TRANSCRIPT - The New Education of Students who are DeafBlind: An AdministratorÕs Story on Creating Systems Change Ð 1-24-21

>> Dr. McCormick: Thank you, Kate. It's really wonderful to be here with all of you. I would like to thank Texas Deafblind outreach for giving me this opportunity to speak on one of the more important stories of the Region 4 RDSPD. It's no easy thing when you endeavor to bring change to any organization. However, it's my sincere hope that you will find something in the telling of our story that you can take back with you to improve your program, your school, or your district. So let me introduce myself to you. As Kate mentioned, my name is Marina McCormick. I'm currently serving as the Region 4 regional day school program for the Deaf or RDSPD coordinator. You'll hear that acronym quite a bit during our time together. I also work as an adjunct instructor for the University of Houston main campus and Texas Tech University. I have 21 years of experience as a teacher of the Deaf and special education administrator. I'm the wife and mother of two young sons who are incredibly rambunctious, 8 and 6 years old. And then just for fun, I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. I'm a huge foodie and avid reader. How am I going to help you shine today? Hopefully by the end of our time together you will first understand the importance of viewing change as a process and then, second, understanding the importance of communicating your vision to the teams that you work with and support. I will note I have been successful today. If you can list the eight steps of John Kotter's model for successful organizational change and write a draft of your why statement. More on that to come. So in order for us to have this conversation today, first we need to know what is a Regional Day School Program for the Deaf or RDSPD? So an RDSPD is a unique programming option within the State of Texas in which school districts and charter schools enter into shared service arrangements. This is a legally-binding contract between all entities involved. And the purpose of the RDSPD is to consolidate special education services. That benefits students who are Deaf, hard of hearing, or Deafblind. RDSPDs were established in Texas as an attempt to provide services more effectively and efficiently due to the low-incident nature of disability. RDSPD provides itinerant, co-teach, core, resource, and self-contained. They also support placement such as early childhood intervention, vocational adjustment program, non-public day schools, state supported living centers, residential centers, homebound, and hospitalization settings. So just to give you some perspective of where we're located, the gray arrow points to the three-member districts we have currently within our Region 4 RDSPD. Those member districts include Houston, Pasadena, and Deer Park ISD. We're located right in the heart of Houston, Texas. The entire map is showing you the full Region 4 area. The area covered by our Region 4 education service center and you can see that our RDSPD is one of eight within the area. So let's think back to 2014. That is where our story of transformation of starting change begins. So what was happening in the world in 2014? Well, first, our world was facing an evil epidemic in Africa. The World Health Organization was trying to contain this epidemic that killed 17,000 people. And then we had the disappearance of Malaysian airline flight. Those who watched Lost were transfixed on this story. We said good-bye to Robin Williams and Joan Rivers and President Obama announced that we could all travel to Cuba again. This is what we looked like in 2014. We had only one-member district at that time and that was Houston ISD. Our program supported 244 students and we had four cluster site locations in Houston ISD. Now you might be wondering what is a cluster site. This is a campus that has been designated as housing staff and resources to support students who are Deaf and hard of hearing. And our program at that time we had 34 teachers of the Deaf, three audiologists and many other ancillary staff members. So we have grown since then but more on that to come. As you might imagine, a lot changes in seven years. So during the 2014-2015 school year our program had identified that it needed a better approach to serving our students with Deafblindness. And the leadership at that time developed a plan for change in the spring of 2015 and then by the end of 2016 we had some pretty spectacular short-term wins. As you can see, these wins came from our community, our campuses, and our district, as well as from the state. And so this is how we felt, right? Mic drop, boom, we're awesome, as they say at the end of every rock concert. Peace, we're out. But not quite. How did this all happen? Do people ever wonder how you do what you do? Do you ever feel like saying it's magic, when in reality you know it's not. That happened to our program. Other districts and other RDSPDs in the area would reach out to us and ask how did you do that? Kids do not magically succeed, I think we all know that. We know that there are many people who are working tirelessly to ensure that students fulfill their potential and that they end up on the top of the pyramid of success. And so those short-term wins didn't just happen by themselves, behind the scenes many days and weeks of collaboration occurred between key individuals to make this instructional approach a reality. And so on the screen in front of you is a collage of those people that were involved in the process between 2014 to 2016. In the top left-hand corner we have a picture of our first certified orientation mobility specialist to serve on our sensory team. And our then-Region 4 educational specialist for the visually impaired. In the top right-hand corner we have Chris Montgomery from Texas Deafblind outreach. He was our designated outreach person during that time. And to his -- well, to his left is Linda Kelley, our first teacher of the Deafblind for the Region 4 RDSPD. And then in the bottom there's a collective picture of our first sensory team. In the middle is Lily, who was our teacher of the Deaf at the time. Most of the people in these pictures have moved on to new adventures but we will forever be grateful to them for trailblazing this new instructional approach for us. So our program's journey all started with an article written by a proverbial wizard of oz, if you will. I would like to introduce you to him now . So this is the man behind the curtain. This is Dr. John Kotter. In 1995, Dr. Kotter shared with the world his eight-step process for change in the Harvard business review with a little article titled leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Since then, through both his work at Harvard and Kotter International, he has assisted countless leaders and businesses to transform themselves for the better. I was very fortunate to learn of Dr. Kotter's model while earning my certificate for principalship. And though it was written with business management in mind, its applications to extend to other sectors, including education. So what is this eight-step model for change? Here it is in all of its glory. Now, I don't claim to be an expert on Dr. Kotter's eight-step model for change but I did rely heavily on it as the program administrator as it guided my thinking when approaching our concern for our students with Deafblindness. It seems real simple when you look at this graphic, doesn't it? It seems to say if you do all of these eight steps, you will change your life, your school, your program, your business, whatever you would like to change. And you will have complete steps. And that would be very assuming of us if we were to think of it as a simple process. Perhaps the most simple part of the process is writing the steps on your whiteboard. For the reminder of our time together I will be sharing with you how we use Dr. Kotter's eight-step process to better serve our students with Deafblindness. So like all great stories, we'll start at the beginning. How did we develop a sense of urgency within our program and within Houston ISD? Sometimes people like to ignore problems. Sometimes people like to admire problems. Sometimes people have a sense of urgency about a problem that's very different than the one you've identified. Do we have many Breaking Bad fans out there? This was on the day of the Breaking Bad finale and this actually happened. So we began creating this sense of urgency by first looking at our annual census data for students with Deafblindness and comparing it to what our IEPs were telling us. And this all started in the spring of 2015. So this pie chart reveals that during the 2014 will have 2015 school year, Houston ISD, had 22 students with Deafblindness. The Region 4 RDSPD however was directly serving only one of the 22 identified students. Having 22 students in one district was incredible considering that across the United States in 2014 there were a total of 9,384 such students. Why, though, was only one student directly served by our program? And so Shawn Ryan, a partner at A.T. kerney said there are two reasons. Research show that as individuals we prefer avoiding losses over achieving equivalent gains. In the case of our program and how it's been supporting students with Deafblindness, this is really evident. Typically what would happen is the teachers of the visually impaired would take the lead with teachers of the Deaf acting in supporting roles. In some instances the teachers have limited knowledge serving this very unique population. So the preference or the known, the traditional model for services over the risk of the unknown and the fear of failing at something new had resulted in consultative rather than direct support for students. And so the specked force, conformity, is a little bitter more insidious. When we began analyzing our students' IEPs, at various times the question why did this happen would arise and time and time again the answer would be, well, that's how it's always been. Conformity begins at the individual level and if it's left unchecked it is then compounded at a organizational level. Most often organizations change from a reactive rather than a proactive state. We began our change process with a foot in both states, if you will. So it's incredibly difficult to stand alone, especially when, as with our situation, you suspect something could be better but you're just not sure about how to make it so. I personally believe -- and I'm sure you share this belief as well -- that people enter education because they love children. They want to help children reach their full potential. And they make the best decisions that they can with the knowledge that they have at that time. And so as Dr. Maya Angelou said do the best you can until you know better and then when you know better, do better. So we were about to do a whole lot better. Within our data there was an inherent challenge, though. How could the Region 4 RDSPD provide high-quality instruction for students with Deafblindness? And so according to Kotter, forming a powerful coalition is the next step in his eight-step process for change. You need your A team when you want to bring about change. If you involve the wrong people you'll only end up spinning your wheels so what our program saw in practice was that we had a four-person leadership team that was the initial coalition, and this consisted of -- if I can get my slides to advance -- these four individuals. So we have myself and then we had two program specialists who operated in a similar fashion as instructional coaches. The member district's program manager oversaw the day-to-day management of the RDSPD whereas I managed the overall efficacy of the program from Region 4 education center. And so this was our initial group of people responsible for driving the change process but over time this coalition grew to include others, depending on the tasks that we needed to achieve as part of that change process. So, for example, these were the people who were needed to approve the position of an itinerant teacher for the Deafblind. Every RDSPD has a manager board that governs its operations and so in much the same way that a school board operates, the management board operates in that way. They vote and approve most measures related to the program, including budget, staffing, cluster site location, and other items. Once this position was approved though by our management board, it then had to go back and be approved by Houston ISD school board. And then for creating the position, these were the people who were involved. When we were creating the job position and the job description, we looked at these elements back in 2015-2016. We embedded knowledge from the CEC DVIDB knowledge and skills. At that time Texas did not have standards of its own. We used what we felt would be best practice. So we recommended that the position be listed as having certification for students with hearing or vision loss with dual certification being preferred. We also knew the position would require intensive training and so we made it very clear in the position as well that there would be required professional development with the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired along with the Texas Deafblind outreach team. Finally, because it was to be an itinerant position, it is important this person that was hired would have to be very skilled at collaborating and working with multiple teams, so that was embedded in our job description as well. Once the position was posted and a suitable candidate was found, we created the coalition called the sensory team. It was based on what I had learned by attending the intervenor team model at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired with only some minor modifications in the intervenor team model the core is reviewed. This is our core team, our itinerant teacher had certification for the visually impaired. To complement her skill set we brought on a teacher of the Deaf. Finally because orientation and mobility skills allow students who are Deafblind to synthesize residual auditory and other sensory information to interpret their environment, we knew we had to have a COMS on our core team. In the beginning this team as a whole had very little working knowledge regarding instruction for students with Deafblindness but within one year they became a powerhouse. It was all really thanks to their commitment and dedication to children. On the administrator side, these three positions were also part of the core team. And so due to the size of Houston ISD it was important that one of our program specialists and that the program manager be linked to the sensory team for day-to-day concerns. My involvement with the team was -- and it remains -- intensive and overseeing the team's professional development and coaching them on the application of skills to learn. In looking at Kotter's model our core coalition was the program's four-person leadership team, as I shared earlier, but different coalitions were formed based on the action needed that would drive that change effort. While step three in Kotter's process is creating a vision, I have to admit we created our vision earlier in the process. Once we decided to change how we were serving students with Deafblindness, we went about creating this vision. This is essential to the change process. The vision is where you want people to go but having people buy into a destination can be tricky if you weren't communicating your vision clearly. So perhaps some of you recognize this man. His name is Simon and he's a famous leadership consultant. He says that the inspired leaders and inspired organizations, regardless of their size, regardless of their industry all think, act, and communicate from the inside out. He goes out to say that people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. So inspired highly effective organizations are able to communicate in order the why, the how, and the what regarding what they do. And it is this type of communication that drives others to action. What does this look like, though, in education? Perhaps you may have heard of yes prep public schools? Yes prep is an open enrollment public charter school that focuses on serving students grade six through 12 in the Houston area. It is well known for its mission of increasing the number of students from socioeconomic challenged communities to graduate from college. Every year a lottery is held and every year hundreds of students sit on the list. It follows the goal of communicating from the inside out. Yes prep tells you why first. We exist to send 100% of our students to college. Then they tell you the how. Our schools are small and integrated with a specialized curriculum, we offer rigorous assessment. We host extended school days and school years. We offer numerous enrichment opportunities. We have personalized college counseling for all of our students. And then after all that they mention the what. We just so happen to teach kids. Want to send your children to our school? Well, of course we do. Our core coalition had to discover what our why was. There are plenty of ways that you can do this but identifying your vision, your why is a topic that we're not going to have much time to devote to today. However, if I could leave you with one fees of piece of advice, it would be this. This perfectly sums it up for me. One time I was managing a team of special education teachers in a school district and we spent a day crafting our vision and I can recall vividly what happened when I put the following sentence on our brainstorm board. Our students are visitors. And this statement caused a lot of discussion. One teacher remarked some of our students never make it out of special education. Why would we have that be part of our vision? To which I replied, the dream never changes, regardless of whether or not a student remains in special education for his or her entire educational career. So dreams are forever, like the quote says. What is your dream for your student? Our program, after much discussion among the leadership, our why became one clear concise sentence. Notice though that this doesn't tell you how or what we will do but it is something that every staff member and every person involved with our program could get behind and they could believe in. Notice too that it is a dream. It is something to strive for every day in every moment. And so this is how we chose to communicate our vision, our why. When we began communicating from the inside out, buy in increased exponentially. Even though this step is third in Kotter's eight-step process, in our experience, our core coalition created our vision after analyzing our baseline data. In our opinion we needed to be able to communicate the plan to various stakeholders and having our why solidified helped with those critical conversations. So, again, developing and communicating your vision are topics that really could be explored in a complete two-day training. I will only be skimming the as far as with you regarding how to communicate your vision sharing with you how our program decided to do the steps. So communicating your vision is something that really needs to be done every hour of the day in every possible way. It's important that you get creative in how you communicate your vision. Kotter says in his article that your why should be simple enough that it could be explained in less than five minutes. In my experience, though, one sentence is really what you should shoot for when creating your vision. It's an approach referred to as an elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is a short concise summary of a product or an organization and its promise of value. Not a lot of time in the elevator so you have to get to the point. If you had to explain your vision or why to somebody you met on the elevator, what would you say? The reason the elevator pitch is helpful, in my opinion, is you will be communicating this vision a lot. You want people to be able to articulate the why so they can internalize the why. If you spend five minutes on describing the why to someone the chances are good they will have an idea of what the vision is about but it's possible that the person will walk away with a different understanding than you intended. One sentence that a person can repeat over and over time and time again, in good times and bad, when barriers appear and when explanations are needed, is really powerful. So for us, we focus a lot of our communication on weekly meetings with the sensory team so we could regularly revisit the vision, the why. In e-mail conversations I regularly cited our why making the connection between the work and the purpose. In critical conversations as the team worked through the year and applied their learning, the why was shared. This -- we then moved our communication forward by having a program logo designed and encouraging staff to wear Region 4 RDSPD shirts. We're also going to be looking at redesigning our website so that the sensory team has more of a presence as well. I would add to this that it's important to be consistent. If your actions do not match your words, individuals will not buy into your why nor will they support your change effort. It's important to identify a why that you can fully support as you move forward. I believe that people will endeavor towards difficult goals if they know and they believe the work is purposeful. Our work is undoubtedly challenging and so this is, in my opinion, why saying your why, you can never say your why enough. So, just like the rebel alliance communicated its vision of a free universe and empowered its small band of X-wing fighters to resist the Empire, so too do you need to empower others to act on your vision, your why. When we created our sensory team, we knew there would be some logistical changes in how we did business but I don't think that we could have anticipated all of the tweaks that we would need to make. Our staff throughout our program were incredibly helpful. With this is they asked questions and they shared their concerns. So an obvious obstacle back then that we were able to predict was IEP meeting participation, including required attendance, documentation on the schedule of service page, and required signatures. We also knew that our sensory team would need to have time to collaborate with one another weekly so those weekly meetings were established from the very beginning. Not so obvious barriers that we discovered along the way were how to address identification of students with Deafblindness at their initial evaluation. How to free up our teacher of the Deafblind's time so that you could collaborate with different assessment teams. How to use the data-driven process for determining the need for a skilled one-to-one aid or intervenor and how to ensure that other teachers of the Deaf or visually impaired within the district adhered to the same recommendations, approaches, or philosophies. These are barriers that even now in -- what are we in now? Year five, six? Year six. We're still improving upon, in my opinion, and so it's always something that you have to work at. So imagine if someone said to you we are going on a trip to India tomorrow. We will get there by car and by boat. I'm sure you would initially be excited by all the things you would get to experience but as the journey progressed it might be difficult to maintain that excitement, especially if, for example, you were to get a flat tire or your cell phone breaks or you don't manage to save all of the photos that you're taking. That's why it would be important to celebrate all of the wonderful things that were happening around you while you traveled to India. So as you might expect, some of those small things that are happening to you along the way might be considered more amazing, possibly, than the Taj Mahal, maybe. [Laughter] I don't know. Taj Mahal's pretty amazing, but maybe. So as a change agent it's not enough to hope that your team will accomplish your vision or your why. You have to give the team something concrete to shoot for but it can't be something so difficult that the team abandons the whole idea. From the leadership perspective, we knew that we wanted to increase the number of students with Deafblindness being directly served by our programming. I encouraged this by studying the following explicit opportunities back then. At the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year the sensory team reviewed programming for five student candidates as part of choosing their focus student with a Texas teacher of the Deafblind pilot. By facilitating that review the team discovered on their own that students with Deafblindness received consultive rather than direct services for both auditory and visual needs. I then utilized cognitive coaching strategies to encourage team members to reach their own conclusions when faced with student concern. For example, when our teacher of the Deaf asked how much service time would be needed for one of our students, I asked her, given what the student's goals are, how much time do you think you would need in order to help her achieve one year's progress. Unless it's an administrative issue the team knew that I didn't intend to immediately answer many of their questions. I recognize that members of our sensory team did not exactly know what instructional services they could offer to students who were Deafblind and so we focused on providing intensive professional development for the team that explicitly shows them what teachers of the visually impaired or teachers of the Deaf or COMS could do to support students with Deafblindness. And every student that was added for direct services became a celebration for us. That was a really wonderful short-term win. But there's one more. He says in his article that short-term wins that are scored within the first 12 to 24 months of the change effort -- excuse me, those are the ones that are considered short-term wins. So these are the same short-term wins that I shared with you at the beginning of the presentation. And they're all short-term wins. They were all completed within 12 months of when we started our journey. So we're going to go across continental now. When South Africa denounced apartide and freed Nelson Mandela, more time was needed to heal. Nelson Mandela knew this and when he was elected President he decided he was consolidate these improvement efforts by focusing on the most unlikely of vehicles in his country, the south African rugby team, and the South African spring box. So although South Africa was instrumental in the World Cup competition, they did not compete in 1997 because of the boycotts happening in South Africa. Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa in 1994. The rugby team made its debut in 1995 when South Africa hosted the tournament. Facing criticism, Nelson Mandela was determined to bring the two cultures together. He was fearful of a civil war and he saw rugby as the mechanism to bring his country together. Mandela met with the captain and forged a friendship that was going to be very critical in creating this change effort. Along with other players and staff members they really helped to change the attitude of their country to one of reconciliation and togetherness. So in this picture you can see that Nelson Mandela is wearing the hat and the jersey of the spring box. The jersey itself was the symbol to the Black population in South Africa of oppression, privilege, and separation. And Mandela purposefully chose to wear the jersey of No. 6 of Francois, the team's Caucasian captain. Mandela symbolized in that moment being one with his people but also being one with those that have oppressed Black south African Americans for very long and the spring box defeated the New Zealand -- I'm sorry. I'm sure this is bringing up bad memories for our one New Zealand participants. It was a water shed moment, really, in the post apartheid nation-building process. I'm sure many of you have seen the 2009 movie Invictus where Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman tells his story in dramatic fashion. Nelson Mandela knew that the abolishment of apartheid in and of itself was not enough to bring about lasting change. The kind of lasting change that South Africa desperately needed and he consolidated improvements and produced more change through the unlikely vehicle of South African rugby. Our team also had to work through this stage. It's important to maintain that sense of urgency as you're working through consolidation of improvement efforts, especially after you have had those short-term wins because you run the risk of losing momentum otherwise. Since 2016 we have been running into deep change and this is where motivating people is key. We can't afford to skip the hard stuff. So we're attempting still to leverage short-term wins, short-term wins happen every year for us. But it's in an effort to make bigger changes within our systems and our structures. As you saw at the very beginning of the presentation, we're not just Houston ISD anymore. We're Houston, Pasadena, and Deer Park ISD so we're consolidating this approach with our sensory team so we can better serve all students across these three school districts, not just students residing in Houston ISD, because then our program, every student who qualifies for the Region 4 RDSPD has access to the sensory team. Trying to figure out, for example, do we need more teachers of the Deafblind on this sensory team so that we can reach all students across all three-member districts. When we enter a new organization we usually know right away whether or not leadership has established a healthy work culture or not. As most of us know, culture is a shared set of beliefs and values that is expressed through common behaviors and attitudes. Culture is what makes your change efforts permanent. As a leader you and your team want to be in control of creating and shaping the culture. You don't want to leave it to chance because as the picture indicates here, you might not like the end result. That's why it's critical that you solidify the change you are creating by making it a part of the work culture. But how do you really do that? In 2016 I asked our initial sensory team the following question: If one of you were to leave to find a new path in life, would this team, this approach continue? And the answer was unanimous. No, it probably wouldn't. And they were right at the time. If our sensory team is not accepted within Houston ISD by the leadership or our Region 4 RDSPD leadership team as a permanent fixture, it's on really shaky ground should one of us decide to begin a new adventure. Kotter says that at this stage it's really important to really show people how this new approach has led to some massive improvements. So at that time the team became really good at explicitly sharing their success with higher leadership and they wanted to make sure that everyone saw the connections that we received. As a mentioned earlier, every RDSPD has a management board and they meet with our board at least two times a year. I make sure that I highlight the work of the sensory team at each of those meetings. I also look for opportunities to share our story, like I'm doing with all of you today. While webinars are a wonderful platform to share, what I'm really referring to are the day-to-day interactions I have in my personal circles. There's real power in telling a vivid story that highlights what the sensory team does and why it is succeeding. And I tried to, with every story, take our sensory team from a fad to a fixture. Other ways to build change through culture include using new employee orientation as a way to demonstrate that our sensory team matters and is invaluable. And then promoting sensory team members by having them participate in influential and visible events. Back in 2017 our first itinerant teacher of the Deafblind presented at the Texas Deafblind symposium. And then there's even heavier lifting after that. So to help make our sensory team business as usual for our program, the team, back in 2016-2017 began writing operational guidelines and these guidelines were embedded into Houston ISD's existing operational guideline. That was a huge win for our program because it really shows that this team isn't going anywhere. Now it's a matter of connecting the team to other teams across the district and promoting that awareness that this team exists. And you would think that even after six years that, you know, that wouldn't be a need anymore but as I'm sure you may realize with turnover, especially during the past two years of the pandemic, it is a matter of reeducating people because new people are joining all of the time. Finally, the team has also joined larger regional collaboratives that focus on supporting students with Deafblindness. Connecting through the Texas teacher of the Deafblind pilot project especially has been helpful. They feel validated and empowered, even our new sensory team has expressed that as well and it's all because they've had the opportunity to meet and to network with other professionals who are walking the same path that they're on. And so here it is. The starting point in your journey for change. My hope is that as you listen to the story today you found yourself becoming inspired. Perhaps you noted what your concern is and perhaps you were able to jot down who some members of your core coalition are. Perhaps you were inspired to start noting your why. I wish you the best of luck as you work to transform the journey for your students and if I can be of help, feel free to reach out to me. And I'm ready for questions. >> Kate: Hey, everyone, this is Kate again. If you have questions for Dr. McCormick, please feel free to put that in the chat. >> Dr. McCormick: Yes, I will gladly share my contact information. My e-mail, which is kind of hidden right now, is here. It's marina.McCormick@esc4.net. And my phone number is there. Thank you, Edgenie. Edgenie said in the chat that she loved that I mentioned that a com was an essential part of the team. Absolutely. Our COMS, even our new COMS, she is -- I just can't imagine having this team without her because she's always bringing up such great points, especially how the auditory sense is so valuable to orientation mobility instruction. We have a question in the chat. I am a part of a smaller district in East Texas that has an RDSPD. I'm curious if it would be more beneficial to have the TOD become a TDB instead of a TVI. Even though I am extremely interested in the field. That's actually a misconception that a TVI cannot be a part of a regional day school program for the Deaf. So the way that the code reads is that students who are Deaf/hard of hearing or Deafblind are receiving at least 45 minutes of instruction from an RDSPD teacher are considered an RDSPD student. It never says exactly it's supposed to be a teacher of the Deaf. In our program we have locally funded through the RDSPD teachers of the visually impaired who only support students with Deafblindness. Now, we have that capacity. Right now, with our three-member school districts, we're approaching 40 students with Deafblindness. And next year we will also be adding another district as a member and so we're anticipating that that number may be closer to 50 before it's all said and done. I just want to bring that up. Teachers of the visually impaired, as long as they work with only students who are Deafblind can be a part of the RDSPD. I was just going to say, Alex, I'm going to have two open positions for teachers of the Deafblind so, you know, if you want to reach out later, please feel free. But, yes, you will have plenty -- you have the opportunity if you're RDSPD and the management board are willing. Let's see, another question. Do we help families with ARD meetings? Absolutely. It's not just about educating students but also educating their families on the kind of supports and services that their children need and helping them to be active collaborators in the IEP process. And so we do that by addressing both the VI expanded core curriculum, which in Texas we know is required. But the DHH side of the house doesn't have a required expanded core curriculum per the state law. We use Iowa's expanded core curriculum as our guiding star in that fashion and there's a lot of good family goals that can be drawn from there that we turn to to help our families better understand, like I mentioned, services, support, and how to participate in IEP meetings. Laura asked what changes have you seen in your students over the past six years? One, I think, most importantly -- I know you asked about students but I have to go back to staff changes first. For our staff there has been a huge philosophical shift in six years from a student who may have significant additional needs, who perhaps before would have received only consultive services to presumed confidence. I'm going to presume that you can do it. I'm going to assume that -- I'm going to give you all of the most high intensive intervention I can in order to get you to where you need to be. And for our students, especially those who were nonverbal, those that were medically challenged, I'm actually getting goosebumps as I talk about it. That's where I see the biggest change. Students who are being connected to assistive technology, who are now experiencing, you know, their first steps towards more formal language structures. Students who are experiencing, for example, core vocabulary and having that door opened for them. That's been really big changes, in my opinion. But it all started with that staff mindset of changing from, you know, you're not ready for this because you're not communicating and you're not interacting with anybody, to presumed confidence. I really do believe that if I did what I needed to do for you that you can do it. Let's see, Alejandra says beautiful presentation. As a DHH teacher I know my limits in my background and I have seen with littles who are Deafblind some teams put hearing loss in the background because it's not as visible as their vision loss. What would you suggest to gently get the team on board to work with the teacher of the Deaf and hard of hearing to address all of their needs? Working with these littles has been an eye openerrer and I'm very interested in gaining a certification in Deafblind. What would be a great first step? Oh, so much to unpack to that question. However, I would probably start -- like if you're working in early intervention, early childhood, certainly we want to build those auditory skills that children have auditory access. So it begins to really having a solid evaluation that you can turn to and build your programming from. Having the teacher of the Deaf utilizing like the functional auditory performance indicators, which is available for free online. The FAPI or utilizing a curriculum such as the MacArthur Bates communicative index or the central institute for the Deaf listening at home curriculum. Those can be really great tools to demonstrate how listening could be developed in those students. And then can point to the need for a teacher of the Deaf being involved. Teachers of the Deaf, as you know, Alejandra, we're experts in communication and language, even if it is augmentative communication. So that's what I would argue that teacher is bringing to the table. The student doesn't have an existing communication system. We really need to turn to that teacher of the Deaf for some really good input along with the speech language pathologist and possibly our assistive technology team. Oh, awesome, Alejandra! That's exciting. Yeah, a lot of people turn to the sky high and there's nothing wrong with the sky high but I want to point out there are other tools you can utilize. Laura asked have you implemented an intervener model for your students? Yes, ma'am, we have. We actually utilize, first the intervener questionnaire developed by Texas Deafblind outreach but our teams gather data so we can have that kind of informed decision, informed discussion leading to a decision or recommendation, I should say. Oftentimes what we have found is there's a difference, naturally, between a skilled one-to-one aid and intervener and so items that may get brought up for needing an intervener -- I'm thinking of a particular situation that we just had where a campus wanted an intervener for a student because the student was not paying attention. When we collected our data, really the student only needed some physical prompting, just a tap on the arm or even a brief verbal prompt with his name to get him to get back on track. It wasn't that he needed any intense intervention such as an intervener would provide, if that makes sense. And I'm grossly oversummarizing this entire story for the purposes of our time but, yes, we have had some students who have had an intervener and it's been quite successful. Those paras that sign up for it go through the model while they are working with the students and our teachers for the Deafblind. Do we have a speech path on the core team? No, they would be on the extended team. They come in when they are needed.