April 13, 2017
by Carole Zangari -
It’s a healthy sign when practitioners in any field examine their beliefs, reflect on their own practices, and revisit previously held assumptions. In this post, veteran SLP Alicia Garcia challenges us to think about some important questions. Do we hold people who use AAC to standards that are different from their speaking peers? How does that impact them? What, if any, adjustments in our thinking should be made to help them flourish? It’s a great day for us to slow down and think through questions like these, and Alicia’s guest post helps us do just that. The Curse of the Random Thought in AAC Situation: Young verbal children playing in a sand pit Child 1: My dad’s truck broke Child 2: Oh… my mom has a blue car and she’s coming over later Child 3: … I had a big candy bar all by myself… Communication is a messy... [Read More...]
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: reflective practices, self-reflection
August 4, 2015
by Carole Zangari -
We’ve all been there. You have meaningful goals, engaging materials, and a solid lesson plan for our therapy session. Five minutes into the session, it’s clear that the AAC learner has little or no interest in what we’ve prepared. Now what? Our choices are limited: persevere with the plan, modify it somewhat, or scrap it entirely. What’s a clinician to do? Take A Breath The first thing to do is breathe. Know that you are not the first one to struggle to engage this learner, and you won’t be the last. Think of it not as an excuse for an unproductive session but as a problem-solving challenge. Previous clinicians may have justified the session’s difficulties and atttibuted them to the learner’s lack of engagement, limited attention span, or behavioral problems. Personally, I feel sad for those clinicians because when we take that approach, not only do we fail the client,... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: AAC Therapy, lesson plan, self-improvement, self-reflection
January 31, 2014
by Carole Zangari -
The holidays are over and we’ve all been back in AACtion for awhile now. That makes it a good time to share What Went Well. Did you ‘reach’ a colleague with an AAC message? Is a parent or caregiver becoming more accepting or involved? Did an AAC learner do something new or more or better? Did an administrator stop hounding you about minutiae? Reflecting and acknowledging small successes puts much-needed wind in our collective sails. We’d love it if you took a moment to share some positives from your month. Inchstones, not milestones. Let’s do this together. What went well in your prAACtical month?
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: inchstones, self-reflection, sharing, success, What Went Well
June 19, 2013
by Carole Zangari -
Today, we welcome back Dr. Kristy Weissling who shared some detailed thoughts on using AAC to support people with aphasia in this earlier post. In this post, she gets us thinking about what might be behind a situation familiar to many SLPs: Under-utilization of the AAC support/ :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Five questions to ask yourself when the person with aphasia you are working with isn’t carrying their communication book. 1) How easy is it to take with them where they go? Is it convenient to use? 2) Does it contain messages they WANT to use? 3) Do they know how to find a message in the book when the time to use the book arises? 4) Have you practiced using the book with them? 5) Do they have another way to communicate the information in the book that they prefer to use? There are certainly many other possible questions to ask …..... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: aphasia, communication book, portabilility, practice, self-reflection, vocabulary
October 29, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
No one wants to be ‘that’ professional. You know him or her. The one who always sees the glass as half empty. The one who can give you a long list of things his/her clients can’t do, won’t be able to do. The one is quick to give a dozen reasons why the AAC tools and strategies won’t work for his/her clients. The one who repeatedly says “We tried that and it didn’t work.” I met a professional like this (haven’t we all??) at a workshop I was teaching on making AAC work in the classroom. She approached me at every break and was eager to talk. In these conversations she tried everything she could to get me to agree that her kids were “too low functioning,” that the AAC device was too high level for them, and that the parent’s expectations were unrealistic. What struck me about this young... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: attitude, attitudinal barrier, Barriers, professional development, professionals, self-reflection