Sharing Information With the School About Your Child With Vision/Hearing Loss
Strategies for families from the perspective of a teacher.
http://www.iadeafblind.k12.ia.us/docs/Sharing_Information.pdf
There are many important reasons for families to share basic information about their children with classroom staff and other service providers in school. These include to help children function at their best in order to facilitate learning, to lessen the time it takes service providers to get to know their students so they can get started working on educational goals, and to facilitate collaborative relationships with service providers from the very beginning.
To begin with, let me share a recent story from my travels around California. Three weeks into this school year I visited a preschool classroom to observe a student I will call Sophie. The day began with the students eating breakfast with the support of the teaching staff. One of the breakfast choices on this day was bagel with cream cheese, and a classroom assistant cut the bagel into small pieces for Sophie. The assistant picked up a piece of bagel with a fork and offered it to Sophie by placing it in front of Sophie's face at a close enough distance for her to see it (Sophie has vision loss). Sophie responded by refusing to open her mouth. I asked the classroom assistant if Sophie liked bagels and she responded by saying that she didn't know what Sophie liked to eat. The classroom teacher explained to me later that Sophie had been in school for only three weeks.
As the classroom assistant cut the bagel into pieces, I remember wondering if this particular student could really eat something like a bagel even if it was cut into small pieces. Sophie had significant motor challenges and walked with the aid of a walker. In addition, she was hard of hearing and communicated mainly through behaviors and ac tions (although she was able to imitate a few words when she was highly motivated, as she demonstrated later during the observation.) Since she didn't communicate orally, I realized that some of her eating skills, particularly chewing- might be impacted by the development of oral-motor skills. The possibility that Sophie could chew and swallow something as hard as a piece bagel seemed low. In the end, the breakfast activity was not a very positive and constructive exper ience for Sophie.