[Opening slide with the words, "This webinar series is provided by the Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans and by the Minnesota Department of Education."]
[Title slide: "An IEP Meeting on Transition Planning"]
[Slide: "Background on the Student"]
[A woman appears and begins to sign.]
Ann: Hello. I am a teacher of the Deaf/hard of hearing and I want to give you some background information about the student you will see in this video. His name is Luke (signs his name, which is an "L" handshape which is waved in the air). Luke is a junior in high school. He is profoundly deaf in both ears. On his right side, he wears a cochlear implant processor. On his left side, he wears a hearing aid. Growing up, he used both a cued language transliterator and an American Sign Language interpreter. He is now a junior in high school. So he has different challenges now. He is mainstreamed for his complete school day, except for one class where he is with me, his Deaf and Hard of Hearing teacher. Luke has noticed he struggles with attending to two different visual information sources. Like if he has to watch both the interpreter and a video without captions, or an interpreter and captioning simultaneously, or trying to take notes in class. That can be challenging. The video will show an IEP team identifying the issues and discussing solutions. And also how to use the Discussion Guide to help the team figure out what is best for Luke. Finally, we will talk about his transition to college. What does he need? What kind of information does he need to consider for transition? Also, notice that in the IEP meeting, there is no additional interpreter. Typically, in many schools, the interpreter during the day will meet with the D/HH teacher in advance to pass on insight to share with the team while the interpreter is interpreting the meeting. So, make sure the interpreter's feedback is collected before the IEP meeting. For this video, our priorities are problem-solving and preparing for the future.
[Slide: "The Meeting"]
[Six people are in a meeting room and are sitting at a table. They have paper and pens in front of them. One person (Susan Lane-Outlaw) has an open laptop in front of her. They are Susan Boinis (interpreter), Susan Lane-Outlaw (school administrator), Mary (parent), Luke (student), and Ann Mayes (teacher).]
Ann: Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming to Luke’s meeting. We want to talk about some of the specifics related to access. At first, I think it might be worthwhile just going around and introducing ourselves. I'm Ann Mayes. I'm the Deaf and Hard of Hearing teacher with Luke. And this is my name sign ('A' and 'M' on shoulder).
Luke: My name is Luke and my name sign is this.
Mary: Hello, I'm Mary, Luke's mother.
Mrs. Paulson: I'm Mrs. Paulson. I'm the social studies teacher.
Dr. Lane-Outlaw: I'm Dr. Lane-Outlaw. I'm an administrator here.
Ann: Okay. Thanks. I think we'll just go ahead with the meeting. Luke, why did you call us here?
Luke: I know I’m doing well in most of my classes, but in social studies, there are lots of videos and I noticed I’m missing a lot of the material. I do have an interpreter, but I feel like I’m missing some of the information because the videos aren't captioned. And then, in my college-level English class, the teacher talks so fast. It's really a challenge for me to watch the interpreter, try and take notes, and do it all at the same time. I think it would be helpful to have a notetaker. And then I could compare my notes with theirs to help me understand the information better. It would also allow me to watch the interpreter better and look at notes later.
Ann: So, I know taking notes is hard while you're trying to watch an interpreter and videos, so the notetaker probably would be helpful. Also, I noticed your English teacher noticed you struggled the first semester. I know it's a fast-paced class. Can you tell me more specifics about social studies?
Mrs. Paulson: Well, I apologize Luke. I found out that you'd be part of our class at the very beginning of this semester. And just because of the way social studies is, we study a lot of current events. And depend on YouTube for captioning. That hasn't worked very well, so, I've been struggling, really, to find captioned films for current events. But this next semester, I know that you'll be with us. And I'm all set up and ready to go.
Mary: Yeah, we really encourage Luke to stand up for himself and to talk to teachers directly and keep really trying to figure out the best way to do that. And I think he prefers to send emails if that works.
Mrs. Paulson: Absolutely.
Dr. Lane-Outlaw: And I've heard he's a really hard worker. I mean the teachers enjoy having him. But I do know that access has been a challenge. So, we are working on that. We want to make sure that we have all the access that Luke needs.
Ann: I do think that it would be good to look at our Discussion Guide and make sure that we've covered everything. There's some prompts. There's some checklists here. So, I'm going to pass those out and if you could, take a moment to look at page 19. Specifically the part about high school students. [Ann passes out the Discussion Guides.] If you notice, this Discussion Guide talks about different situations like you've experienced - the same kind of thing. It talks about using interpreters and having other kinds of assistance. Specifically for fast-paced classes. Try to remember - that you're going to college soon and we want you to be ready for that experience. Have you talked to your VR counselor yet? The vocational rehab counselor? There's a page here for them.
Luke: Yeah. I've emailed my VR counselor and she wasn’t able to come. meeting. But we have another meeting set up for later on. I looked at the Discussion Guide and I feel like I'd be able to explain my hearing loss and how it affects me in school. I really like to be independent, even though I know I miss things. I don’t remember the specific numbers.
Ann: Right, you are very independent. But it is important to know some of the data because other people don't always understand the impact of a hearing loss. Remember, the audiologist tested your hearing and I think they said you catch about 20%, which means that you miss 80%. So, I know if you use your processor and your hearing aids, you can hear some. But when your eyes aren't on the speaker, you’ll miss some. So, it's important to consider that kind of phrasing to help people understand how much you miss if you're taking notes or watching the interpreter. I think as you take the more and more advanced classes, it's going to be more and more difficult to take notes and look at the board and watch the interpreter all at the same time.
Dr. Lane-Outlaw: If I remember right, there was a trial with some voice recognition software. I know the tech gentleman - he and I had talked about that. He was downloading it on a laptop. How did that work?
Luke: Well, it was really distracting. Many of the words were messed up. Especially those vocabulary words that I was missing already. It didn’t work for me.
Mary: I notice when you had a notetaker that was a paraprofessional in the classroom for other students, that you seemed to do better with that. Whatever happened with that?
Luke: Yes, I can focus better on the teacher instead of taking my own notes from the board. It allows me to relax a little bit more, focus on the interpreter, knowing that somebody else is taking notes. And then that information lines up better to the study guides than what the teacher has written on the board. And I can then study better with the notes.
Ann: So, to summarize, it sounds like a notetaker would be helpful. Voice recognition software was not helpful. The accuracy of the voice-recognition software was not there and it was also a distraction to you. So, I'm wondering if you think it would be important as you go through your college prep classes to do maybe a trial with CART or C-Print or something like that? Have you done that already? I think you've tried CART, as I remember. Also, it would be important - like you say you do like to do things independently. When you move into the dorm, we have to think about the fire alarm, how you're going to wake up, we need to think about those kinds of things as you go to college. Do you want to try CART again? I think you've tried CART before. Do you want to try it again?
Dr. Lane-Outlaw: Can I just - What is CART? And is that a replacement for - what does that look like?
Luke: CART is when someone types word for word what everyone is saying. I've tried CART last spring, on a trial basis with some other deaf students, but I wasn't sure about not having the interpreter in class. C-print is similar to that, but it is not a word for word transcription. It's more of a summary whereas CART is more accurate. I think I'd probably need CART in my A.P. European History class.
Ann: So you're right - that's a good question. Does that supplant the interpreter or enhance the interpreter? That's something we have to think about. We were thinking about using CART only in class for a heavy lecture class. I know you're going to have a variety of classes. Some of them will be suited to an interpreter. Some of them will be better suited to CART, like the AP European History. I think that's going to be heavy on the lecture and the vocabulary. So, that might be a good place to use CART. Why don't we sit down and make a plan and save that for later? What do you think? [Luke nods.]
Mary: So, that sounds good. Are you guys going to - where are you going to save this information? How are you going to remember to use it?
Luke: Mom, Ann Mayes and I will be starting to create a portfolio for me on Google Drive. And that will include things like sample emails, sample letters. [All nod in agreement.]
Mary: Okay.
Ann: Because when we go to college, it's important to have that kind of information at your fingertips, at the ready. So, you can store a variety of things like that, when you apply to a college, there might be similar things they're requesting. So you can have a form already done and just tweak it a little bit according to each application. We also want to make sure you're up to speed on ADA. If you look at page 20, no, wait, is it page 20? No, I'm thinking about something else. I'm thinking about Appendix VI on page 47. Look at that. It's towards the end. [All change find page 47 in their Discussion Guides.]
Ann: If you read through that, you notice there's different areas that the checklist includes. We can kind of use this as a guide and create the portfolio along these lines. And starting in the fall, we can include ADA information, things about Title II of the ADA, all kinds of things that will be important in college. Because in college, there is no IEP. You need to know your rights and you need to be able to know how to advocate for yourself. To help people understand what your hearing loss is and how the ADA applies to your rights. But going back to page 20, [All find page 20 in their Discussion Guides.]
Ann: Page 20 talks about the impact of if you only understand 20%, of how that impacts, how you might want to use CART in some classes, and note-taking in some classes. That explains clearly all the different things you might want to cover. All the different considerations as you develop your portfolio. The kinds of things to prioritize. The kind of things to include. So it's important - there's a website for PEPnet that has a lot of resources even though PEPnet itself is no longer functioning. They still have some resources online that you might want to look at and see how it goes.
Luke: Well, that sounds like a good plan. I'm really looking forward to college. I know my mom and dad really want me to have that experience with the support and have the language to tell people what I need to be successful. [All nod in agreement.]
[Video fades to the original slide with the words, "This webinar series is provided by The Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans and by the Minnesota Department of Education."]
