This week, we're talking about High-Leverage Practice number 13, adapting curriculum tasks and materials for specific learning goals. And Cass, you are an incredibly creative instructor in all the different ways that you help your students figure out how to learn these skills that you are putting in front of them. For you and your practice, what does this look like?

Well, it does, like you said, show up in a lot of different ways. And being creative is very helpful, but it also feels like its own personal challenge. Where it's like, okay, well that's not working. How do I get to them? Because I'm not one to give up. That's kind of how the mentality that we have to have when we're working with this population of students who are very deserving of services. But I gotta be a little hard-headed and say, “Okay, that angle didn't work. How can I use something that they're good at to help me focus on that goal?”

If you're not so good at writing because you can't hold a pencil, I might use Velcro instead. So instead of being able to draw a line to match, maybe I'm going to have a little Velcro laminated sheet where you match that way because your skills are better that way. Because sometimes we want to focus on that ‘Oh, I'm just trying to get them to write.’ Well, writing is broken down into so many other different skills. So when we look at things that help us understand what those skills look like.

Now, in my clinical setting, we're looking at the ABLLS, AFLS, the VB-MAPP. I use the VB-MAPP a lot. And what that kind of told us is, what are these milestones that are age-appropriate for this student or this person, and how are we going to adapt those different skills that they do have? Sometimes we have skills that they're really, really good at, but they maybe don't have the foundational skills for that to even make sense. So sometimes we have to work that back. Understanding what that trajectory is, is vital to being able to break down what it is you're trying to teach them.

Now, what I mean by that is to essentially say, if I am trying to get them to spell their name, I'm not necessarily going to worry about all the other parts that might go to that. If writing the name isn't important, then them verbally spell it. Oh, well, what if my student doesn't use verbal language like that? Awesome. Do they have an AAC device that you can program letters into, or can you pull that sheet up or teach them how to do that so they can spell their name that way?

What if your student is working on peer interactions and trying to initiate play in an appropriate way? Maybe all they do is throw toys at the other students to try to get them to play with them. Well, let's teach them how to do that. Well, it's not quite the step of just, ‘oh, they're going to initiate the interaction. They're just going to start it.’ Well, what does that look like? What does that look like? That requires them to say something.That also requires them to get a student's attention in an appropriate way. That also requires them to stand and wait and listen for a response. And so all of these different skills need to be pushed to the side, broken down, and let's identify where we're struggling. If they walk up to the student and then throw the toy, well, hey, you know what? They know how to walk up to the student. They know how to start that.

So what we need to do is catch them.We need to stop. Oh, they walked up. Great. Now we're going to show you we can tap on that student's shoulder and get their attention. Oh, well, now they have to tell them that they want to play. What if my student doesn't use verbal language as that other student does? Well, what if they have picture exchange communication and they can hand that student an icon or hand a teacher that? Or they have an AAC device that says, "Hey, will you play with me?” And all they have to do is push that button. You're going to teach them that. But what we have to do is break down these fundamental steps that build up to appropriate play with a peer. Yeah. Our goals can be that, and we identify that man, there are major issues, that's where their behaviors come up, that's when they stop learning. Is when they have to interact. Well, great, let's teach them how.

But we have to understand that that's not a simple concept. Something that comes easily to us might take six or seven steps for a student in our classrooms or in our care. So we have to understand that breaking these steps down is identifying what it is that we're actually trying to measure, what it is that we're trying to teach them, what is the skill, and what are the other pieces that don't really matter. Yeah, sure, we might have to break a little bit from social norms. It might not be the usual on a playground to see a student walk up and use an AAC device or bring a student over or a teacher over to a communication board that's on the playground to explain that they need to go to the bathroom. That might not be normal, but why can't it be? Why can't we break that down? Why can't we make that normal and acceptable? And so what we're going to be able to do is change what we do and how we measure those typical tasks.

In a perfect world, we'd be able to say every student who needs to learn to write will learn it this way. It will be successful. They will learn it in this amount of time, and it will be fine. And they will always keep that skill. That's cool. That's not the world we live in, and that's not how learning works. And I think we understand that in a way, as educators and clinicians. But what's really important is identifying that these age appropriate and these milestones and all of these things in theory are great, but not necessarily exactly where each person needs to be on the same trajectory that each person is going to reach it.

So you have covered a ton of ground with all of these different examples, from what tools you're using to how you're laying out instruction, to then how you're within that instruction trying to reinforce and catch these different opportunities of expressing new skills to then, like, how are you actually just embedding that into just a normal way of living life? Like, there are accommodations and modifications at every single piece of what you just walked through.

But I want to make sure that since a lot of our listeners are living in the educational space, I think in a clinical setting, it's just the strategies. Like, this is just what works for this individual, and this is how they learn, or this is how we've been able to adjust some things around them so that they can hit these goals. In a classroom setting, walk me through what that could look like in a somewhat typical instructional day-to-day.

Yeah, it's so easy when we're working one-on-one with a student to create whatever world or strategy that works for just them; that's so real. And in theory, ‘oh, we can throw this strategy for the student and this strategy at this student and this strategy at this student.’ But I am one person with 15 students who need different strategies, 15 different strategies at the same time. How do we do that?

Let's break that down. It is woven into what we do. So, for example, if I recognize that a student, let's say we're doing a calendar on the carpet, and some students don't know their numbers and some don't know their letters, and some don't know the songs that we sing to do the days of the week, that's okay, because here's what we're going to do. We are going to work functionally on multiple levels at the same time. And I know that sounds crazy, so don't get scared.

But what that looks like for some students, let's say they're really great at writing and not so good about speaking out socially in front of other students. We're going to give them whiteboards. Or we're going to come closer when we ask a group question because they still deserve to voice when they know the answer too. Maybe they'll hold their whiteboard up.

Maybe we have more visual learners. So as we're doing the ABCs and the students who maybe don't know theirs quite yet, we're going to be pointing at that visual model as we go. But maybe we have other students who don't have to look at that visual model, who maybe are sitting in a different location or a different way. But we are all learning at the same time at different strategies. And so remember that different strategies don't always have to work on a one-on-one basis. And you can be doing them at the same time.And you probably already are.

And a lot of the time, I use a calendar because I think that's a very significant time I've seen not only represented in my classroom, but representative across my school as well, where these teachers who are all presenting the same information are doing it at different grade levels, but different methods at the same time. So I know that they have some students who don't quite know their letters or can't do that math for the day, but they're. ‘Oh, great. Well, you know what? We're going to weave in some scaffolding. We're going to weave in some different embedded learning techniques that we've already done.’

I have visuals on the walls, but the students who don't need the visuals aren't going to use them. They're not. They know. And if they don't have to look at you, they probably won't. But that's okay because those visuals are there as strategies for other students. So remember that as you're instructing your classroom, if the kid's looking away but they're still on task and they're still learning, you're actually doing it. You're doing that High-Leverage Practice. Because there are also students who are learning and using that visual as well, while everyone is learning at their own pace. So it doesn't have to be an intimidating thing. It can be something that we embed and weave into the structure of each plan. Identify that I have some visual learners or some hands-on learners. It's in what we do every single day. It's how you learned to teach. Scaffolding and changing that approach or varying what you use to get whichever skill you're trying to teach across.

So, in my classroom, just for a plain example, I might stand there, and I know that I have one kid who does not speak in front of anybody else, but he does really well if I give him a clue. And so he is allowed one clue or to phone a friend. And so now that the student is working in a small group mindset. But he also has the comfort of knowing, ‘hey, I don't have so much pressure on my social skills.’ I'm gonna tell you right now, that student knows the answer every single time. He does. I know he does. He's brilliant. But that social piece is what keeps him from sharing that. So what are we going to do to adapt that expectation and that skill so that he is also, ‘hey, you know what phoning a friend means, he's working on a social skill. It's just a smaller one than yelling in front of the entire class.’ So if he's like, hey, I'm gonna tell you what the answer is, and then my friend can say it, that works.

So remember that it can be woven into anything that you do. And it can be as simple as saying, "Hey, do you want to phone a friend this time?” If you see that he's resistant, you see that he's waiting, “Do you want to phone a friend, or do you want me to give you a clue?” It's usually phone a friend, and there you go. You just changed your different and you adapted that skill for that student based on what he needed at that time. And so it can be as simple as that. It doesn't have to be this massive, thought-out, extended plan. It can be something as simple as just adapting it just slightly that way.

You have dropped so many examples throughout this entire conversation. I mean, one of the most overwhelming pieces of this High-Leverage Practice is that there's so many options, like between accommodations, modifications, all the different needs of all the different students at all the different levels on all the different content, like, oh my gosh!

How many different strategies am I leveraging to try to get a very diverse student population to try to hit that mark that I'm trying to move them toward? How have you grown your toolbox? Like, as a professional, where do you get these strategies? How do you dream up these ideas?

I am a little nerdy, and I love research. So I do have some background in clinical work, where I learned a lot on that job, and I learned a lot of those approaches that way. So, applied behavioral analysis has really helped me. However, I am a big observer. I'm also a big advocate to say that when I say I know it all, I'm probably not the smartest person in the room. So I'm a big observer in the ways that I'll put myself out there and say, "Hey, I don't know how to do this,” or "Hey, how are you doing this? Can I come watch? Can I come just see, like, can I be nosy?” But I like to use my nosiness for power and for information.

And so if I can recognize what one of my peers is doing really well. Or is really, really benefiting a student, how can I learn from that practice to embed it into a similar situation I might see down the road? So, especially coming from that clinical background, I've had a massive time doing that the past couple of years of sitting and watching and learning and understanding that these veteran teachers or these new teachers are coming in with all different perspectives.

I'm also learning from people from different cultural backgrounds as well. I think that is pivotal too, to the population that I work with as well. I live in a really diverse community, and a lot of my students don't have the same background as I do, which in some ways is a strengthening thing, I think. But in other ways, I recognize that. And again, understanding that I don't know everything and I couldn't possibly know that. That might break down to me saying I don't know what kind of brush they should use for our hairbrushing program because they have a different texture of hair than I do, and reaching out to people who are resourceful and humbly saying, ‘Hey, I don't know, can you give me some recommendations on how this would work?’

That can show up not just with hair brushes. I had a veteran teacher this last year who said it to me, “Hey, I am tired, and I have never in my 21 years of teaching ever had a class that I have struggled this much with behaviorally. What am I doing wrong?” And I said, as much as I would love to say, ‘I'm going to have that exact answer for you, and we're going to fix it all,’ what I will say is, “let's be a team, let's look.”

And you know how much I learned from her, actually. And by the end of the year, her class was doing really, really well. She was feeling way more confident, and it was really cool to sit down and put our heads together and say, what are you already doing that works? So I can learn, and I can use that, but what do I have in my back pocket that can help you, too? And that collaboration, I think a lot of people drag their feet on like where I've heard in the world that it's difficult to have those communications or those collaborations because, when we're working with our special needs students in these kinds of low-incidence populations, or in a self-contained setting, we don't necessarily get to connect with those general education teachers.

But that's not to say that those general education teachers haven't absolutely had to be so creative with students who are unidentified in their population and had to learn how to teach those students, too. So it's not a one-way street. I don't have all of the answers. And there is so, so, so much I can learn from everyone else. And that has kept my toolbox expanding and putting myself in rooms and saying, ‘I don't know,’ has expanded my toolbox far, far, far greater than it could have ever been. If I walked into a room and saying, well, ‘hey, I have some answers.’ If I walk in saying, ‘I'm not sure, but let's look together.’ I have learned to be an ever-evolving educator that continues to pull out weird, like you said, creative strategies that are informed.

And that's the most important part. ‘Well, this strategy worked for this student.’ ‘Well, that's unethical, and you cannot do that. So let's make sure that we're informed as we do these sorts of things. We look at these veteran teachers and say, ‘How have we evolved? How has education evolved? And how can we take these old strategies, maybe that work, but how do we shape them in a way that is more constructive than they could ever be?’ That's the point, right, Heather? That's the point, is to continue to grow and expand what we understand, what we know, and thus create an environment that is ultimately better in every room than it has been in the past. So that's the goal.

Thank you for showing how human education is. That we just get to show up and figure it out. Like, we're not coming in like clueless. You're coming in with lots of training, access to resources, but knowing that our colleagues are resources, that there are so many different ways to go find our own phone a friend to figure out how to do this in a different way, as I am trying new things, then my own toolbox is expanding. Thank you so much for just being so human about that, that it's not just having all the answers and knowing all the strategies and doing all the research so I can be like this master practitioner that in reality, every single student is so completely unique that they're going to have their own combination of things that works for them in this moment, and then it's going to change and then it's going to be in context with other students that are their own different kinds of needs as well.

So thank you for clearly communicating that it is not like the end goal as a practitioner to know all the things, to have all the accommodations, to be able to dream up and do all these modifications, but instead it's actually, how do I know who my people are and where can I go to get more ideas? So that I can make those adjustments to either the curriculum or the instruction, or how I'm trying to target these learning goals with incredibly challenging students at times.

You hit the nail on the head with that. Where it has to be a collaborative effort and a community effort. And just always bring up if there's a problem. And this has always been my go-to if there's a problem, bring a solution. And it might not be the one that we end up on, but bring some sort of suggestion. And that's where we start to research. That's where we start to bring that information for ourselves and not rely solely on those resources, but understand that we can all bring something from our toolboxes to the table and see what tool fits best.

Thank you so much for sharing your expertise here on High- Leverage Practice 13. I've so appreciated this conversation.

Me too. Thank you.