>>Lynne: Hi, everybody, I'm Lynne McAlister. I work in TSBVI outreach and some of you may know me. >>Kathi: And I'm Kathi Garza and I am also working in outreach as an early childhood consultant and I know many of you on here as well. I was following through the people's names in the chat. Familiar from short-term programs and also just from other Coffee Hours and other things that we have done. We appreciate you being here for general consideration -- this is a really long title. What we really mean is VI101 but I wasn't sure how formal or informal we needed to be with our titling. General Considerations for Supporting Students with Visual Impairments. But VI101 -- and what we really want to do today as we are talking is this is really probably a lot of things. What we're going to share are probably a lot of things that you already know as VI professionals or people who are working with the Special Ed population in general but this is more of kind of like guidance about how to talk to instructional teams at the beginning of the year. We know a lot of you guys do that kind of VI101 chat with a student's team. We know our kiddos get new teams or new team members quite often but especially at the beginning of the year. And so this is more just giving you guys some additional language or ideas about how to talk to them about relevant topics for working with our students. So, Kate, do you want to go to the next slide? And we're going to talk about today a little bit about touch, including, you know, hand over hand versus hand under hand. Concept development, which is one of my favorite topics. We'll talk about incidental learning, social skills for our students, and we'll sum it up at the end with some other tips about preparing for a new year. So on the next slide we're just going to get started in the chat, again, I know some of you have been typing where you're from in the chat but we're going to talk about touch first and Lynne's going to really drive that conversation. But as we're getting ready to talk about that, what are some of the different emotions that touch can convey? If you'll just jot it to us in the chat. See what you can come up with about the different emotions that touch can convey. Either when you are touching someone or someone is touching you. >>Lynne: Sympathy, startle, strength, concern, calm, affection, love, support. A couple of supports. Hostility. >>Kathi: Definitely. >>Both: Anxiety. Fear. >>Lynne: Yeah. >>Kathi: Cool. And I think on the next slide Lynne is going to talk a little bit about some of the research on touch. >>Lynne: So you guys came up with a nice list of things that you think touch can convey and it's true that touch can convey a whole lot without any kind of language being involved. So this guy is named David Eaglemen and if you have never heard of him, he's on this website Sappi.com. He has several videos on this website talking about touch. And there was a study done because researchers were curious, you know, people think that you can convey emotions through touch. Is that really true? And if it's true, how well does a recipient of touch, how well are they able to translate what that touch is conveying, the message it's conveying. So we're going to play you a little bit of David -- it's not going to be the whole video, so I would encourage you -- it's not much longer than what we're going to show you but I just found his website fascinating. Okay, Kate. You can go ahead and play it. This video is video No. 3. >>David Eaglemen: The way that we understand and interpret the world has a lot to do with our physical bodies, how we feel about things drives the way that we think and that we behave and this is known as embodied cognition. You can't think about thinking without understanding how the body plays a role in that. And, in fact, even our language is often built on top of our physical interactions with the world. So we say that was a rough event or that was a heavy movie or she has a warm personality. At the root of our language is the way that we touch and feel the world. When we're trying to decide something like is that person friendly or is that company competent and trustworthy, we're using the same brain networks that are involved in assessing warmth and texture and solidness and weight. In other words, the haptic machinery that we have is what helps us answer questions about personal warmth or friendliness. In our daily lives, touch serves as a high bandwidth channel to move information between people. It's a really powerful communication tool so to give assurance you lay a hand on somebody's forearm or to give kudos, you slap somebody on the back. In an aggressive situation people poke each other and when people shake hands they notice the firmness of each other's grip. And to show affection people do things like move a hair out of the way or nuzzle up with somebody's cheek. We communicate a lot more information through touch than normally aware of. There was a study at DePaul University where they blindfolded people and asked them to communicate a social emotion just by touching the other person. So they were asked to communicate things like anger, fear, disgust, or love or gratitude or sympathy or happiness or sadness just through touch. And people were blindfolded and figured there would be no way they would be able to communicate that. But they did much better than they thought. 75% of the time the other person was able to understand the social emotion that was being communicated. And this just underscores how good we are at using this communication channel. >>Lynne: Perfect. So do y'all have any thoughts about David and what he's saying here? We're going to talk a little bit more about it and some other people as well. Barbara Miles -- I don't know if you guys are familiar with Barbara Miles. She wrote a paper -- I don't know about the actual original form of it. Was it an article, Kate or Kaycee, do you know? Called talking the language of the hands. And she wrote it about kids, for people who are Deafblind and she made some pretty strong points. And this is an older piece of work. It's been around for a long time. And the points she makes are for typical sighted people, hands are tools, usually. We think of our hands, we think of tools. However, if someone is missing one or more of their senses, the hands kind of take on the role of that sense. So in someone who is blind, the hands are tools and eyes. And if someone is Deaf and blind then the hands now are tools and eyes and ears. And so she says the more roles the hands are doing, the more you should respect them. So she talks about hands are eyes quite a bit. And, you know, David Eaglemen in a different one of his videos, he makes this point too. When you want more information about someone, like someone shows you something they got on vacation, you say let me look at it and you reach out and get it. You're not saying let me look at it, because you're already looking at it. What you want to do is touch it. And so you do gain all of this information through your haptic sense. She also talks about touch should be non-controlling and I think in her papers she uses this kind of extreme example. She said just like if you wanted someone to look at something, you would not put your fingers on their eye balls and turn their eye balls toward where you want them to look. That's what you do if you grab someone's hands and put their hands on something that you want them to look at. So touch should be very respectful and non-controlling. The focus should be on shared attention. So when two people with typical vision are talking about something, they're both looking at the same thing and they know they're both talking about the same thing because they know that they're both looking at the same thing. That's that kind of mutual attention. Kids with visual impairments don't have that, right? So you can be talking about something and they don't really know if it's what they're doing or what they're experiencing or even really maybe if you're talking to them. So Barbara introduced this whole concept of hand under hand. A lot of teachers are used to hand over hand and they see that written in IEP goals and lesson plans. She really introduced hand under hand and hand under hand is where a student's hand is on top of yours -- not underneath yours. So when you do that -- and the child has to learn this. It's not a natural thing and a lot of kids are used to having their hands, you know, manipulated. And you're both -- and if you're both touching the same object or Braille word or whatever, both of you know your conversation is about the same topic. The thing that both of you are touching. Also, the focus on what the child is experiencing. What the child is experiencing. So with hand under hand, the child is free to explore things without manipulation of their body, because if you're manipulating the child's body, their hands, that's what they're going to be focused on. They're going to be focused on what your touch and what you're doing to them. They might be a little worried about what you're going to do to them next. They might not like what you're doing but their focus will not be on what you actually want them to be touching. So in the next slide we put together a video. The first part of this is hand over hand versus hand under hand. HOH versus HUH. The first part of this video is two teachers here at TSBVI, kind of a lighthearted example of Kerry is teaching Ben -- I think they're wiping the table and she's doing it hand over hand. The second video is a student here at TSBVI -- and I didn't realize until after I've seen this video and I thought how perfect it was that the teacher said this is the first time they ever did this activity. So the student, Eddie, has optic nerve hypoplasia. He does not like to touch sticky or wet or things like that. They're making muffins, which are actually very sticky and wet. Let's watch this video and we'll talk about it afterwards. So think about some things that maybe struck you in watching these videos. [Video] >>Here, I need you to sit down on the chair right here, okay? The chair's right here and we're going to talk about your cleaning routine. You've got to scooch yourself over. Get real close. So we had snack at this table and there's stuff on the table. Can you find it, where we need to clean it? Scoot a little closer over here. Do you feel that? >>Oh. >>Yeah. That's where all that stuff is so we're going to clean that up, okay? >>Okay. >>Come on. We're going to go get that sponge. So the sponge is -- move a little over here. Right there. And then you're going to want to put it in the water. Feel all that water? Yeah. And then you're going to squeeze it, squeeze it real hard. Yeah. Okay. So then let's come back over to the table -- oops, sorry, you got to watch out, Ben. You've got to be careful. And then you're going to wipe that table, okay? You've got to wipe it real good. Remember your patterns. You've got to stretch all the way, all the way and then come on in, just like that. Be sure this hand is right here to catch those crumbs, right? So all the way. Good job. All the way. Nice. Nice work, okay. A couple more. See if you can find if there's anything else. You're not reaching all the way, Ben, all the way. There you go, Ben. All right. Now let's bring that back to the sink. [Video] >>Tap, tap, tap. Can we open it together? You ready? And then another egg. Ready to tap it? Tap, tap. Two eggs. And then we're going to -- I have two cupcake tins. I'll do one and will you do one? We've got our paper liners. Let's count. You ready? There's one. One. Feel that? Two! One more. Three! Four! Five! [Laughter] Ready? Oh, my gosh! Where are you going with that cupcake liner? Six! There's one pan. Do you want to help me with mine? Let's keep going. What's after six? Seven! See? There it is. Eight! [Laughter] Oh, my goodness! Number nine. Number ten. Two more. Oh, it fell. 11 and 12! >>12! >>Can I have a high-five? Whoo! You counted out 12 muffin liners! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Woo hoo! Okay. One. >>Number two. >>So good, Eddie. Oh, three. [ Laughter ] Oh, my gosh! It smells so good. After three is number four. What's that number? >>Five! >>Five! And number -- [ Laughter ] Oh, my gosh! So that's half of 12 is six. Eddie, we call that a half dozen. >>Yay! >>Do you want to help me do these other six or do you want me to have my turn? [Inaudible] >>Will you help me count? Okay. I scooped one. >>Lynne: Okay. So on the next slide -- oops. Yeah. So here is some hand over hand and hand under hand takeaways. I don't know about you guys or how long you have been in this field but at TSBVI I know positively that we got kids a lot times and their hands are up here. Their hands are very closed. They're on their body. They might not, you know, if you go to touch them, they may be aggressive. Just because they have learned the world is a scary place where their bodies are not in their control. So I have some that say the student will shadow the adult's hand for X number of seconds, even if it's just a second. But nothing follows, in my opinion, if this -- this has to happen for any other teaching to follow because to teach, they're going to need to touch things, especially if they have no vision. And probably, if they aren't used to hand under hand they might not like touching things, like Eddie didn't like touching things. But he built such a bond with his teacher, because she was very respectful of his hands, that he is now willing to enter into a potentially really scary activity. Kathi, do you have anything else to add? >>Kathi: Yeah, just that when you're communicating about this with your teams and with classroom teachers, just letting people know that we definitely understand that it takes time. Like hand under hand is not always super intuitive, I don't think. I went to a school once and we were trying to encourage the parent to use hand under hand and as soon as the student took his hand away from hers, she reached over, grabbed his hand and put it back on top of her hand. And we all kind of giggled together, like she totally realized, oh, I went back to hand over hand. But it takes time and even when putting together another presentation that I did, I was looking for pictures of my students doing hand under hand and I found pictures and videos of myself doing hand over hand for certain things. And so just, you know, that idea of giving everyone grace and helping them all learn together that with different activities or with different body positioning, like it might not be intuitive. And so you can let them know that you as the TVI are there or O&M or whatever related service are there to help them kind of understand how to do it in different situations. I see this comment in the chat that, Lynne, you might have some thoughts too but somebody -- Angela writes that she was told by a teacher that nothing would ever get done if she used hand under hand, no time to allow for that. And I think that is -- I'm glad you brought that up because I was also thinking that it might look to some people that the student will never be independent if they're always doing hand under hand. The idea to me about hand under hand is that's what's happening during the teaching phase. Just like in a classroom where you would have direct instruction and then you would have, like, guided practice and then independent practice. And so we do the same kind of things I think with hand under hand and some of our students spend more time in that teaching phase using hand under hand before they might be ready to go into those other phases. And so it's kind of one of those, in my opinion, and Lynne and Kate and Kaycee might have some other thoughts but to me the end justifies the means. If you put a little bit of work in on the front end, then as they build that trust and willingness to explore, they end up making progress much more quickly, you know, just kind of like even what we say about general parenting, like healthy habits with screen, healthy habits with food choices. Putting that work in on the front kind of helps in the long haul. Do you have any thoughts, Lynne? >>Lynne: Oh, no, I totally agree with you. >>Kathi: I love that. >>Lynne: That's a tough situation. I think that might be a reason why we envision this training being used to train teens. When I first started in the classroom, I did a training where the speech language pathologist blindfolded me and then, you know, we wiped off the table, kind of like Kerry and Ben. I think if you do maybe a blindfold session, this is what hand over hand is, and put their hand on like a cold, wet rag, you know, or shaving cream or something that's going to shock them, I think sometimes it takes that, that actual, you know, that actual experience of this is what it feels like to you. To people. And the student was a biter. He bit more when hand under over hand was constantly being used. I'd bite too. >>Kathi: I worked with a student, he was one of those who Lynne was saying hands were here. I came in with my pinky and I don't know how long we did guiding across the classroom and we spent an entire year working -- I mean, really an entire year working on building, rebuilding that trust and that ability to shadow and, you know, shadow somebody's hands and the willingness to do it. >>Lynne: It takes a while to unlearn something like that. I've written IEP goals that a student will allow an adult to sit next to them within, like -- not touching their body, just to sit next to them without getting aggressive. And it took me about a year with this one student for her to realize I was not going to get in her physical stuff, you know, just by sitting next to her. By being within arm's length. So maybe if you write stuff like this as an IEP goal and maybe they would be more inclined. >>Kathi: Kate, I think you can go on to that chatter slide. We're already doing that now so you guys are already ahead of the game here. We're talking about -- and, Lynne, this is really your slide but we're just talking about sharing about interactions that went well because you used hand under hand or activities where you might incorporate that in the future. So I love this conversation in the chat about, you know, kind of just people who are really interested in just modeling that and doing the best they can during their time. >>Lynne: Yes, and if any of you have been successful in changing somebody's mind about hand under hand or hand over hand, please write it in the chat for other people who are trying to change people's minds. I think we should move on to the next slide. >>Kathi: Now it's me. So we're going to talk about concept development now. This is one of my favorite topics and one of my favorite graphics as well. So this is a picture of -- and this is something that's really important to talk to our classroom teachers about, whether it's life skills or, you know, general ed content area. Somebody was saying a story in a training, when we were talking about concept development, about a girl who didn't understand how people were on top of the earth and how we weren't going to just walk off the edge and didn't understand that concept. And it was like a high school student, academic Braille student but was still missing some of these concepts. This picture is a picture of an elephant. It comes from this old, like a fable or something that actually was interesting -- my son was reading about it this year and it really surprised me. So it's about -- it's got six different characters around this elephant and they're all making a prediction about what this thing is based on the part that they're exposed to. So the guy that's at the tusks is saying, oh, this is a spear. I know what this is. The guy at the tail is this is a rope. And it's totally based on what they're experiencing in that moment and really kind of, as VI professionals this is relevant for us because a lot of our kids build their concepts in a part to whole kind of way. You know, a lot of times they're only getting one small part at a time of the bigger picture. So we can go to the next slide. And so when we're talking about visual versus tactile learning, visual learning allows for simultaneous perception. If a student with vision is seeing this elephant at the zoo, they're able to perceive a lot of things about the elephant at one time. And then in a single viewing you can walk into a room and kind of read the room, as they say, in a very easy way. And visual learning also allows gathering of information at a distance. So I just had a family e-mailing me about their child having a hard time, couldn't see the elephant at the zoo and it was very sad for them and what are some things they could do or get to help him see that. And we talked a little bit about some of this stuff in the tactile learning section. Information is gained by exploring one at a time. It's like that part to whole, especially if you're using miniatures or smaller models or if you're just using your hands to fully explore a machine, you might not know -- have a concept for what the whole machine looks like. Your concept of a car might just be the seat and the seat belt because somebody opens the door for you and maybe you've never checked out the other seats in the car. It requires multiple explorations to build the full picture. So we can say the same thing about the car, if you go around and check it out, you still would need to do that multiple times. And it also requires -- tactile learning also requires immediate proximity. You have to be able to get close to some of these things. And sometimes you can't. You can't obviously bring an elephant to the classroom or you might be able to -- one picture we looked at recently was of a teacher who took her kids near a train track to feel and see what it's like and hear when a train goes by. Those students would probably then also want to have spent time at another period exploring a real train that's not moving so they could understand what it is that's passing them by. We can go on to the next slide. And so thinking about this visual versus tactile learning, it helps us think about, you know, going from concrete to abstract with our students, especially with younger students. You know, this idea of fish and fishness and how a lot of times we're asking our students to look at pictures or look at tactile drawings or look at words in print or Braille and that might not understand, they might not have a concept for what it actually is. So this slide shows, you know, a little boy holding a fish and how that can translate to a picture of a fish and then the word fish, the student actually has the opportunity to pull on their prior knowledge if they've had the experience of touching a fish or going fishing or, you know, whether it's touching a fish on a fishing trip or through a touch aquarium or something like that. And so we want to make sure that teachers and families even are having as many of these concrete experiences as possible prior to expecting our students to understand things in the abstract. I see this a lot with reading inventories and things and the state assessments that have these reading passages about things like kites or things like a soccer game or even things like lightning and thunder. My son is not visually impaired and he still thinks that thunder is what you can see and lightning is what you can hear. Helping kids build these concepts is really important, getting teachers on board. And you kind of supporting them in terms of their lesson planning and if they are saying we're going to be talking about airplanes as part of our transportation unit, you know, maybe some of your work with the student ahead of time can be to help build those concepts about what airplanes are. Next. So these two graphics on these slides also go into this concrete to abstract and incidental learning. These triangles, there's a reference for them at the end of the slide by -- I think it's Linda Alsop. And the book, the book and article is about students who are Deafblind but I love this graphic because it's a triangle that shows you that learning for a typically-sighted child happens most of their learning, the bulk of what they're learning from this triangle is incidental. It's things they can pick up with their hearing or with their eyes. They're watching people eat with forks and they can imitate it whereas a smaller portion of what kids learn is through direct learning or secondary learning. But for our kids on the next slide, the triangle is flipped on its head here and for our students, they get very little learning incidentally because of a lack of proximity. You don't always know what's going on in the room if you can't see very far in front of you. And so for our students they really, really desperately need that direct learning. And to be able to talk to teachers about that and how important it is for them to kind of provide extra descriptions or extra objects to explore to really enhance that direct learning for our kiddos. >>Lynne: As an example story -- and I'm sure we all have a story about what Kathi is talking about. I had a group of academic high schoolers one summer and we went to the Austin lyric opera summer camp. They let us drop in to visit, and they had a classical violinist. He played the violin and then he asked the students, you know, if anybody had any questions. And my like 17-year-old Braille reader, academic girl raised her hand and said do you blow into that to play it? While she had a concept of a violin -- she might have even touched a violin, she had no idea how one played a violin. And so that's kind of an example of things you don't think about. Who would think that playing a violin was high up there in your curriculum? But it's an important thing to know. And so this gentleman sat on the floor and let her watch him play the violin. But before that she had no idea how it was played. >>Kathi: Yeah, and I think we all have stories like that too. >>Lynne: Yes, so this -- I'm sorry, what? >>Kathi: I think this is you now. >>Lynne: This is me. This is another video. The first video is Merrick but she's just playing in this kitchen center at a school. She's not being directed here and she's trying to figure out what some of this plastic food is. The next video we show you is Natalie, who is an academic Deafblind student that attended TSBVI, having a very detailed lesson about fashion, because Natalie was very, very interested in fashion. And so as you go through this -- as you watch these, you know, also try to think about what are some things that Merrick is missing and what are some things that Natalie is picking up? How is that being taught and the direction instruction involved. You can go ahead and play Merrick. Plus, they're both cute. >>What is that? Do you know what that is? >>A straw -- a strawberry. A strawberry. That was a strawberry. It's a fire juice. It's a fire juice. >>Fire juice? I think that's supposed to be a fried egg. Does your mama fix you eggs? >>Yes. >>Yep. Does she fix them that way? >>This is another juice. >>Oh, what's this? >>A stick. >>A stick. >>And my pants, I'm going to stand up to show you. You can sit. The name is Capri. Capri pants. Love it. Oh, she liked that. Okay. They go down and stop. So they hit you about right here. Yeah. Yep. That's right where they hit you. >>Where is that? >>Kind of a mid-calf. She was reaching down. Yeah, they're not short like -- they go on. They're not long, all the way down my leg. No. They go down and stop here. Can you spell it yourself? I'm independent. I can spell. Okay. Capr-i. Yes. Now let's compare Mimi and Ms. Blaha. Stand up. Check it out. >>I have what? Stop here means what? What's the name of it? >>SHORT. Short. >>Short. >>So Mimi has on short pants and Blaha has on Capris Capris. Natalie, what do you have on? I have long bluejeans on. You do, yes. That's right. I see. They go all the way down to your ankles. I see that. Yeah. That's right! So it's different, different, different. >>What is that? Do you know what that is? [End of videos] >>Lynne: So Natalie, you know, was discouraged about Brailling people, about looking at their clothes. To look at their clothes or what they were wearing she would have to touch them and, you know, you don't just walk up and start feeling people's clothes. So they had actual really structured lessons where she could touch people's clothes and she could figure out the difference between lengths of pants and what they're called. And so to get some of these -- to learn some things, you know, you really have to have kind of a focused lesson and not assume that these guys are just picking stuff up because they're getting it from their environment. Because often they're not, they're missing it. So the next slide -- anyone has any more comments about concept development or touch, feel free to add them to the chat. The next kind of general topic we wanted to cover is social skills. And this goes right along with that incidental learning and concept development because the vast majority of the social skills that we learn, we learn by watching other people. So Kathi referenced eating with a fork and not eating with your fingers. So when you're teaching a kid, a child about using utensils, maybe they don't really understand that other people use utensils. Maybe they think you're doing this special torture for them because you're mean. So allowing them to hand under hand watch you use utensils would be a perfect way to begin a lesson about using utensils so they know other people in the world use utensils. Some other things that, you know, kids miss is appropriate body language. They might not have, you know, that appropriate social distancing. They might get up into people's personal space because they can hear them better or see them better and maybe not realize that people don't really stand up so close to people. That social communication etiquette -- Kathi, I didn't write down my notes for this. I know the notes are in there. >>Kathi: That's okay. You're doing great. Just keep going. >>Lynne: Just chime in with things from the notes because I don't know if I'm going to remember all of them. The social communication, like when to ask questions, when not to ask so many questions, when is it your turn to talk, what is your volume level in different environments, what's appropriate in different environments. Your interactions with others -- and I can't remember what that was, Kathi, you want to talk about that one? >>Kathi: Yes, interactions with others meaning how do we help our kids, how can the team help our students have genuine interactions with others that are not just helper-based and how can we help our students feel empowered to like solicit assistance when it's appropriate but also reject it when it's not. Especially in the younger grades, everybody wants to be a helper. Everybody wants to help the student that has adults helping them throughout the day and so I think having those conversations openly and honestly with the team and with peers, with other peers is really important. Like, the most important thing you can do for so and so in this class is to help them be independent. And so, you know, we can encourage them to be independent by giving their own materials. And those things really helps our kids develop those social skills around accepting and rejecting assistance. >>Lynne: Right. Thank you. And developing relationships and friendships, oftentimes these kids may have very limited topics and so other kids may not really want to be friends with them because they see them as kind of odd because all they want to talk about is Britney Spears or whatever. And that goes really along with that lack of experiences, so kids typically if they're latched on to one or two topics, it's because of that's kind of what they do and they do that a lot and so that's what they talk about. So how to have a friendship, you know, how to talk with a friend. Just all of those rules. We're going to give you -- I think it's in the handout or the resource, page, Kathi that page -- >>Kathi: The ECC. >>Lynne: There are assessments out there about social skills, if you want to evaluate your kid's social skills, I think the TSBVI eval kit has a couple of assessments. And then the resource will link you where to go after you have that information. So resources to help you teach social skills. >>Kathi: And I also think about this bullet No. 4, the other really important thing about this development of relationships and friendships is not only for the students to learn these skills but for teachers, you know, general ed or life teachers and paraprofessionals to understand how important this is because I think sometimes -- and I tend to try my very best to assume that everybody has good intentions for our kiddos. I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and says, man, I can't wait to be a really crummy teacher today. But I think sometimes without realizing it, having an adult supporting a student is always going to be a road block for the student to have genuine peer interactions. And a lot of times our kids have equipment that might cause them to sit away from other students or the para might be at lunch with them helping them open containers and I think sometimes that -- it just unintentionally causes a barrier for other kids to want to interact with that student. So I think having those conversations, you know, diplomatically with paras and other support staff to just really -- when you can take a step back, do it. Because that's really what's going to support the student developing those kinds of relationships as well. >>Lynne: Kathi, we have about two or three minutes. >>Kathi: We have one more slide. I'm on it. And so this is just kind of wrapping up, as you think about preparing for a new year, some of the things that are really important that we've talked about are just that collaboration with the team and trying to set up a time to talk with your team or your students' teams, whether it's at the end of the previous year so that you can take advantage of having last year's team and the new team kind of working together or at the beginning of the year. We think it's really important to identify roles and responsibilities and, you know, who to call if there's an issue with getting around the classroom versus an issue with I'm not sure how to teach this topic that we have coming up in a way that's appropriate for my students. So the more you can define those roles and responsibilities, I think the easier it is to collaborate with your team. And then we've talked a lot about this promoting independence for the student. Actually, that's not even true. I feel like we haven't even scratched the surface on all these topics. I'm feeling very stressed about this short time we have had with you all. But, you know, just promoting independence for the student and how can they be independent and advocate for their independence or how can you help them learn to do that if they're younger or if they have some other challenges that they're dealing with. And then, again, like we were just talking about supporting those conversations with peers and having kids either talk about their visual impairment at the beginning or allowing -- asking them to allow you to talk about it and answering questions for peers. Because I think a lot of times our kids perceive that other kids are targeting them or bullying them, when really I find that other kids are very curious and our students don't often have the language to explain in a way that kind of answers the question and moves on. And so I think helping them with that is really important. And the last thing that's not on here but it's something that I see a lot -- and I think it's a very delicate conversation to have and maybe can be done either through e-mail to the principal or another handout in teachers' boxes. I see a lot of times that for us, for TVIs and O and Ms, our classroom is not always the classroom. Our classroom is anywhere in the school that the student needs to learn how to access. And sometimes I see, you know, people in the school really want to help the student feel a part of their community and sometimes that looks like interrupting a lesson, right? You're trying to teach O&M in the cafeteria how to get through the tray line and every person who walks through the cafeteria wants to say hi to your student and show you they really care about that student and want to include that student in their school community, which I think is wonderful but I think it can also impact teaching and so I think, you know, finding ways to diplomatically set some of those boundaries about when we're working together our time is really short and precious and we would love to come and talk to you and say hi to you and maybe make you a part of the routine of our lesson but if we're working together, you know, it's really important if you can refrain from saying hi in that moment or interrupting the lesson for my student. And so, again, I know that can be a really delicate topic but I think it's really important because it's what's best for our students.