ECC Webinar #3 Social Skills & Self-Determination

This video is posted online with the following chapter markers:
Chapter 1. Introduction & Handouts - Welcome from presenters Ann Adkins, Debra Sewell and Jeri Cleveland.
Chapter 2. Social Interaction Skills - ECC definitions and specific resources for teaching Social Skills to students who are blind or visually impaired.
Chapter 3. Self-Determination - ECC definitions and specific resources for teaching Self-Determination Skills to students who are blind or visually impaired.
Chapter 4. Self-Control - Specific resources for teaching Self-Control to students who are blind or visually impaired.
Chapter 5. Getting & Keeping a Job - Specific resources for teaching Employment Skills to students who are blind or visually impaired.
Chapter 6. Data Collection - The importance of monitoring student success with tangible data and ESPED software.
Chapter 7. Additional ECC Resources - List of additional resources on the Expanded Core Curriculum.

ECC Webinar #3 Transcript

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Chapter 1. Introduction & Handouts

Ann Adkins: This is Ann Adkins with the Outreach Program at TSBVI, I would like to welcome all of you to our third ECC webinar. Today's webinar is going to address two different areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum; social interaction skills and self-determination skills. Like our other two webinars, this one will only be an hour, so we have lots of information that we want to cover in a short period of time.

We're glad that you could join us, and we're very fortunate to have Debra Sewell and Jeri Cleveland, members of the Curriculum Department here at TSBVI, joining us for today's webinar. Both of them have been very actively involved with instruction in both of these areas that we're going to discuss today. We're thrilled that they're going to share their expertise with us. But before we start the three of us start talking about social interaction skills and self-determination. I want to draw your attention to the handout make sure everybody is on the same page. I hope everybody has had a chance to download, a copy of the PowerPoint -- you probably received two emails from Kate. The PowerPoint was in the second email, the earlier email had the sign-in roster and also the longer with several parts, that's what I want to point out to you to organize ourselves today.

Kate Hurst: I want to mention if somebody forgot to download or bring them, they are in the files pod in the upper left hand corner of the screen and they can click on there and download them from there; if they -- if they haven't got them in advance.

Adkins: Good. Thank you. 

The first part after the PowerPoint in your handout is a resource document on the expanded core curriculum. 

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It's called Evaluation, Teaching Materials and Selected Resources for Social Interaction Skills and Self-Determination skills. That's roughly pages 1 through 12 in your handout. 

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After that there's a multi-paged chart 

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called Self-Determination Across the School Day, about 10 pages, and then there's a blank copy of that chart, so that you can adapt it to use with your students. The blank one is actually entitled ECC Instruction Across the School Day.

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That way you can apply it to other areas of the expanded core. These are tools that we hope will be helpful to you as you are doing the rather somewhat complex task of incorporating ECC instruction, not only into students' schedules, but into your very busy schedule, also. But first, let's look briefly at the resource document that I mentioned to you, the pages 1 thru 12; the two-column chart. And it shows a list of evaluation tools and teaching materials for both Social Interaction Skills and Self-determination. I will give you a second to find that in your handout. This document is part of a larger document that covers all nine areas of the ECC. We'll have one of these resource documents that will cover all nine areas of -- [ Laughter ] one of these for each of the areas of ECC. Got a little distracted there. 

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But this is the document. Great! Thank you, Kate. This is the document that I was mentioning. You will notice it's divided into two columns, the left-hand column list evaluation instrument, the right-hand column has teaching materials and resources that you can use for instruction; and they're listed side by side. 

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For example, on the first page, if you will look at the second thing listed under the evaluation column, the second evaluation tool, 

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is called Family Life and Sexual Health. Also known as FLASH.

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A very unfortunate name for sex ed curriculum material and evaluation, but it's a really good resource for sexuality education -- something we hope to share with you, there's a link where you can find it. Since it has both an evaluation piece and it provides instructional information and curricular content, it's included on both sides of your chart, that's the way that one's listed. Everything that has both an evaluation part and instructional materials, is provided side by side. 

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But if you scroll down through that document, say to the bottom of the second page, you'll notice that there's nothing in the right-hand column 

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beside the Brigance, and that's because the Brigance is an evaluation tool and doesn't have an instructional component. We just want to give you a feeling of how this is set up -- how this document -- how this resource document works.

There are separate charts here for Social Interaction Skills, that's first. And it's followed by a similar chart for Self-Determination. That one on Self-Determination starts on Page 4 of your handout, to just kind of give a clue where it is. Kate is scrolling through it now. Thank you, Kate.

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After that, following the charts, there's several pages of reference information, bibliographical information so that you will know the complete documentation of the sources that we are using, 

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so that you can look at it for your own resource information so you know where to go find it. Then there's one of those for Social Interaction and there's also one for SD. Here's the page she's scrolling, SD right now. After that, you'll see some general references, these are ones that can be used for multiple areas of the ECC. And then following that, is a list of some web resources.

Debra and I have been working on this resource document for some time, forever, you certainly realize it's not all inclusive. We are continually updating it. We know there are probably resources that you love and we may not have included them. So we would love for you to share that information to us so we can add that to the document.

Debra Sewell: Our hope -- Our hope for this document, initially, will be that -- it has all nine areas and Ann has pulled out specific ones for each of these ECC webinars, our hope is that it will eventually live on the TSBVI website so we can update it with information from the rest of the world.

Adkins: Now we know that there is a lot of information that we want to color -- cover -- color?. So back to the PowerPoint, let's get started with social interaction skills. Debra.

Chapter 2. Social Interaction Skills

Sewell: The first thing we're going to talk about today is Social Interaction Skills 

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and some of the resources that we are going to share with you about social interaction skills. I'm not sure if any of you have seen the 

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ECC flyer that is posted on the TSBVI website. This particular description of social interaction skills came from that ECC flyer. Basically what we want people to know is that social interaction skills include awareness of body language, gestures, facial expressions and personal space; instruction also includes learning about interpersonal relationships, self control and human sexuality. Almost all social skills are learned about visually observing other people, and instruction and social interaction skills in school, work and recreational settings is crucial for our students. Having appropriate social skills have often mean the difference between social isolation and having a fulfilling life as an adult. You can find that flyer and all of the little blurbs about the ECC areas on our website.

Ann has already mentioned a little piece of this, but on Page 1 of your resources document, there are a few things about social interaction skills and one of those is Family Life and Sexual Health. I realize that's probably a touchy situation, and it's kind of an interesting name for a curriculum. But one of the other ones is also Safe and Sound. Both of these are free, you can download them from the websites that are listed on your resources document, but I think it's important for us to understand and talk about the fact that sexuality education is part of social skills instructions for our students.

Hurst: And Debra, just let me throw in -- from Dawn, she mentioned that the FLASH program includes very real anatomical models; and that if anyone wants the phone contact to order those, her secretary has it. So if you can just contact her at Region 8, she might be able to help you out if you need that information.

Sewell: Okay, our anatomical models did not come with the FLASH curriculum, but there are places that you can orders them. Again, let us know if you need more information about that.

Adkins: Now let's look at some of the components of social interaction. This particular list of nine components comes from the new AFB book on ECC essentials. It's a list of nine components, and we know that there are certainly others. But I like the way this book has laid them out and they are based on quite a bit of research. Much it from Sharon Sax and Karen Wolfe, names I suspect you recognize. Some of it goes back to 1992. The most recent was 206 -- 2006. Regardless of when the research was done, I think we all can realize the importance of the components that are listed here.

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The appropriate body language, communication and conversation patterns, the ability to interact and cooperate with others, basic social etiquette, 

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those are things that I think we do address, sometimes informally; and we'll talk more about that as we go through this hour about some ways to do it in a more structured way. But certainly a component that we hear families talk about a lot and ask about is their concern over the development of appropriate relationships and friendships for their children. And that's a huge component of social interaction that I know we all worry about; how in the world do we address it? It is a component of the next two, they all kind of overlap, the knowledge of one’s self and interpreting and monitoring social behavior. I think we can all realize how much these skills overlap with each other and also with other areas of the ECC, in particular self-determination, which we will also talk about later today. One quote from the ECC Essentials book that I particularly like, is that fact that "social skills is an ongoing process which requires consistent practice over time throughout a student's educational program." This is something in an area that we need to continually work on and address at TVIs and COMs.

So let's look at what we decided to do today. We're not really going to talk a whole lot about why Social Skills instruction is important. Frankly we think that's a given. What we are going to address is why it's important for us to provide specific instruction in social interaction skills, and some ways to do that. A variety of resources in your handout to help do that. We pulled out four that we wanted to highlight today that we feel like will give you some good information, there are four of those many resources that we really like a lot.

The first one is the AFB book that I mentioned, and I have a copy of it, I can show it to you. It's new from AFB. If I hold it up high enough, you might recognize it. Really like it, called ECC Essentials, Teaching the Expanded Core Curriculum to Students with Visual Impairment. 

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Chapter 9 is the chapter on Social Interaction Skills. The other sources, one is the Better Together: Building relationships with People Who have Visual Impairment and Autism Spectrum Disorder or, you know, a lot of our kids have atypical social development, regardless of whether or not they are identified as autistic. TSBVI publication and Debra will talk about that quite a bit, I think. Also, Teaching Social Skills to Youth and Job-Related -- Job-Related Social Skills: A Curriculum for Adolescents with Special Needs.

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Some teaching strategies that are true for all social interaction, these are drawn from the ECC Essentials book. And we know that there are many teaching strategies. This list is not all inclusive, either, but I do think it does provide good background for us to get started. The book itself provides really good descriptions of each of these strategies. 

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For example, how to provide structured behavioral intervention and what does that really mean? What is a behavioral intervention? The early part the book -- of the chapter 9 in this book, covers what these really mean and what the strategies might look like. 

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I think we understand role playing scenarios and I think that is a technique that we as VI teachers use quite often. Cognitive behavioral strategies might be something we leave up to maybe psych associates or diagnosticians, but it is something that we should work on together. Having mentors and role models, classroom support models, peer mediated interventions, all of these are something for us to consider. One thing that I like about this particular book is the five minute lessons they include, I will address that a little bit in a few minutes.

So the first book on the list, the four that we pulled out, is that ECC Essentials book and chapter 9. 

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And so a little bit more information about that. I really like what I have gotten to know about the book. It's new, so I'm just barely getting into it. But I particularly like chapter 9, because of the background information it gives, and then really good specific suggestions for teachers, 

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problem solving scenarios, role playing scenarios. And it's also broken down by kids age levels and grade levels; goes up through transition age and older students. Starting with very young preschool kids. The role playing scenarios start with elementary age -- and thinking of my granddaughter who is not yet elementary age, I can't imagine her doing role playing, although playing is high on her list. And we learn through play.

Creating those opportunities to promote social skills instruction; promote good social skills but in instructional way, I think that's huge. I really like the way they have five minute social skills lessons broken down. At the end of each chapter, they also have specific learning activities that are almost like lesson plans. Not quite as complex as you would probably want for your lesson plans, but it breaks down the information so that you can really add a personal component to it. There are five specific learning activities at the end of the social interaction chapter. It also includes suggestions for working with parents and and the -- the information on assessment. I don't think I've included that on this slide, but there's information on assessing social interaction skills.

Sewell: Next we're going to talk about sample instructional units from Better Together, the book that is published, is it on there?, at TSBVI. It is -- it was written by Linda Hagood who worked with a lot of kids who had autistic type of behaviors. So she titled it: Building Relationships with People who Have Visual Impairment and Autism Spectrum Disorder or Atypical Social Development.

Parents and teachers are faced with a growing number of students with visual impairments who have trouble building social connections that typically sighted students build within the first few years of life. There's diagnostic criteria, there are learning characteristics and educational approaches in the Better Together. It's probably one of my favorite books that TSBVI publishes. There are -- in Chapter 6, there are some instructional units,

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and the instructional units are making connections, and part of making connections is -- is some information about staying connected 

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with people or we can isolate -- we can operate in isolation. So it gives us some information about connecting with people, so we don't remain isolated for all of our lives. Each one of these units also includes social games, stories, and some examples of activities that you can use in general education classes; like science, social studies and language arts, if you want to. Going back to building the connections, this sample unit gets across the fact that it's more fun to be connected than being in isolation, and then -- and that a student can do something to help them connect to others. So, again, it brings in the social games and activities to help people learn how to connect with others. 

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Unit 2 is titled Understanding Other's Perspectives. I know that our students have, frequently, have trouble understanding the perspectives of other persons. 

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So this unit goes into depth about what other people might see, hear or understand that might be different than I see, hear and understand things.
And that our senses and our experiences affect our perspectives, and that another person might see me differently than I see them, you know. 

Adkins: Really? [ Laughter ] 

Sewell: Yeah, imagine. And one of the other really big points this unit has is that we need to think about another person's perspective before you act. And I think that has a lot --

Adkins: Oh, darn.

Sewell: I know. You are going to have to buck up here. But that's -- that also goes with the social skills things that are going on right now, doing some of those social connections things. Unit 3 is about transitions and changes. How many of our students have trouble with transitions and changes. This unit, this sample teaching activity just -- just -- this units concept is changes can cause stress, and how can I do things to help me accept those changes and monitor and modify that -- those stress levels. And changes can be exciting, so how can I, you know, make -- how can I make changes happen when I get bored? You know, I do that kind of every day. Changes can be small or they can be large, and my body and mind changes as I get older, which I think is a really critical thing. [ Laughter ] It kind of goes back to the sex ed and the social skills piece of this, as well.

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Sewell: The unit 4 is emotions and feelings and what they cover in this particular unit is describing your own feelings in words or using numbers, like I am stress level 80 or I am stress level 10. So it's kind of a cool thing to work with kids on, figuring out where they are in the stress monitor. My feelings can be very intense or very mild. I can change the level of my intensity of -- by using strategies to raise or lower my emotional level. And my feelings are not right or wrong. I think that's really important for us to get across to students that their feelings aren't right or wrong, it's just that they are feelings and they need to feel out how to monitor them if they are stressing them out. 

Adkins: Okay. Next slide.

Jeri Cleveland: That would be me, but I want to say something about Better Together, because one of my favorite parts of it is the use of yoga to work on self-regulation, being aware of your stress levels and building excitement and then cooling it down. I think that is why yoga is really cool, [ Inaudible ] the emotional regulation piece.

But I'm really here to talk about teaching social skills to youth, I hope I do this right.

Hurst: You've got it.

Cleveland: Okay! [ Laughter ]. This really is Boys Town, it really does still exist. Father Flannigan started it long, long ago, but still in Nebraska, but it has a lot -- a larger continuum of services that go out to cities all across America. And... their basic premise is that they try to replace ineffective and destructive social behaviors with efficient ones that work. And that build social connections. It lays out step-by-step teaching strategies for teaching social skills. It offers strategies for clearly defining, demonstrating and modeling desired social behaviors, effective praise, promoting generalization of social skills. So, lessons are very highly structured and you have to learn the structure but then you can mess with it. There are 182 different social skills broken down into these steps, and just having them broken into steps is invaluable to me because it makes me -- it makes it easier for me to know where students are messing up when they are trying it.

For example, the steps in showing a appreciation; I look at the person, use a pleasant sincere voice, tone, say thank you for and then describe specific behaviors or specific things that you appreciate that the person did for you.

And then if it's appropriate, give a reason for why it was so helpful, and in the future offer help or favors to the person that helped you. And, you know, we all work so hard on getting people to keep their heads up and say who they're talking to. And we work so hard on helping them know that they are getting something special when they get help and that they should reciprocate. So that was -- I pulled that one out on purpose. The skills are organized from basic to complex in levels in the book. But in the appendices they are organized by all different categories, traits, personality traits, that you want to build into the student, and the one that I brought forward is social skills categories.

So that's what what you are seeing on your slide. 

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Some of the 72 social interaction skills are following instructions, showing appreciation, 

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maintaining a conversation and expressing empathy and understanding for others. That whole perspective shifting thing we were just talking about. There are 69 emotional management skills in self regulation, like accepting no for an answer, responding to teasing...

Adkins: Oh, dear, no!

Cleveland: And sharing attention with others. There are 23 ethical/moral skills. Remember this is a program that's designed to help boys who are, you know, having trouble in their hometown. For our kids, it goes down to things like doing good quality work, making an apology, clarifying their own values, and it's a cool book.
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Sewell: The next curriculum that we're going to talk about is one that we are using to help us write some of the activities for the new general employability innovative course that we have gotten permission from TEA to use as state elective credit. And this book is -- I can't get it quite right. Job-Related Social Skills. And it is a curriculum for adolescents with special needs. What we have found over years is that adolescents with special needs frequently are at a disadvantage in competitive employment because they lack the appropriate communication and social interaction skills they need. Studies have demonstrated that these skills are essential for finding, for getting, keeping and holding a job, so this book has 18 -- in addition to the 18 scripted lessons, it has ideas for teaching strategies, it has social skills surveys for students and teachers and parents. What we did for this particular presentation is we have taken four of those skills, so you would kind of know a little bit about what's in this book. 

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So skill number 4 is asking questions. And I think what happens is sometimes our students don't know how to ask questions.

Hurst: We want to know who publishes that book [Multiple voices]

Adkins: It's in the resource list, that's why they have that document.

Sewell: It's in the resource list. It's published by Exceptional Innovation. Exceptional Innovations, and it's out of Reston, Virginia; it is in your resource list, though.

Adkins: All of the resources are in there.
So we can help you find it later if you need to.

Sewell: Absolutely. Each lesson, like I said they are scripted lessons. Each lesson has a goal, it has objectives, it has materials that you're going to need to teach this lesson; then it has procedure, step-by-step procedures. Here in step 1 this is what you say, in step 2 this is what you say. You might not want to follow it completely like that. But it lays it all out for you, it's really easy to follow and this is one of our new favorite books. We discovered it as we are trying to put some curriculum together for general employability.

These five skills listed here are just a little tiny example of -- tiny example of what's in this entire book. We were thinking asking questions and asking for help are kind of two huge issues for our kids. Engaging in conversations is also a huge issue. Giving compliments is sometimes difficult and accepting criticism, that's probably true for not just -- [ Laughter ] -- for all of us. For all of us here [ Laughter ]. But we just wanted to give you a little smattering example of the job related social skills, it's really a nice book, we like it a lot. 

Chapter 3. Self-Determination

Cleveland: So now we're going to switch from social skills more to self determination. And what you have on your slide is the definition that it comes from the ECC flyer; and it includes choice making, decision making, problem solving, personal advocacy, assertiveness and goal setting, among other stuff. Students with visual impairment, lots of times, don't have time to observe those things, to practice those things. To feel -- to feel the empowerment of making those choices, like seeing something, seeing the colors of suckers at a birthday party and wanting a red one. You can all remember kids fighting over colors. Our kids aren't seeing those so much of the time. Students who know and value themselves have self-determination skills. They become effective advocates for themselves and therefore they have more control over their lives. There are lots of other definitions, self-determination includes -- sorry, I'm catching up on my braille. 

It can focus on skills that enable students to advocate efficiently for themselves and to set goals. So we're talking about moving to have dreams, to really have experiences enough, so that we know what our strengths and challenges are, we are talking about having the ability to decide what he or she wants and needs to do, and basically taking charge of your life.

The ECC Essentials book has a definition and you just heard parts of it. The last one that I'm going to read to you is the ability to make choices and exercise control over their lives to achieve their goals and to acquire the skills and resources necessary to participate fully and meaningfully as an adult.

So if you heard control so many times and, you know, even a very young child wants control, but you don't have the -- have the wisdom or the experience to make very good choices when you are very young, and so you can only have control at certain levels. But I think that it's really important to help our students grow up into the ability to have that control, because we all want it really badly. [ Laughter ].

Sewell: We're going to talk about the components of self-determination as they are listed in the ECC book. There are -- what they listed in the ECC book on Page 473, are self knowledge, self advocacy and empowerment, assertiveness, informed decision-making, problem solving and goal setting and self-directed and self-regulated behavior.

These apparently, you know, were research based from the ECC Essentials book and a lot of the people that they have acknowledged as having done research, we also -- we also found in -- in network connectivity lost -- were also found -- that we used in the -- in the -- am I even still on?

Hurst: You're on.

Sewell: That we used for empower -- I'm sorry, my computer went bonkers, it's confusing me.

So , there are lots of other components to self-determination, and we're going to mention some of those when we talk about the other resources. These are not exactly the same components that we use for empowered, but there's so much overlap in all of the resources out there. 

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The resources that we have chosen to use for the discussion today, again, is the ECC Essentials book, the new one from AFB, Empowered: An Activity-Based Self-Determination Curriculum for Students with Visual Impairments from TSBVI. We're also going to talk a little bit about Ready to Use Social Skills Lessons and Activities and another curriculum that we have found that we've been using, again, to help us create curriculum for a couple of the courses on our campus, and it's called The Transitions Curriculum from Stanfield and Company.

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All of these, again, are in your selected resources document. There are a few other books that I would like to point out ,as well, that are also in your resources document. Raising Self-Reliance, Children in a Self-Indulgent World. You have probably heard about that one. Person-centered training videos on the TSBVI website are also very good resources for self-determination, and the Perkins School for the Blind has those on their website, as well. Those are the four that we're going to talk about for self-determination.

Adkins: And the first one, again, is the ECC Essentials book that I like so much -- that I showed you earlier, new. Holding it up again. 

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It's chapter 12 that addresses Self-Determination. I, again, have learning activities at the end of the chapter, that's the last bullet on this slide. But they are basically short lesson plans that you can then add to if you need to. 

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So I've bulleted parts of the chapter that I thought were really helpful. Some general considerations like having role models and peer modeling. I think we, you know, use that. But it also brings up some of the issues that teachers face in addressing self-determination skills for our students; such as providing the opportunities to practice the SD skills, and that the instructional time should be explicit, planned instruction and that our activities should be organized as well as those incidental teaching opportunities that we often rely on.

It also includes a template for goal setting. And I think any of the research that you find on self-determination, whether it's relating -- related to students with visual impairments or not, will talk about the importance of goal setting. And so a template to help you do that with your students, I think, would be very helpful and they have a suggestion for that on Page 509. They also address person-centered planning and there are multiple models for that and Debra mentioned videos on our website that are helpful.

The chapter itself also really emphasizes the importance that -- that all people learn by doing. Our students do as well. Visually impaired, students, however often need more time to practice those skills, and that's the hard part for all of us to find time in the day, or the opportunities when they can repeat skills, maybe multiple ways, and help them generalize those skills into a different situation in different environment. But our kids need those opportunities to practice what they have learned. And opportunities to fail, to see what happens if they don't do it the right way in a non-threatening situation.

The chapter also discusses the importance of -- and this is the way they worded it -- "Exposing students to the use of self-determination skills by competent adults." Looking around the room, Debra and I are laughing because finding a competent adult takes -- [ Laughter ]  Heh, not in this room, right? I am just kidding. So much for my social skills!

But it talks about significant adults in the student's life. And how significant adults are the ones who can help, not only model the skills, but let the student have an opportunity to practice with them, and finding those people in our students' lives. And identifying who that might be, can be powerful. It also includes information on coaching, the importance of working and especially volunteering, something that I think our students have really found a good little niche, or a good way to help them move into the job world.

There are also suggestions in here for parents because we know how difficult it sometimes is for our parents to see their child as they move from an infant to an adult. And so there are suggestions for parents, infants, toddlers, preschoolers, elementary, middle and high school aged kids and on up into and beyond transition age. So I think that you will find some good information. This is pretty good sized chapter.

Cleveland: Our next resource is Empowered, and it's TSBVI's Self-Determination Curriculum. And I'm just going to hit some of the units. 

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So unit 3 is part of a set -- it's for Identifying Strengths and Challenges, it's part of a set about getting to know yourself better and knowing other people and how that's related. Unit 8 is Communication Basics and it's mostly about Active Listening, but it's in a sequence of units that's about interacting with others.

Unit 11 is about Decision-Making and tries to guide the students into understanding the difference between making a choice and making an informed decision, and it gives a bit of a template for making decisions that's a little more structured. Unit 14 is Setting Long-Term Goals, and it's in a goal setting sequence that starts with exploring your values, dreaming about your future and finally ends with making action plans. 

Unit 17 is the Problem-Solving, beginning problem-solving basics. Two problem-solving units and the first one is -- is basically gives you the SODAS or -- for problem solving strategy 

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or the SOS one that's shorter. But it also -- oh, no that's not where I was going. Sorry about that. The second one is pretty involved in sorting out -- sorting out what to do about more sophisticated problems. Unit 21 is Knowledge of Resources. And it's part of a section about putting everything together and making it work in your life. It has a lot about asking for help and reciprocation and understanding that all resources are limited.

Sewell: The next... resource we are going to talk about is -- ready? They are samples from Ready to Use Social Skills Lessons and Activities. It again is in your resource list.
And we discovered this recently, again, when we were trying to create curriculum for our teachers here on campus. And these books are also available at pre-K through K, they are available in grade 1 through 3 and they are also available in grades 4 through 6. The one that we have chosen is grades 7 through 12. They were written, edited and I love this phrase, 'room-tested' by teachers. And I just think -- I think that's kind of important that they were 'room-tested' by teachers who were really doing these lessons. The major objectives of these lessons are to build self-esteem, work on self-control, work on respecting the rights of others and work on a sense of responsibility for one's own actions.
Again, very important for our students. One of the other things that it does proposal is communication without violence, you know, without hatefulness, and I just think that's a pretty cool, a pretty cool thing. Solving conflicts peaceably -- that's one of the units and it's got two lessons in it entitled Using Negotiations to Settle Differences and Using Negotiations to Deal with Peer Pressure. So those are two really solid lessons for that.

Chapter 4. Self-Control

The next one we're going to talk about is self-control and under the self-control unit there's several lessons, Staying Calm Under Stress, which I think I need to go through. [ Laughter ], in great detail. Recognizing Loss of Self-Control, because sometimes kids don't get that they have lost their self-control. Avoiding Troubles with Others, I do like that one, too. Making Life Decisions, Avoiding Fights and Solving Differences without Problems, Problem Solving, and it has Deciding What Caused a Problem, Figuring Out and Analyzing and Ssolving the Problem. The goal setting activities and lessons include Setting Goals for the Future, and Setting Career Goals. So the first one is just like setting goals for personal daily life and the next one is for setting career goals.

Chapter 5. Getting & Keeping a Job

The next unit that we want to share with you is Getting and Keeping a Job. The things -- the lessons that are in Getting and Keeping a Job are: How to Apply for a Job, How to Conduct Yourself During a Job Interview, How to Keep a Job, How to Become a Supervisor and the Code of Job Ethics; which is part of job skills we need in general. This book is really quite useful. Again, it's kind of scripted. You know, you have lessons, here's your lesson, here's your materials, here's your objectives, and it's got some role play and behavior rehearsal is what I -- I love that title, too, 'room-tested' and 'behavior rehearsal.' It's a really solid book. I don't know as much about the other ones, the K through 2 and the ones for the younger kids, but we do like this one for the 7th through 12th graders.

The next one I want to talk about, and this is a giant box! [ Laughter ]. Here. Let me heft it up here, that will be my exercise for the day. It's called the Transitions Curriculum from Stanfield and Company. Again, this is in your resource list. Thank you. And it comes in three volumes. 

[ Slide start: ]

Here's Volume 1. Volume 1 is Personal Management. Volume 2 is Career Management. And Volume 3 is Life Management. One of the things that we wanted to show you is in Volume 1 -- Unit 1 is Winning with Personal Power, Unit 4 is Advocating for Your Future. There are many -- there are four units apparently in each one of them, but I just chose those two share with you. In Volume 2, Career Management, Getting the Job for You and Participating in -- unit 4 -- Participating in Your Community, Volume 3 the two units we chose to talk about under Life Management were Enjoying your Leisure Time, which we -- I don't think spend enough time... working on. 

[ Slide end: ]

[ Laughter ]. Sorry! [ Laughter ]. [Multiple voices] [ Laughter ] We don't spend enough time playing with. This is also a really good curriculum. It's kind of expensive. We are also again using this curriculum to help us write the General Employability innovative course that we are now implementing. The last example there is Living on Your Own. I think that's kind of a cool one, too, about getting roommates, finding an apartment, finding out what kind of roommates you might get along with or not. You might just want to live by yourself. So those are the things that we wanted to share with you from the transitions curriculum.

Adkins: So we've shared some resources. Clearly that is not all of them, since that document goes on for -- I don't know -- a million pages. But having the resources is one piece of what you need. We know that there's some issues... that affects your ability to teach social interaction skills and self-determination skills. Actually, I think one of the biggest ones, of course, is time. And we've only briefly alluded to that. But a couple of others that I think that are really important when we look at how we're going to teach social interaction skills and self-determination to our students.

I’m going to kind of start this conversation. I know that Debra and Jeri have strong opinions and will chime in and some suggestions of some activities and things that we've done in different workshops. We all feel very strongly 

[ Slide start: ]

and Jeri may just jump right in here, about the importance of structured lessons and systematic instruction. Those of you have heard me say, I feel like I did a pretty decent job sometimes with social skills instruction. 

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But when I go back and look at it, I know what I did was pretty informal and it was when we would do things at the moment when it appeared. And that was good. That's a good thing, but it wasn't enough.

And I think we know now, fortunately through some of that research I mentioned, to help support the fact that social interaction skills need structured lessons and needs to be systematic and it needs to be a lot of feedback related to how that goes. So when we, maybe set up a role playing scenario with our students, and we go through that, the piece that we may not hit as hard, I think, is the feedback of how it went after the fact. And giving them an opportunity possibly to redo that in a different way, or choose a different role in order to see a different person's perspective. Which is one of the things that Debra mentioned and I think Jeri did, too. Both of them in the resources they shared. So I want to give each of you a chance to chime in. I know that you think that it's important, as I do. [ Laughter ] 

Sewell: I’d say. One of the things that I would like to point out, is the document that you have in your handout called Self-Determination Across the Day. This is a document that Jeri and I put together several years ago, because we know how difficult it is, especially on an itinerant basis, to deliver a lot of the ECC skills. So we have a document that says, okay, for Unit 1 Knowledge of Yourself, then -- then how do you do that throughout the day? How do you do that in -- in activity period at the beginning of the school day, how do you do that during lunch, how do you do that during art or music, how do you do that during academic subject areas?

The way that we organized it -- we organized it by the units from Empowered. But you don't have to have Empowered to do that. Let's just say look -- can you scroll up just a little bit, to Personal Control. 

[ Slide start: ]

If you just, for example, look at Personal Control, which is Unit 7 in the Empowered curriculum, it gives you some ideas about how to help kids gain personal control during circle time, academic, art, music, PE or lunch. 

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But you do not have to have our curriculum to incorporate those activities across the school day. What you do have to have is a cooperation and collaboration with the teachers and with the family. But this is just an idea -- you know, just to give you kind of a jumping off point about how to think about incorporating ECC areas throughout the day. You have a blank form in your... in your packet, as well, that you can say, "Oh, how do I do this for career ed? How do I do this for orientation and mobility? How do I do this for rec leisure?" But...

Adkins: The blank form I think can really help open up your thinking, to help you see how you can kind of brainstorm and, you know, build in stuff. We may see our child, our visually impaired student during a certain time of the day, when we work with them, so we need to think about what is happening with them throughout the day. Certainly lunch is huge for our kids. So finding ways to incorporate instruction throughout the day is -- is a huge component.

I have one more piece, I know Jeri wants to really talk about the importance of data collection and documentation. At least I think she does before we run out of time. Because no matter how structured we make our lessons, if we are not collecting data on it, how do we share that, how do we move forward, how do we document the progress? How do we know what's going on?

But I want to give you another resource. Chapter 13 in the AFB book, the ECC Essentials, is on Teaching the ECC in General Education Settings. That's the chapter that is designed for you as the teacher. Certainly it talks about the importance of collaboration, role recognition, but it even has stuff, which I really need to look at closely on time management and organization skills; of how you organize all your materials when you are flying from one place to another in your car. So I wanted to point that out to you, hopefully you are not flying and getting tickets. But data collection, and Jeri I wanted to give you a second to address that.

Chapter 6. Data Collection

Cleveland: Really quickly, our school uses ESPED, you know that [ Inaudible ] program and a lot of districts in Texas use it. And they do have a vehicle for doing weekly data collection; comments, or it will also make a graph. It goes by goal. You can either -- you can either address a whole goal or you can address individual objects, but it prints out the goals and objectives as a report ,and will also make a graph for you, if you choose to do that part. You can do both or just one. They also have -- ESPED also has in it a -- a handwritten data collection sheet that it will, if you choose your students and choose the goal that you want, it will print all of that information at the top, and then it gives you a table to fill in. It was developed by Northside Independent School District. We had to get permission to get to share it. I don't know if that means that now everybody has blanket permission or if you have to ask for it, but it's nice having the goals and the data already filled in at the top.

Sewell: There's also a data collection sheet in the TAKS curriculum for O&M specialist, it would have to be modified somewhat for TVI's, but there's one in TAKS as well.
If you have any other ones that you would like to share with the world that would be awesome.

Adkins: We would love for you to do that. We know that some of you are using the VI supplement as a way to document some of your services. I think that's a beginning, but many of you have shared with me in the past that it really doesn't allow you to gather and to report on specific information.

Chapter 7. Additional ECC Resources

So we're going to wrap it up pretty quickly. Your next several slides are very general resources on the Expanded Core Curriculum itself. 

[ Slide start: ]

There's the link for the EVALS kit. There is a link for that flyer that Jeri and Debra both mentioned that's on our website, defining expanded core, a link for the RECC that's on there, 

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[ Slide start: ]

for the 2014 version of Educating Students with Visual Impairments in Texas: Guidelines and Standards, and on the Q&A document that is related to the new legislation from last summer. 

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If any of you have attended the previous ECC webinars this year, these records, these resources are the same. 

[ Slide start: ]

The next slide or two is also that just some other ECC resources available through AFB, through TSBVI, through Perkins, and Region 10 ECC checklist.

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[ Slide start: ]

Sewell: Please just remember, you've just got a little tiny smattering [ Laughter ] of the resources available,

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in your -- your resources document will give you more information about additional resources.

Adkins: All three of us are very willing to talk with you, email you, whatever. Our contact information is on there.
Love for you to share. There was a question about the PowerPoint. We will be more than happy to share that PowerPoint with you. I think your handout had the -- had the information from it. Has the content, but it's not listed by slide. So -- so whatever the easiest way to do that, we can --

Hurst: I will just email it out to everybody who registered, how's that?

Adkins: Sounds good to me.

Sewell: That sounds great.

Adkins: Anything else? Any last minute questions? Thank you very much, everyone.

Sewell: Thank you.

Adkins: Hope that you will join us next month in December for assistive technology, December 4th, at 3:00, with Sharon Nichols.
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