This week, Rachel invites Gemma White back to TWT to talk about personal safety awareness and self advocacy for AAC users. Gemma recently gave a presentation at AAC in the Cloud, “Where is the Penis?: Equipping AAC Users to Discuss Personal Safety Awareness with Personal Safety Curriculum”. Gemma talks about this presentation, why words like “penis” and “vagina” should be in AAC users devices, ways that we can collaborate to support personal safety awareness, and other ways that we can empower AAC users to protect themselves from neglect and abuse.
Before the interview, Rachel and Chris discuss some comments made by an SLP who works with one of Rachel’s clients and focuses only on verbal speech. This client has Childhood Apraxia of Speech and is highly unintelligible. He has been making good progress with his AAC and is now choosing to use it more often. Recently, the other SLP commented that “AAC is holding back verbal speech” because the client chose to use his AAC more than verbal speech to communicate. Rachel shares how she responded, the reasons why the other SLP may have believed this, and why following the student’s lead is so important when accepting communication modalities.
Key ideas this week:
🔑 If your school or practice has a curriculum developed to teach children about personal safety awareness, then you can collaborate with the whole team to add language to AAC user’s devices that support what they’re learning about their bodies and safety.
🔑 A person’s gender does not always match the body parts they were born with - It’s important to separate words related to gender and labels for private parts to foster a more inclusive environment.
🔑 We need to focus on self-advocacy from the beginning, e.g. "no," "stop," and "all done." Often refusal and negation can be motivating, especially if we are asking a student to do something they don’t want to do.
Links from this Episode:
Gail van Tatenhove: The Power of Core: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqfVAPuGzpI
Gemma White, AAC in the Cloud: “Where is the Penis?: Equipping AAC Users to Discuss Personal Safety Awareness with Personal Safety Curriculum” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-kw4_HH6FI
Visit talkingwithtech.org to access previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!
Help us develop new content and keep the podcast going strong! Support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech!
Emma Fischer - Preparing for a New Career in Assistive Technology
Otto Lana: Autistic Advocate, Writer, Actor, and AAC User
Rémi Morin - Creating the Canadian-French Version of LAMP:WFL as a Parent
Emily Macklin, Neha Sharma, & Amber Skerry: Supporting Communication for Deafblind Students
McKinzee Steve, Danielle Welge, & Kendra Everette (Part 2): Providing High-Tech AAC as a Tier 2 Early Childhood Intervention
McKinzee Steve, Danielle Welge, & Kendra Everette (Part 1): Providing District-Led 1:1 AAC Training to Parents
Emily Taylor: Using Social Media to Promote Your AAC Resources
April Wallace & Christina Stader - Specific Language System First Approach Q&A
Dr. Barry Prizant (Part 2): Is ”Spelling to Communicate” Authentic Communication?
Dr. Barry Prizant (Part 1): Echolalia and Gestalt Language Processing
Kimberly Neely: The Trauma-Informed SLP
Barbara Gruber & Ashley Grady: Supporting Accessibility and Inclusion at the Smithsonian Institution
Tiffanie Zaugg: Creating an AAC Facilitator’s Guide for a School District
Ashley Waterman: Supporting Language as a Parent of an AAC User
Judith Schoonover (Part 2): The Role of OTs in AAC Assessment
Judith Schoonover (Part 1): Quickly Create AT Solutions From Common Objects
Recast: AAC Modeling Roundtable
Recast: Chris Klein: The Importance of Motor Planning
Recast: Shaun Pearson & Chris Chicoskikelly: The AAC Agreements
Recast: Core Words Roundtable
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Navigating Life After 40
Teaching Learning Leading K-12
Regenerative Skills
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Mel Robbins Podcast