Category: Monday Message

The weather is warmer and the kids are out of school, time to get vacation ready! Traveling with learners can be a challenge, but it is always worth it once you reach your destination. Here are a few tips and tricks for your travels.

1. When flying, ask to be seated by the restroom before boarding. Many times the flight staff will heed this request when there is a child with exceptionalities.
2. A fun activity and something for your learner to look forward to is a goodie bag. Goodie bags can be packed for long car rides or flights. Goodie bags with a theme that your learner enjoys, or their favorite treats, are great to use as reinforcers along the road! 
3. Many children with autism spectrum disorder may be sensitive to changes in their routines. Bringing along the exact snacks that your learner eats, familiar bedding, and taking frequent bathroom breaks, can all help aid in keeping your child comfortable. 

What is Bookshare? Bookshare is a resource that we provide to each of our learners with IEPs. Bookshare is an online reading platform geared toward those that may have reading barriers. This platform is customizable to a learner’s individual needs and learning styles. Possible Bookshare customizations include human reader, braille, highlighted text, large font, and more. There are over 1 million titles on Bookshare and the titles can be read on virtually any device. If you would like to learn more about Bookshare, please reach out to your Education Specialist or visit bookshare.org.

Alyssa Jenkins

Howdy! Alyssa here! I live in Tehachapi, California with my husband Kyle and daughter Olivia. We have 15 chickens, 3 ducks, 3 turkeys, and a dog! I have been teaching at iLead for almost 4 school years and loving every minute of it!

Anna Siegel

I am proud to be a new Assistive Technology Specialist at iLEAD schools! I have my bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Studies from California Baptist University. I am currently pursuing my Master’s in Innovative Early Childhood Education studying the Reggio Emilia approach from University of Colorado – Denver and will be done in Spring 2023! Before coming to iLEAD, I worked as an Early Childhood Educator and Administrator.

My hobbies include advocating for education and children’s rights, watching movies, cooking, playing video games, hanging out with my dog Bentley, and spending time with family and friends. A fun fact about me is that I played the clarinet for 15 years!

Courtney Ellis
I am a first-year speech-language pathologist. I received my undergraduate degree from California State University Fullerton and my master’s degree from the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences. I am passionate about all things speech and language, but my favorite areas include autism, AAC, gestalt language processing, and CAS. I love continuous learning, reading, cooking, fitness, nutrition, surfing, and hiking. I come from a wonderful family and cherish spending time with my siblings and their children.

Fun fact: I’ve been to over 30 countries!

Join us in celebrating National Charter Schools Week (May 9th-15th)! This is a great week to come together and stand up for charter schools and learners! Tell us why you love iLEAD Schools by sharing a photo or video on social media and tagging us!
Instagram & Facebook: @ileadstudentsupport

Communication is a crucial part of our daily lives and as we don’t want to feel any part of our population is isolated or frustrated, there are easy ways for us to be more deaf-aware. There are also some unique ways and more immersive ways to try and understand:

Easy Ways

1. Understand deafness: Deafness is a spectrum and not all of those that identify as deaf are profoundly deaf (meaning they can’t hear anything at all); degrees of hearing loss can vary from person to person.
2. Communication style: Each deaf or hard-of-hearing person will have their own preference for communicating. It could include sign language (of which there are many!), lip-reading, the use of an interpreter, a combination of all of these, or none of these. (environmental factors can play a huge role in this decision also)
3. Recognize signs someone can’t hear you:
   Ask you to repeat phrases or words
   Seem confused while in conversation
   Appear to be ignoring you
   Pay close attention to your facial expressions
   Communicate with hand gestures that you don’t understand
   Be wearing a hearing aid or cochlear implant
4. Be aware of yourself and communication style: body position is important (face the individual when possible at a shared eye level); speak in a clear, unexaggerated way; use simple body language and visual cues; don’t be afraid to write things down – especially if it is critical information that needs to be fully understood

Unique ways to understand that and more immersive:

1. Read a good book or watch a movie with deaf characters: List of books link, List of movies link
2. Experience what it is like to watch a movie or television show with no sounds and captions only
3. Take the Unfair Spelling Test and get a good sense of what it is like to hear with a hearing loss
4. Give your family or friends a lip-reading test: Check out this short video then make it a game by having classmates or family members come up with sentences to try to lipread each other. Of course, another fun way to appreciate the challenge of lipreading is to check out the YouTube channel BAD LIP READING
5. And finally… take time to learn more, and explore the accessible technology that deaf or hard of hearing individuals use to access the world (cochlear implants, FM systems, video phones, flashing doorbells, alarm clocks, and more)

This safe listening infographic was created by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association.The infographic provides a visual of dangerous and safe noise levels. It explains how loud noise can lead to hearing loss. It also lists ways that you can actively protect your hearing in order to prevent noise-induced hearing loss. This infographic is a great resource for people of all ages to reference and learn from.

If you wish to learn more about better speech and hearing month, please visit https://www.asha.org/bhsm/. This website includes a lot of great articles and resources that help raise awareness of communication disorders. The website includes a list of upcoming events and conferences that can be attended in order to gain more insight in this area. They also have coloring pages, posters, and bookmarks that can be printed and enjoyed!

How can we make our learners with autism feel included?

Autism is a developmental disorder that impairs someone’s ability to communicate and interact. Oftentimes, there are many social cues that are given off when an individual has this disability. For example, learners/students with autism often have a hard time making friends, working on group projects, and having everyday conversations with the other students around them. Learners with autism also struggle with the idea of change, they like a set routine, the same thing day in and day out. Week after week, and month after month. So how can we help them?

1. Be predictable. Have a set routine in place so they are never caught off guard
2. Model how to act in group settings and how to communicate so that they become more confident/comfortable
3. Give clear instructions

All three of these things will help your learner feel more included in the classroom, and overall help them in life!