Hearing the Knock
Wishes are wonderful things, seducing us with their promise and possibility. So with the luck o’ the Irish in mind, we’re sending forth a wish for something intangible, the big O: Opportunity.
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Our AAC wish list for this month is all about opportunities. Opportunity. It has such a nice ring to it. Our parents and teachers tried to prepare us to recognize opportunity, and promised us that it would come knocking.
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But sometimes the knock of AAC opportunity is drowned out by other things. Sometimes we just don’t hear it. We may miss the opportunity to teach a new clinician how to expand the language of a teenager learning to use a speech generating device. We may miss the chance to create the teachable moment for a child just learning to use AAC to make a comment. We might miss the opportunity to encourage a parent to give their child choices of what to do, eat, or wear. We may miss the opportunity to educate a misinformed professional who fears that using AAC will prevent a student from speaking.
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Knocks that we didn’t hear. What to do when we miss those chances? The legendary comic, Milton Berle, had the best answer we’ve found. It’s all about creating new opportunities. “When opportunity doesn’t knock,” he said, “Build a door.”
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In the year to come, we hope to build a lot of doors. Doors of opportunity, because windows are sometimes too small.
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With the promise of spring just around the corner, we dream of:
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- Plentiful opportunities for people who use AAC to communicate, because we all need to practice when we’re learning something new.
- Plentiful opportunities for educators, SLPs, families, and others to give AAC a fair chance before deciding that the individual ‘isn’t ready.’
- Plentiful opportunities to provide support to people learning AAC. More teaching and less testing.
- Plentiful opportunities for AAC to be encouraged across activities and environments. Communication all day long, not just at snack time. Not just in school.
- Plentiful opportunities for meaningful goals and expectations. Communication is about power and participation, not tasks and compliance.
- Plentiful opportunities to build a dialogue with you about AAC. It’s a complex field and ongoing interaction about how to make it work will benefit both of us.
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Our ears are peeled, listening for those knocks. And if they don’t come, well, I guess we’ll be building some doors.
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Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: opportunity, wishes
This post was written by Carole Zangari
