and Change, went well. My students enjoyed the hands-on activities such as a lesson named, ‘Let’s Bake a Change’. To begin, I read a story called, Whopper Cake by Karma Wilson. After we completed that section, the students and their partners baked cupcakes to identify the concept of baked versus not baked. They responded well to a game where we used a spinner to select items to show if the pictures of items were baked or not baked.

I have learned so much from the in-depth work involved in creating lessons to address science topics as related to students with severe disabilities and deaf-blindness. I try my best through all of my lessons to incorporate communication skills to allow the students to initiate communication. Students in my class are all non-verbal so they all have alternate means of communicating. I have attached example of some of the voice output devices they use. Since I use the North Carolina Extended Content Standards to address academic skills (an adapted version of the NC Essential Standards), I try my best to have the lessons related to science but also related to real life situations to help them generalize the topics.

In addition to the communication adaptations, I ensure that there are adaptations for those students who are deaf/blind. For example, in my lesson called “Through Thick and Thin”, I made sure to include hands-on materials of bags with of liquids with a variety of thick and thin liquids. The students each had a marble in the bags and they were able to feel the liquids in the bags and tell whether the marble moved fast or slow through the liquid in the bag. In my area of teaching, there are few ideas and options available for teaching science to students with severe disabilities. It is hard to also find ideas of how to get parents involved in their child’s education. In each of my lessons, I included ideas of how the science lessons can carry over to home. I am in the process of creating videos for parents to show them how to teach the same skills we use at school.

In the attached pictures, I used a homemade spinner that my son built to use as a choice making opportunity for classroom lessons. In the lesson, we had been learning about the difference between solids and liquids. The students helped move the spinner to make their choice of a solid or liquid. They then worked with a partner to experiment and identify whether the item was solid or liquid. After that, they made a sentence and took pictures of the process. As a class, we made a PowerPoint book about the experiment. In the picture below, a student is using an adapted device to turn the pages on the newly student-created electronic book.

Solids or Liquids Classmade book 3-14

In order to create inclusive situations with students from the general education classes, I also gave ideas of how teachers can include students from all levels of learning. In one of my lessons, I was able to use it as an inclusive lesson. The students all enjoyed working together. Activities such as this are very effective in helping the general education students understand my students. It is also very helpful with my students in that it gives them great opportunities to practice communication with others.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the Kenan experience and have changed the way I write and think through my lesson plans as a result of creating the Kenan Unit Plan. I truly appreciate this opportunity!

The Kenan Fellow/Mentor partnership is the foundation of our program and what we do.  What does this partnership mean to you?

I was very fortunate to have been paired with two wonderful mentors during my fellowship, Elizabeth Edwards from NC DPI and Dr. Sandra Warren from East Carolina University. Through the summer, we would meet together to discuss ideas and lesson plans. I learned a lot from both of my mentors through their guidance as I wrote science lesson plans related to the Extended Content Standards. As I was creating the plans and going through the rough draft stages, the both were very helpful with their feedback.  They gave ideas that led me to changes in how I write my lesson plans now.  With the format I used for the Kenan lesson plans, I have now embedded those details into my other science units.  I  appreciate all of their help and encouragement as I have gone through the Kenan Fellowship.

It has been such a great honor to be a part of this wonderful organization.  This whole experience has been full of reflection, personal and professional growth.  I don’t want this fellowship to be the end of the road as far as growth and opportunities in my area of teaching.

From my head being so full of wonderful new technology ideas to being involved in political discussions about what is going on with the current direction of education/educators in our state and nation.  I don’t feel like this journey is over since I still have so many things I want to accomplish from things I learned at the Professional Development Institutes.  As all of the speakers shared information about their classrooms and teaching ideas, I was always thinking of how I could adapt the information to make it work in my classroom of students with severe disabilities.

As our last professional development ended, I agree with other Kenan Fellows who said that it doesn’t feel like we are done meeting.  After listening to the politicians speak, I feel that our role as Kenan Fellows/Leaders includes speaking up for the direction of education in our state.  We are perfect candidates to share our education vision with those in Raleigh and Washington.  I hope we have an opportunity to meet again and share our ideas with those who need to hear.

Thank you to all of the Kenan staff for making this entire process such a memorable one!!

As some districts ban the use of social media in and out of classrooms, and others encourage its use, how do you explain such polar viewpoints?

Things that are common now would have been banned 20-30 years ago. Our society has become so open to adult language and things that are inappropriate in nature.  Just this morning, I heard a credit card commercial with Samuel Jackson using profanity. Many commercials already have suggestive themes. Our children are exposed to so much more now at a younger age.

When we think of protecting our students from certain topics especially in elementary school, it can be a tough job due to the fact that the internet has so many questionable sites.  With technology becoming such an integral part of our everyday lives, we also on the other hand cannot keep our children from learning things through the internet.

Some counties that limit the websites offered make it very difficult for students to learn about some topics that are behind a blanketed block on sites. As a teacher, it can be very frustrating when you want you students to grow in their knowledge of things they can explore through the internet.

There needs to be a happy medium in their exposure at school. We need to be proactive in guarding what websites the students are accessing. Obviously with many of the examples we have learned through the Kenan workshops, technology and the social media can be a great thing.

I am in the process right now of creating webinars for parents to learn some of the same techniques we use in the classroom for our students with severe disabilities.  We learned so many examples of teachers using the internet for flipping their classrooms. I wanted to be able to reach my parents through versions of social media to help us all be on the same page with helping their children.

With our young people being so computer literate and involved in social media, we have no choice but to figure out how to make it all work in a safe and respectable manner.  If we want to reach our students in their world, we have to find a happy medium of how to make it work while not losing the focus of what’s important and appropriate.

As the summer of Kenan has come to a close, I feel so fortunate to have been a part of such a special learning experience.  I look forward to embedding many of the technology options into my daily teaching of students with severe disabilities and deaf/blindness.

This experience helped me to delve into the Science Extended Essential Standards for my students in the adapted curriculum. I thoroughly enjoyed researching and creating lessons that use to teach science in my classroom. The technology I learned had the biggest impact on me.  It got me excited in thinking of ways to get my students and parents more involved in the classroom. For every technology idea that was shared with us at NCCAT and Raleigh, I got excited thinking about how I could adapt this for my classroom. I look forward to figuring out how to embed the technology into science with our separate and inclusive educational settings.

With my students having so many physical disabilities and communication hurdles to jump, technology has opened a lot of doors for them to become active participants in their lives. Things sure have come a long way from when I first started almost 25 years ago. Back then, students in the low incidence classrooms would just participate in sensory type activities. Now the bar has been raised to such a higher level! So far this school year, I have already arranged some inclusive science lesson opportunities for our students in the adapted setting to work together with those students from the general education setting. I am in the process now of writing grants to help fund some of these inclusive science lessons throughout the school year. My fingers are crossed! So exciting!

With the beginning of a new school year, I look forward to sharing new multisensory science activities that embed other academic and communication areas with my students!

Our class already has opportunities to meet students from the general education classes at the beginning of the year. As we build on these initial relationships, we will be carrying out some of the Kenan lessons in an inclusive setting. I look forward to sharing the multimodal teaching ideas with the general education classes through these lessons.

As we begin each unit topic from the Extended Content Standards, I plan to create video snippets for the parents to watch through Edmodo. I hope to help the parents understand a little more about how we address academics and communication in the classroom. I would love to have them use some of those ideas through homework activities. They already complete reading homework assignments.  I would love to take the home/school relationship to a new level of skill building for the students. This will hopefully help with generalization of the skills concepts.

With having some new students in my class this year, it always take a little time to find the most effective individualized communication methods. The new multisensory adapted lessons will simplify the job of adapting activities for new students.  Some ideas may need to be tweaked a little as we go along.

I look forward to sharing the many rich, educationally relevant ideas through the upcoming year. I feel refreshed and ready to bring it to the next level!

Throughout my fellowship, I have been focusing on creating science lessons for students with severe disabilities and deaf/blindness.I also planned to create inclusive lessons for our students to use within general education classes. Recently through conversations with my mentors, I got to thinking about how I am creating my lessons. My focus had been on how to create them so that my students could participate mainly in activities within our classroom. From information I learned at NCCAT, there is more of a focus on students working cooperatively within their own groups for learning science concepts. When I really got into the creation of my lessons, I realized that my lesson plans are multisensory and would be appropriate for students of all ability levels. Through the incorporation of technology, manipulative and communication adaptations, the activities would allow students of all ability levels to participate in group experiments at different levels within the lesson.  Although my lessons will be geared towards students with disabilities, each lesson will have a component that will show how lessons could be used in the inclusive setting. The basic ideas and adaptations of all the lessons will make them appropriate for any setting to meet the needs of all students while embedding science, math and literacy within the lessons.

Each year, I invite all of the classes in our elementary school to meet our children within our classroom. It is very helpful for the students to see how much our activities are like what they do in their classrooms…and how our children are so much like them…just with adaptations. When I think back to some of the group games we played at NCCAT, I remember noticing group dynamics. Some people were more outgoing or outspoken within the group than others. All of the Kenan Fellows are leaders but when some feel more comfortable within certain situations, they were more apt to speak up to be leaders during certain games. This concept demonstrates how all students need the opportunity to see what it feels like to be a leader. When our students with disabilities are in group situations with general education students, those students have opportunities to be leaders and assist our students. In creating these types of lessons, I hope they can be used to allow all students to feel like active learners in the activities.