Interview between Speaker 1 (Meg Ferrell) and Speaker 2 (Karina Saechao)
Episode 84: AAC for All: Here’s How We Do It!
[Introductory music]
Welcome to the Two Sides of the Spectrum Podcast. A place where we explore research, amplify Autistic voices, and change the way we think about autism in life, and in our professional therapy practices. I’m Meg Ferrell, formerly Meg Proctor, from learnplaythrive.com broadcasting to you today from unceded Tsalagi territory.
Meg:
Before we get started, a quick note on language. On this podcast, you’ll hear me and many of my guests use identity-affirming language. That means we say ‘Autistic person’ rather than ‘person with autism’, because this is the preference of most Autistic adults. Being Autistic is a part of their identity that they don’t need to be separated from. Join us in embracing the word ‘Autistic’ to help reduce the stigma.
Welcome to Episode 84 with Karina Saechao. In this episode, Karina and I have a really impassioned conversation about what it looks like now for multiply marginalized kids to try and access and use AAC, and what steps we can all take to try and change that. Karina gives the best advice to therapists on the ground who are collaborating with parents and teachers and trying the best that they can to improve access to communication for our clients. I left this conversation with Karina feeling really energized and excited and I hope you do, too. I’ll tell you about Karina Saechao. She’s an SLP, researcher, scholar, and activist who’s really passionate about increasing equity, access, and outcomes related to research, clinical practice, and course curriculum. She holds a certificate as an assistive technology specialist from CSU Northridge. She’s a PhD student and the founder and CEO of Golden Oak Speech Therapy. Karina frequently presents on topics in the areas of African American English, AAC, assistive technology, creating inclusive environments, power, privilege, and race and cultural humility. She is a great speaker. I love learning from her.
And she’s one of our presenters at the 2024 Learn Play Thrive Neurodiversity Continuing Education Summit. If you haven’t gotten your ticket yet, I can’t say it enough times. Just go check it out. We have 15 talks. 11 of them are new from last year, all of last year’s talks that are returning are updated. The topics range from AAC, to feeding, PDA, sensory processing, interoception, DEI, and so much more. Karina’s talk is called ‘AAC For All: Strategizing through Barriers to Accessing AAC and Literacy in Systematically Marginalized Communities’. It’s deeply practical and impactful. You can find the details at learnplaythrive.com/summit. Karina is also a contributing instructor in the next version of our self-study course, Authentic AAC, which is taught by Kate McLaughlin. We’ll have that new version out in early 2024 as well, so stay tuned for that update. All right, quick note about our interview. At one point you’ll hear Karina use the acronym FAPE — F-A-P-E. If you’re not familiar with the US education system, I just wanted to let you know that that means Free Appropriate Public Education, which is a legal right for kids here in the US. Here’s the interview with Karina Saechao.
Hi, Karina, welcome to the podcast.
Karina:
Hi! How are you, Meg.
Meg:
I’m thrilled to be sitting here talking with you. How are you?
Karina:
Same. I feel so, so, so excited to chat with you today about, of course, a topic that I love a ton.
Meg:
Yeah, you sort of came into the Learn Play Thrive world this year as we were planning our Summit content. And what you have to offer has been such a needed addition to how we’re thinking about AAC, and equity, and inclusion, and access, and really excited to continue collaborating with you. And I want to start with your story. Can you tell us a little bit about you and how you came to do the work that you’re doing now?
Karina:
Yeah, so this is my 10th year as a speech-language pathologist, and I actually refer to myself more usually as a speech therapist. But it was in my second year, in terms of AAC, I started my career working at a high school and it was for a small district. And one of the things that was happening essentially is that every time an AAC assessment needed to be conducted — I was like a little baby CFY — but every time an AAC assessment needed to be conducted, there was a lot of pushback, you know, from the upper administrators and people who didn’t quite understand our work fully as speech-language pathologists. But when they finally would agree to conduct an AAC assessment, they were bringing in speech-language pathologists from far away, like, over 45-minutes away to conduct these assessments. They were paying them a lot of money, but we also were not, in my mind, getting a lot of bang for our buck, you know? So, this person would come, they would conduct the assessment, and then essentially, they would just leave. Like, they would provide an AAC device. And then, that was it, you know. The contracts did not include consultation with the current team, including like the parents, the educational team, the intervention team. And so, there became a time, I think, the third time this happened, where we just had like devices laying around, and none of the SLP’s knew what to do, including the more seasoned SLP’s. And so, I was able to work with the district to essentially convince them to send me back to school, you know, to work toward — I worked towards an Assistive Technology Certificate along with the occupational therapist, another speech therapist, and then the school psychologist. And we, the four of us work together to bring an assistive technology department to our school district. And this was to support an increase in the Universal Design for Learning for like all of the students for assistive technology. But then, myself and the speech therapist, the other one, went on to become AAC specialists, because we just had a whole bunch of children who had this need in the area of AAC who essentially were going underserved. So, we were, at the high school level, had been still working on essentially goals that they were working on when they were small children, and they didn’t have access to an authentic voice is what I like to call it. And so, now we’re here, you know. Now this work has really expanded, and I have been able to continue being able to provide and support districts and families and children who use AAC. And it’s exciting.
Meg:
And that is so exciting. I love your story. I love how you saw a need, you said this isn’t being done well, we’re not serving these kids well, how can we do it better? What training do we need? What resources do we need? And then, you got your multidisciplinary team together, and sort of got the training to make it happen. And you’ve travelled a long way since that point, too. I imagine as your career continued to unfold, you shifted your focus a little bit to access and equity. Can you speak to that piece a little bit as well?
Karina:
Yeah. So, of course, as I got like further into the career, it became clear that this was more than just a, like, isolated AAC issue. So, you know, the access and equity components came in because I essentially grew up in an area that was being underserved for a lot of reasons. So, I was born and raised in a historically redlined area. And so, essentially, what that means is quite literally, the government took out a map of different cities around the nation, including where I’m from, and they crossed off red areas on the map. They literally shaded them red with a pen. And these were places that were considered undesirable to live. And so, banks would not, like, mortgage to families who lived in these areas. And the families who lived in these areas, most typically were Black families, or they were migrant families, but they were almost always families of color. And so, the problem is systemic, because it still is a problem today. And my company was born out of this problem. And so, essentially, in terms of access and equity, there are still, right, like whole populations of children, there are whole zip codes of children, primarily Black and Brown children who are not being served the, you know, with speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, right. So, they’re not being served. But an AAC, this has become an even bigger issue because it is not uncommon at all for me to walk into a classroom to serve a student, you know, even if it’s just like a one off, you know, like, contract to go and serve the student and the only student, and/or students who don’t have AAC devices, are the Black and Brown children or the children who speak a language, a heritage language other than English. And so, this has become an access and equity issue because now there is much more information about providing AAC for children but not for all children. And so, that it has been now the way the journey, my journey, has veered toward how do we get AAC for all children?
Meg:
Yeah, that’s so needed. Can you share with us what about your work feels motivating and feels really good, and what’s hard about it?
Karina:
I think what feels, like, really motivating is supporting families and educators. It feels kind of cliche, right, but supporting families and educators with like rethinking how society has framed and perpetuated myths about disability and AAC. And so, as we know, our society equates non-speaking with non-thinking, right. And so, our society is not very kind to people who do not sound like the mainstream. And that looks like a lot of ways, right? So, it could be an articulation error, it can be a fluency error in terms of stuttering, you know, it could be a person who speaks in what some might consider a non-mainstream dialect, like African American English, but this most definitely includes people who use AAC. And so, when I think about the things that motivate me, you know, I think about being able to debunk some of the myths around prerequisites, around who uses AAC, around how we think about intellect, you know, and also what it means to have an intellectual disability or not, right. Like, how we talk about the medical model versus the social model of disability, for example. And I think I am also motivated by, you know, AAC gives people a way to use language. So, sometimes people will conflate, like, communication and language, for example, and while everyone communicates no matter what, right, using gestures, actions, eye gaze, eye fixation, you know, you name it, right, everybody can communicate, but that does not mean that they’re using language, you know. And so, if they don’t have access to AAC, but they also don’t have access to mouth words via their voice for, you know, whatever reason that is, you know, like whether they are a person who has experienced situational mutism, or whether anatomically and physiologically they have a motor speech disorder, you know, communication and language are not the same thing. And so, what motivates me is supporting, being able to support everyone with rethinking how we think about, like, language and language development and access to literacy, and why those things are important so that people can say, you know, really, what they want to be able to say when, where, and how they want to be able to say it.
Meg:
Thank you so much for that distinction. That’s so helpful. I know a question that I get a lot, Karina, is people are often looking for advice for how to approach those conversations with families, when families come in maybe with misguided, or ableist, or just very medical model goals, ideas, information, that, frankly, they’ve probably learned from their other providers, you know, they didn’t have their child and suddenly have these beliefs. But a lot of the listeners of the podcast are often looking for advice on how to approach those conversations with their families. And I know, you know, I just asked you what motivates you and you said you love helping families and educators make that shift. Do you have any advice on how to approach those conversations?
Karina:
Yeah, you know, I start with debunking myths. And then, I also start with really providing information and support and education around the difference, actually, between speech and language, right. So, speech is, you know, how we use our mouth to articulate what we want to say. And then, being able to sequence, you know, all of our articulators, tongue, lips, teeth, you know, all of that to say what we want to say. But language is, you know, like, what we’re saying, right? And so, some families, like, that’s where they start, you know, like, some families need that. And so, when I think about how can I make the bridge and the connection to why AAC, it’s to support language development, vocabulary, development, literacy development. You know, one of the things that I also do is ethnographic interviewing. So, all parents, for the most part, the thread that they say is that they really want to understand their children. They want to know their children, right. And so, how do we get to know our children? It’s by having conversations with them. That conversation does not need to come from mouth words. That conversation can come from using AAC to support them, and really being able to establish and build the foundation of a connection, you know. And so, we, I really focus less on trying to like fight against, you know, like ableism and ableistic ideologies, because that will come as a part of the journey. You know, it is so unfortunate that our society has positioned families and practitioners, right, like, so many people into, you know, like, their foundation being of ableism and using the medical model, you know. But my experience has been, over this decade working in this field, is that when families are armed with more knowledge, you know, like when they have more understanding actually just about how speech and language work, and then talking about what that looks like in education. And then, if you sometimes, it takes a little bit more convincing, and you say, let’s just use it for a month, you know, let’s just use it for however amount of time, and then we can see a clear, you know, like, there’s always like, clear signs. They don’t always — I mean, they’re, I guess they’re clear to me, I shouldn’t say that they’re clear because they’re not always clear to everyone, you know, but when we start to see signs that there is, that the AAC is needed in that way, for example. Like, we start to see, you know, oh, now they’re actually looking around the room, and they’re engaging with the teacher, because nobody, people are no longer assuming that they don’t have anything to say, you know. Like, oh, so now they’re happier to go to school, because they actually feel like they’re a part of the classroom community, and they feel connected to the other students and to the teacher. Yeah, that’s the part of the effect of having access to AAC, you know, and to language and communication.
Meg:
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for walking us down how that journey can unfold for families. I think for folks who have been trained in the coaching model, they can miss that opportunity of also doing a little bit of education and consulting. Like you said, you come in and provide this information to lay the groundwork for the work that you’re going to do. I want to jump into your content a little bit on the About Me page on your website. You write, I’m going to quote you, “I believe that every child should be able to authentically communicate and receive an equitable education.” There’s a lot in that. Can you unpack that a little bit for us?
Karina:
Yeah. So, you know, like I really, deeply, in my core and heart of hearts, you know, really believe that all children have the right to be educated, and to participate in educational and therapeutic experiences that will support them with living, thinking, communicating, you know, like as independently as possible. And so, we really have a long way to go in the area of AAC in terms of providing comprehensive education, comprehensive literacy instruction. Honestly, getting it out of the backpack and onto the table is where we’re at in some of these classrooms, right? Unfortunately, some of my experience, I think, has also been of, you know, sometimes, some people saying, “Well, I’m old school, and they just have to learn to talk.” Well, girl, you know, like, don’t you think that if they could use mouth words and have access to them in that moment, that they would? You know, like, projecting your own thought processes about what a human should look like and be like, is not going to make them show up in that way, you know, like, in your space, in your setting, or in your classroom. So, when I think about what I have written on my, like, on my website, all of those things are important for just like how we think about working with and supporting all children with disabilities, but especially with AAC users. And because they, all children are a vulnerable population, but they become even more vulnerable when they don’t have access to, you know, to speech and sometimes even to language, right. So, everybody has language. It comes in via input, right. But they’re not always able to get those words out, because without reading instruction, right, without literacy and writing instruction, they also can’t pick up the pencil to write those things down, or to type them on the keyboard. And so, then where are we? And so, I when I think about that statement, I think about the right via the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and access to — which guarantees, right, access to a free and appropriate public education, and the least restrictive environment, and really having to sit down and think about what does that mean. We all can rattle off what the laws are, you know, we’re educated on those things when we’re working in schools, or when we’re headed to work into the schools. But what does that really mean to us? You know, like, how is that, how does that show up in our curriculum? How does that show up in devices, services, tools, support? And how does that show up in the conversations and the IEP’s when we’re thinking about like collaboration and coaching and direct service models? Like, what does this actually mean to people? And so, as I suggested, you know, I do really believe that all children have the right to be able to authentically be and exist in the world around them as their peers do and as they want to do. And sometimes what that looks like is, you know, it always, always what that looks like, is having a community who believes in them unconditionally.
Meg:
I love that so much. And I think that that’s a shared value for most, if not all, of our listeners. And there’s a lot of barriers. In your work, you’re really good at naming root causes, impact, and solutions to these systemic issues when it comes to communication and access. So, I want to walk through that process with you. So, let’s start with root causes. When we’re thinking about disparities in communication access, what would you name here in the root causes category?
Karina:
Well, I have a few.
Meg:
Yeah, I bet.
Karina:
And so, you know, I think that some of the root causes, I think we have to start with, like, systemic racism, you know, I think that’s just where we are, right. And I’m gonna just like head straight into how schools are funded. So, we know that schools are funded based on the tax dollars of that city, you know, like, wherever they are. And so, what that means is, is if homes are undervalued, right, that means less money, less tax money. And if there are children in a wealthy school district, that means that they have access to more resources. AAC devices for all. Everybody has a smart board. Life is good. Everyone has a computer. But what about the school district that does not have that to provide to children, which are many school districts, right. And so, what about the school districts that are sending children and directing their therapists to tell children and tell families that they have to meet these prerequisites in order to be able to access high-tech AAC, for example, which happens all the time. So, we have all of these children who are using picture icons, they’re using PECS systems, for example — don’t get me started on that — you know, but they’re also using other kinds of technology that don’t provide access to what we refer to as a dynamic display. So, you know, when you open that, you know, you touch one icon, it’ll open up to a bunch of other icons, and this helps provide a more robust AAC system. But when children don’t have access to that, they don’t really have access to comprehensive educational instruction, right. There’s no way that anybody can use four, five, twelve, two icons, to be able to actually say the things that they want to say. It limits their communication functions, right.
And so, in addition to that, that kind of also leads to like a, you know, to differences in services, the way that services are delivered, the way that children get to participate in services. We also get to think about the lack of diversity in the field, right? So, in the field of speech-language pathology, for example, less than 10% of all SLP’s are people of color, only the 3.5% are Black, for example. And then, the rest of the 5% are like every other race all smashed into one. And the setbacks from that are that we don’t have enough knowledge about, you know, there’s these perpetuation of myths, really, about bilingualism, for example, including in AAC system and what that looks like. But then, in addition to that, you know, like AAC systems are just like not representative of everyone. And so, I expound on all of those things in the upcoming talk, which we’ll talk about in just a little bit for the Summit, and I expound on all of those things in the Summit, because they’re all important when we think about access to AAC and AAC users. I think that the other thing that I’m going to say about this, though, is that SLP’s also often act as gatekeepers to AAC. So, even in my private practice, I work with a lot of families who come to me and say that they were fired by their last SLP’s, for example, or that the school system won’t give their child an AAC system because they said they had to delete these prerequisites. And there are many ways to be a gatekeeper. But I do want to direct the audience to to look that up, just put it in Google, ‘SLPs as gatekeepers’. Jordan Zimmerman is an AAC user. And she has a wonderful piece — she spoke at ASHA some years ago — and she has a wonderful piece about that SLPs as gatekeepers in terms of AAC, and I think that everybody should go and read it to just kind of have a better understanding of a part of some of the root causes for providing devices and services to AAC users.
Meg:
We’ll link to that in the show notes as well. My heart’s beating fast as soon as you started talking about the disparities in how public education is funded. I just feel my blood boil and it goes on from there, because this this really matters and it’s impactful on people’s lives, on children’s lives. Can you talk about the impacts?
Karina:
Yeah. So, you know, the impacts are, the short-term impacts are that children just don’t have what they need to participate in education. And sometimes what that looks like is ‘maladaptive behaviors’. Everyone can’t see me, right? But I’m like putting the quotes in the air, you know. What that looks like is people using instead, the reframe, is people using the tools that they have access to, which is their body, right. If there are no access to external tools, they have the tools that they do have access to, to say what they want to say, right, or to be able to show or communicate what they want to communicate. And so, the long-term impacts are that children do not have access to tools, they don’t have access to services and devices, but they also don’t have access to qualified professionals. So, sometimes, there are some schools and school districts and there are some zip codes, for example, who are perpetually served by new professionals, right. The SLP, that I am at year 10 is never, never going to be the SLP that I was as CFY, but that’s the point, we all are supposed to grow, you know, and we continue to hone in on the scope of practice, we get better with our work, as research gets better, you know, like, we learn more, we do better, we know more. And so, it can never be possible that a child can get the same kind of service for Year 1 person that they can from Year 10 person, you know. And I won’t say never, you know, there’s all of these kinds of individual differences, you know, but for the most part, I think we should all be able to expect that if somebody has been working longer, that they can provide a better service, right, a more well-rounded service.
I think, in addition to that, even though AAC systems are available much more than ever before, when I started in this profession, we were still doing these huge lifts to get AAC systems, you know, iPads were not nearly as readily available as they are now. They’re also very cheap in comparison to what they were back in the day. And in addition to that, finally, AAC apps, many of them are also available on iPads and different kinds of tablet systems. It is no longer that AAC systems are only durable medical equipment and that’s the only way to fund them. That is no longer true. AAC systems can be funded via a variety of funding resources. And that is a consideration. And sometimes it’s often a barrier, too. But when I think about the impact, I think about that there are children that are being denied, you know, like high-tech AAC systems for so many different reasons. And those just don’t have to exist, but they still do because of the structure funding, like we were just talking about, to public education systems. We think about the barriers for, you know, like the knowledge and the skills of the people who work in these areas, for example. And so, there’s so much, you know, there’s so much to be done.
But I think that, you know, lastly, the impact is the continued perpetuation, as we’ve been talking about, of the myth around prerequisites. And I think one of the things to consider, and one of the things to think about maybe, and I’m trying to decide if this was like a good comparison, you know, but we don’t deprive babies of food because they don’t have teeth, you know, what I mean? You know, so depriving children of AAC systems, right, because the presumption is that or the assumption is that they don’t have vocabulary or language yet, or they cannot make a direct selection on the device in the one way that other people can consider it, which is usually the pointer finger, means that they don’t get an AAC system, you know, it’s really problematic, right? Because with babies, you know, we’re like, oh, well, they don’t have teeth. So, you know, like, they need to have their food, you know, ground up, chopped up, blended out, you know, and we do those things until they get their teeth, you know. And so, there are so many ways to rethink about and reconsider how we think about AAC, and the provision of devices and services.
Meg:
I want to tie in one of the things you said about often underserved communities getting new therapists to something that Joshuaa Allison-Burbank, who’s also a speaker in the Summit, said in Episode 82, talking about therapists who come in to work with Native communities for a year to get their loan forgiveness, and then they leave. And he talks about how that’s also not building trust. Like, you can’t get buy in, if you’re just there for a short period of time, for a year, for five years. And as opposed to when you talk about someone who’s been in that community, been in that school for 10 years, they have the experience and they also have the relationship with the people that they’re serving, I imagine, is part of it as well.
Karina:
Absolutely.
Meg:
So, here’s the fun part, Karina. I mean, it’s still hard. But the part that we’re hungry for is solutions. Can you share some of the more — I’m going to ask you bottom-up solutions in just a minute. But I want to start with top down. Can you share some of the more top-down solutions that could enhance students’ access to communication, self-determination, all of the desired outcomes that we share?
Karina:
Yes. School districts needs to start saying yes. When I really think about top-down solutions, I really think about more training, more knowledge. Like, it seems so cliche. It also seems so easy, but so difficult. And I, when I think about, you know, just like general solutions, overall, I really think about, quite frankly, when students have a device, get it out of the backpack and put it on the table, right. When I think about solutions, I think about, like, you make sure the screen is on, turn it on, and just start to use it. Like, I think that there’s like this fear, a general fear from my own observations and work over the years of just AAC, and using it, and how to use it, and what if I do it wrong, kind of all of these things, you know. But if you just pick it up, and you’re not making these huge changes to the system, just pick it up and use it. And I also think about, like, in the background, just like take some time, there are many free resources to be able to learn about AAC, like the basics of AAC. And so, starting with the basics of AAC, you know, just turn on a webinar, turn on a podcast, treat it like just the thing that you’re learning at that time. It is the thing that you’re learning at the time.
When I think about like top-down, like what do our professions need to do, and what do districts need to do, you know, like, I think that we need to start having conversations about being more open. What does it also actually mean to deliver FAPE, in a least restrictive environment? I think we also have to think about and consider the way that our schools are funded. Every city handles this differently in terms of how many, how much taxes they get, right, and the federal government. But to your last point about what Joshua Burbank was saying, that is a problem in the Black community as well, right. If people work in a title one school, for example, for, you know, a certain amount of years, they can work toward loan forgiveness, but for a variety of reasons — which you guys can learn about in the upcoming talk — for a variety of reasons, people do not come, interventionists do not come and stay in these communities and therefore, do not build trust with the communities. And because AAC is often so novel to so many people, educators and families alike, it feels foreign, you know, so it feels really different than anything that they’ve ever done. And sometimes that leads to an immediate rejection, right. But if you are able to build trust, and you just say, you know, sometimes if people, if they have an AAC device and people don’t see immediate results or if they’re not using it correctly, for example, which is like a whole ‘nother topic, but then people just kind of give up on it. They say, “Well, they’re not, it’s not working. They’re only pressing buttons,” or, you know, just kind of things like that. But it comes with trust, which takes years to build, right. It comes with trust to say, hey, actually, here are some other reframes. Like, here are some other ways of like thinking about these things.
I also think that one of the other things that happens, and now I’m like mixing up the bottom-up and the top-down, so, you know, here we are. But I also think that one of the things that happens is that we are all trained to be like a jack-of-all-trades, right. Because of our work in the school systems, our work sometimes even in some private practices, in the medical setting. And that means that we are not taught to refer out. And so, I see so much harm when children and families are not referred to a therapist or a specialist who can support their family and the way that needs to be supported. And sometimes what that looks like, and what I often hear in my own practice, like I referred to earlier, is that sometimes people will perpetuate myths, right. So, you know, if you have a trusting relationship with a family, and if the family says, “Hey, I learned about AAC, I think we should pursue it.” And they already trust you as the therapist and you say, “Oh, no, no, no, it’ll hinder speech. You shouldn’t do that.” I work against that. And in fact, I am working against that right now with a couple of families because their elementary aged children who do not have any mouth words right now and are not able to participate in their education the way they want to, but their parents also will — do not, you know, are benefiting from the education around, like, why AAC. And so, I want to say refer out, you know, like, as much and as often as you can, if your knowledge stops there.
So, instead of trying to protect your ego, or yourself, or whatever part of you that, if you don’t know enough about AAC, instead of trying to protect that part of you, instead, you can say, “Hey, you know, I don’t know that I know the answer to that. I think I know somebody who might. I want to go and look into that first, and then I’ll get back to you,” you know, like, something like that would be, would be helpful. And then, lastly, I would say, just begin. Like, all of these things, I feel like they sound so, you know, like, maybe at a basic level, a little bit cliche, you know. But like, just begin. So, we all start somewhere. You don’t have to do everything at once. You don’t have to be an expert, you know, like to be an AAC specialist. Like, even me, like, I started, you know, Iike, 10 years ago in this work, and so you just, you just have to begin. And so, I just want to encourage everyone to do that.
Meg:
I love that you segued into the, to the bottom of we really can’t talk about one without the other, right. Like, there’s only so much therapists on the ground can do, which is frustrating. But there are things they can do, and we need some changes from a higher level, too. You mentioned education. I get excited because sometimes we’ll have school systems enroll 50, 100 SLP’s in our AAC course for Learn Play Thrive, or in the Summit, we’ve been getting big groups like that. And I’m like, that is how change happens. They’re enrolling every single SLP in their school district in a training about supporting autonomous, authentic communication, and neurodiversity. It’s exciting. So, if you’re listening, we have these very robust group discounts. Because we want that. We want everybody, not the one person. It’s hard to be that one person trying to do things differently on your own. Karina, what are some of the big shifts you would like to see in the fields of SLP, OT? What do you want to see happen?
Karina:
I want to see people start trying to do it on their own. You know, it is like that is where we are. There are a bunch of silos for a variety of reasons around AAC, education, and supports. And I want to see more collaborations and conversations about AAC implementation and support. It really does need to happen with a team, you know, like that would be really helpful in terms of, you know, like, working with school districts and private practices. And, you know, like, there, of course, will always be the people that you look to, and there can be a person, like a specialist who leads a team, you know, but I think really, some of the big shifts that I want to see is really making having more considerations about what AAC looks like. I really want us to have a bigger focus on reducing ableism and ableistic practices, you know, by moving away from the medical model of disability and more toward the social model of disability. Like, we can have that. There are AAC users, Autistic people, there are disabled people who are helping us and supporting us with moving away from that framing and mindset, you know, but I think that there is a reality that people are not listening yet in the ways that they should be listening. They are not hearing the underlying message yet, you know. And so, like, I think about, like, how can we support having different conversations. The big shift would really mean being able to get away from having so many conversations about the myths of AAC and being able to have more conversations about AAC implementation, AAC customization, AAC use across settings and people and learning how to read and, you know, like, we, I would spend less time when I think about, like, on a collective and also individual level, if we could get to a place where we could spend less time on bumping against those myths, and then doing the real work that advances, you know, like all of us. Eventually, the myths would also take care of themselves, you know. Being able to get rid of the perpetuation of those myths, at least, would take care of itself. And so, that’s the shift that I hope to see.
Meg:
I love that shift. I love that vision. I hope that with the growing number of therapists on the ground who are really, really interested in learning more about neurodiversity-affirming principles and practices in their work and access to authentic, autonomous communication that we can sort of catalyze a lot of that change. So, Karina, we mentioned before you are speaking in the upcoming Summit. Can you share with us a little bit about what you’re excited to cover in your Summit talk?
Karina:
Yes. I am so excited, too. So, I want to just take a second, you know, to agree that I feel so inspired by the amount of professionals, speech therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, educators, parent educators, and even at this point in my career, administrators; I am so excited about the amount of people who are moving toward really rethinking AAC and being more supportive, of course, with so much more work to do. And this talk also exists because we have so much more work to do. And so, in this talk, you will be able to really think about and learn about and consider three persistent barriers that members of systemically marginalized communities face, like in the provision of AAC services and devices. You’ll really be able to also think about AAC service delivery trends that prevent the provision of these equitable AAC services to members of these systemically marginalized communities. But then, the part that we love the most, as Meg said, is that you’ll also be able to learn about and think about solutions and considerations for appropriate AAC, and literacy assessments, and services, and tools for members of these communities. It is jam packed with so much good information. And so, I am really excited for everyone to be able to just partake in the Summit. I’m excited also to learn from the other speakers, but to be able to learn these things as we continue our talk and education about AAC. Yay!
Meg:
Yay! I’m really excited, too. One of our values as a continuing education company, and this is just from my own frustration with continuing education in the past, is that we want every course a person takes, every lecture they watch, to give them something concrete they can do in their work, because it’s so hard. It’s so stressful being a therapist, especially when your scope is so broad. And that’s one thing that you do really well, is teach the practical, nitty gritty, on the ground to takeaways and implications of what we’re learning. It’s also really exciting to have you speaking because you tie together the content on literacy, which Jane Farrall is speaking on, and AAC, which Kate McLaughlin is teaching, and DEI, which we have lots of talks covering, I feel like we can’t talk about it enough. And you bring all of those together for us in a way that we can actually apply to our work. So, really excited about that. Tell us, Karina, what are you working on now, and where can we find you and your work online?
Karina:
Yes, so I am working to finish up my PhD. So, everyone send me good vibes. So, that is taking up a lot of my brain space. But in the interim, like, middle components there when I’m taking a, you know, very short break, from thinking about all the PhD work, I am working on putting together some AAC resources that will be coming very soon to my website online. You can find me at goldenoakspeech.com. And you can find me on Instagram at @GoldenOakSLP, as in speech-language pathologist, and you can find me on Facebook at Golden Oak Speech Therapy. I am a therapist who actually does still do work on the ground. So, in addition to doing some research, in addition to coaching and consultation and collaborations, and super fun nerd joy, stuff like this, I also am a therapist that continues to work with families on the ground and supporting school districts and supporting other therapists just like you, and I am excited to continue to do that work. And so, I really do want to thank you, Meg, for having me on the podcast today. And I also want to thank you all, the audience, for listening to me. If you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, if you just want to share what you have to say, I want to encourage you to reach out to me on any of the platforms that I just named; Instagram, Facebook, or on my website at goldenoakspeech.com.
Meg:
Thank you, Karina. I’m smiling so big that you just called this conversation super fun nerd joy stuff. I cannot imagine a higher compliment. Karina, we’ll link to you and all of your work and social media sites on the show notes. Thank you so much, and I can’t wait to see you again in the Q&A for the Summit.
Karina:
Thank you. See everyone soon.
[Ending music]
Thanks for listening to the Two Sides of the Spectrum podcast. Visit learnplaythrive.com/podcast for show notes, a transcript of the episode, and more. And if you learned something today, please share the episode with a friend or post it on your social media pages. Join me next time, where we will keep diving deep into autism.