Communication is Power

I thought you might enjoy a specific story about a student in my class.  For the sake of this post, we will call this student Dan.

Dan transitioned to middle school this year and ended up in my class. I had met Dan last year while doing my practicum. The very first day of practicum, while we were having free time, he walked over, grabbed my hand, walked me over to the CD player, and handed me a CD. Despite his clear intelligence, he tended to refuse to do any work.

His favorite things are anything to do with music (tapping a rhythm, clapping, playing the keyboard, etc.).  He also loves going on bike rides, swinging, and chewing on things.  Last year, his mom purchased an app on his iPad to try to encourage him to begin conversing, as he has no functional communication.  Despite lots of work, he did not really seem to grasp the power of communication last year.

Midway through the first semester I had a practicum student in my class. As she started thinking about a project to complete, we decided to give Dan another chance to try using a communication device. We tried a different app on his iPad (LAMP Words for Life). My practicum student spent four weeks working to teach Dan nine different words using LAMP. Over this time, he was able to go from no functional communication to being able to request several things on his iPad (bike, walk, toy, chewy, finished, etc).

He even started using the phrases on his device for new meaning. For example, he had learned to use finished when he was done riding the bike. However, he started using the word finished to let us know that he was done communicating and wanted to go back to playing his favorite game on the iPad. Just this week he has learned how to navigate in and out of apps by himself to go between communicating and playing his games.

Initially, I didn't think he would get past 84 possible words to use for communication.  I honestly wasn't sure he would succeed in 4-5 words. However, when it became obvious that he learned words quickly, I had to do some reconfiguring of his device. He now has to tap up to three different icons in order to have the device say a word (instead of just one).  Although this is harder for him than what he originally did, he is already starting to learn how to do this (we have only been doing this since coming back from Christmas break). We have also added additional words to his vocabulary (swing, upstairs, downstairs, etc).

This has all been a major reminder to me of how important it is to give students a new chance at learning over and over again. Last year, he wasn't ready to communicate, but it seems like something has clicked this year and he is learning that his words have power. It will be fun to see how Dan continues to increase in communication skills as the year progresses. Our biggest challenge now is keeping Dan busy as he is no longer content to sit at his desk. He wants to go on bike rides, play with his iPad, take a walk, etc. I guess this is a good problems to have!