E81: Deaf/Hard of Hearing Teacher & Teacher of Visually Impaired [IEP Team BONUS Series]
IEP Team BONUS Series: DHH & TVI! This series is all about giving you the most basic context for what qualifications each IEP team member has and what they do so you know who you should go to on the team to advocate for what need!
[Scroll down for giveaway details!]
IEP Team BONUS Series: DHH & TVI!
This series is all about giving you the most basic context for what qualifications each IEP team member has and what they do so you know who you should go to on the team to advocate for what need!
In this episode we discuss:
-Deaf/Heard of Hearing Teachers: Their qualifications, responsibilities, and what they actualy do as a service provider
-Teacher of Visually Impaired: Their qualifications, responsibilities, and what they actually do as a service provider
-Also a bit of context into what their job could look like (aka “itenerant”) and what that means when looking at service provision!
ALSO don’t forget about the HUGE giveaway! Here are the links you need to enter:
Prizes:
-ALL submissions will receive an exclusive “Accommodations 101 Guide”
-10 winners of IEP 101 Parent Workbook (make your 30-day advocacy plan!) $19 value
-5 winners of the December Decoding IEP Data Workshop ($27 value)
-Grand prize winner of The Ultimate Parent IEP Prep Course ($249 value)
How to Enter the Giveaway:
- Rate and Review the Podcast in your preferred player & take a screenshot to submit!
- Make sure you are on the email list by CLICKING THIS LINK TO SIGN UP
- CLINK THIS LINK to fill out your submission form!
- Name
- Picture of podcast review
- You have until Thanksgiving to fill out your form to be entered into the drawings!
E81: Deaf/Hard of Hearing Teacher & Teacher of the Visually Impaired [IEP Team BONUS Series!]
[00:00:00] Welcome to the second episode of the bonus IEP team series. In this episode, we are combining the deaf and hard of hearing teacher and teacher of the visually impaired. And we’re talking about their roles and their qualifications, as well as what they actually do to help your child access their education.
And so stay tuned to get a little context or these teachers that may be a part of your child’s IEP team.
You are listening to the parent IUP lab, the podcast that helps you get an effective IEP plan for your child so that you can get them supported and learning in school. I’m Beth LEAs and Feld occupational therapist, who started to notice trends in parents who got effective IEP for their kids. My mission is to help you turn insider knowledge of how the school system works
Into effective parent advocacy for your child and identify some barriers you might be experiencing when you’re trying to advocate for your child and we’ll help you in overcoming those as well. The parent IUP lab is all about the long game and realizing that [00:01:00] while the IEP is incredibly important. You have so much power outside of that IEP meeting to make a good IEP. Great.
So let’s dive in and think about what we can change and tweak to get the right formula for success for your child to learn and grow at school. Welcome to the lab.
We are getting submissions in right now, as I speak, we have a handful of parents who have submitted their review. Uh, in order to enter the huge giveaway that we have going on right now. so in order for you to be entered in the giveaway, just rate and review this podcast in your podcast player, and take a quick screenshot of your review, make sure that you’re on the IEP lab email list. And lastly, fill out the three question giveaway submission form. Literally, it’s just your name, your email, and the screenshot of your review to be entered into the drawing
again, links to get you entered are below this podcast in your podcast player. And as a reminder, everyone who submits will receive the exclusive accommodations one-on-one guide and be entered into the drawing for some great prices. We are [00:02:00] giving away 10 IUP one-on-one workbooks, five spots in the December, decoding IEP data workshop.
And one lucky winner will get a spot in the ultimate parent IEP prep course, which is your complete guide for prepping for your upcoming meeting and getting the follow through from. The team after that IEP meeting is done.
This course includes three months of live office hours with me to ask all your questions,
and talk through your priorities for the year as well. So links to the drawing are below this podcast, and please enter by Thanksgiving 2022. And thank you so much for helping this podcast grow.
Okay. So you might be wondering why I’m combining deaf and hard of hearing teacher with teacher of the visually impaired. And this is because we covered a lot of the special education teacher context in the last episode of this bonus series. So if you’re like, um, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Special education teacher. Yes. I want to know more about that. Then just go back to last week’s episode. It was dropped on Thursday and just look for that one and listen to that one [00:03:00] as well.
But of course, I’m going to give you some context here as well. This deaf and hard of hearing teacher and teacher of the visually impaired. They can be case managers. They can provide special education service. They can be the sole provider on an IEP. And this is because they are special education teachers. Okay. So they have the same license. As we talked about last week, they have the same qualifications where they at least have a bachelor’s degree.
Many, many of them have a master’s degree. And so both the deaf and hard of hearing and the teacher of the visually impaired. They have an additional certification on top of their special education teacher license. So we’re just going to break these two down because they’re both pretty quick because we’ve already talked about that teacher part. And I thought it was worth it to combine them together. It made sense in my brain. Hopefully it makes sense in your brain too. So let’s start with deaf and hard of hearing. So this is special education teacher that also has an additional
additional [00:04:00] education in deaf and hard of hearing. So let’s go through and just as a reference point, I’m going to Colorado for their endorsement requirements. So your state might be a little bit different, but my guess is that they’re very, very similar so that you can just get the context, because the point in doing this IEP team bonus series is so that you just get context for like what people do, right. And if you are requesting something of like the quote unquote wrong person on the team that provides that, they’re going to be like,
I don’t do that, or, oh, I don’t know what you’re talking about. So you’re, you’re extending this emotional energy and this like building up the courage to advocate for your kid, and then you’re doing it at the wrong person. And so More inefficient. Right? So this series is to teach you about what everybody on the team does, who are these people that are sitting in your IEP meeting? What do they actually do so that you can understand? And like, oh, this is who I asked for this. And this is who [00:05:00] I asked for advice in problem solving this kind of problem.
And that makes a world of difference and just having that context. Right. Okay. So deaf and hard of hearing. What Colorado says for their endorsement requirements is a master’s or higher degree from a regionally accredited institution in special education, deaf slash hard of hearing or its equivalent as determined by the department. So they have to have this additional master’s degree in deaf and hard of hearing.
So it’s more than just the special education teachers are required to have for their license. And then the second thing for deaf and hard of hearing is completion of an improved program for a regionally accredited. Institution for special education specialists, deaf slash hard of hearing that includes prescribed field experience requirements. So.
This is really common actually for this education, especially for master’s degrees. That well, and it happens in special education teaching too, that yes, you have to go through the coursework, but yes, you also have to do a field work or [00:06:00] AKA an internship so that you actually go through that experience of doing what you are going to do. And you have like a supervisor
Or a fieldwork coordinator that’s like looking over your shoulder and making sure that you’re doing it right. And also there for questions as you kind of work out your role in that as well. So hopefully that makes sense now, deaf and hard of hearing. Is different from an interpreter. And I’ve had this come up, actually in a couple of people that I’ve been emailing back and forth. And also a couple of people that are in the course right now that they have an interpreter.
Well, the interpreter actually isn’t listed as a special service provider or a special education provider as outlined by the law. So they’re kind of in this like weird in-between, you know, they should be on the IEP, but they’re not always in your child’s IEP meeting. So if you’re like, oh, deaf and hard of hearing teacher, that should be my interpreter.
That’s actually not essentially the [00:07:00] same person they can be sometimes, but I’ve actually never seen them be an interpreter as well. So just so you know, they work really closely with the interpreter and they work really closely with the audiologist, but they are not an audiologist. And we will get to that audiologist in a couple of weeks as well, so that we can kind of say.
Yes, they do all the testing. They’re the specialists in that area, but they’re not actually doing the work with your kid from what I Now. This brings us to what does this. Deaf and hard of hearing teacher actually do. And so from my experience and just seeing what they do on a day to day basis, what they are doing as they are essentially making sure that all of their equipment is working. If your child has cochlear implants, if they have a hearing aid.
If they use an FM system, which is like a microphone that goes around the teacher’s neck. And a lot of times the FM system will connect to hearing aids directly or cochlear implants directly. And so, as you can imagine, batteries need to be [00:08:00] changed out. Children need to be taught how to use that FM system, because it is part of their education. So they are taught self-advocacy skills by this DHH teacher. And okay. Now,
Now’s the time where you go out to the teacher, you ask for the FM microphone so that you can bring it to the small group, or you can take it to a special education room where you’re going to work on And that reading teacher needs to wear your FM system. So it’s a combination of this device management part.
The self-advocacy part. And then also what I’ve seen is them actually working on they’re actually hearing skills, so they will sit down and they will say, okay, like they’re having a hard time understanding that S sound when somebody says the S sound. And so they will go through a series of exercises where they are saying things and they’re making sure that child is hearing it,
or that they’re understanding what that word is, even if they can’t like, hear that as sound or hear the T [00:09:00] H sound. So they’re working on active listening skills and hearing skills as well. So hopefully that makes a little bit more sense with like what they actually do. And I’m sure I would absolutely love a deaf and hard of hearing teacher.
To come in and say, and give us a little bit more context and details about what they actually do, because I’m sure they do more than this as well. But hopefully that gives you just a little peek behind the curtain as to what they do. Now, just as a side note that both the deaf and hard of hearing teacher and the teacher of the visually impaired oftentimes will float from building to building. And when I was working in my last placement, she was very much itinerant, which means that she goes from school to school, to school, to cost, to cost class. And she doesn’t.
She had like maybe three or four kids on caseload in each building in the entire district. And this was like, you know, a mid-sized district. So some of the bigger districts, they might actually have a deaf and hard of hearing program so that they’re working, you know, more at one school than another school.
[00:10:00] But just so you know, like that DHH teacher isn’t necessarily in the building the entire time with your child every single day, it just kind of depends on the district resources. It depends on the caseload. It depends on how many minutes your child has of this as well. So just kind of know that as well. Um, with that there might be some consult services that they do where they’re teaching the general education teacher, how to do the accommodations, they’re teaching the paraprofessional, how to use, the technology that your kid is using.
So they’re teaching them how to change out batteries in that hearing aid or in that cochlear implant, or, you know, they’re also very much teaching the staff how to help your child access that education as well. So that’s a big piece of what they do as well.
Now, we’re going to shift gears into talking about teacher of the visually impaired. And so again, same thing. They are special education teachers first, right? That’s their general license that they have. And then this teacher of the visually
Gets [00:11:00] layered on top and they’re also called TV eyes, just so you know, of course there’s always alone. A ton of acronyms here. So it’s a TVI as well. So the TVI. Same thing has an additional endorsement. So we’re going to go through the, the two bullet points Very similar to DHH teacher. So we’re going to go through the requirements that Colorado has outlined. And again, if you need help, like finding the requirements for your own state, that’s where the Facebook group is for. So
you can jump into the Facebook group by going to be IEP lab.com/podcast. And there’s a button there that just gets you into the Facebook group if you have any questions about any of this. Okay, so let’s go through those two bullet points from Colorado. So for a teacher of the visually impaired or TVI, the first one is a master’s or higher degree from a regionally accredited institution in special education, visual impairment, or its equivalent as determined by the department. Same thing. Right. Really similar to deaf and hard of hearing. You have to have a master’s degree or higher in this specialty, right? [00:12:00]
And then the second one is again, really similar completion of an approved program from a regionally accredited institution for special education specialists. Visually impaired, that includes prescribed field experience requirements. And again, same thing, they are going through that coursework. And then they just want to make sure that they’ve had that field experience, which AKA is like an internship where they are taking over somebody’s caseload. Somebody is supervising them to make sure that they are competent and they are able to, you know,
I actually do the job of a TVI and they’re able to pass their field works and they’re able to pass all of their coursework as well. So let’s talk about what a teacher of the visually impaired actually does. So. I have less experience with working with TBIs.
Yes. I was super excited to work with one when we overlapped
in one of the elementary schools that I worked at and I was like, Hey, what do you do? Because OTs work in vision as well. We kind of have this overlap. And so it was like, okay, well, what are you [00:13:00] do so that I know that, so I know what you’re doing. So I don’t have to like re replicate. So I don’t have to do the same thing as you, right.
And what I got was this like really vague answer. And, but by working with her on this specific case, we, we figured it out. Okay. So what we can both do is we both looked at accommodations. Okay. So as an OT, I can look at the motor side of vision so I can look at the strength of the eye muscles. I can look at the visual perception.
I can look at. Um, hand, eye coordination. I can look at those kinds of things. So I’m looking at function of the vision, and I’m also focusing on the motor part of the vision. Now teacher of the visually impaired when they assess somebody they’re looking at, yes, they’re looking at Do they need glasses and we all start there. Right? Cause that’s just like such an easy fix that we can do
And then they will have a series of tests where they do, you know, near-sighted, can they discriminate between two different [00:14:00] things? How is it them seeing far? Um, are they seeing any shakiness of the eyes? Are they seeing the eyes coordinate together? And so we overlap in that part as well, where they can look at the strength of the muscles.
They can look at overall function of vision. And then the other thing that we both can do, but the TVI is like extremely specialized in, is looking at accommodations for vision. So just for an example, we had this child that we were working on together to assess. And what happened was she had jumpiness of the eyes. So they would like.
Even when she was trying to read her eyes would bounce back and forth. And this is like a neurological condition, so they would jump back and forth. The glare makes it worse. And so we’re looking at, oh, maybe we need to like put her book on a slant board. So it’s more like on an easel.
If that makes sense in your head. And so that brought it closer and it reduced the glare from the overhead lights, right? So we’re looking at accommodations in that way that we can say, okay, well, we’re [00:15:00] seeing this challenge. This is how we can accommodate that and make it easier. So they can also recommend these, now.
A lot of times too. They are going through. Um, some skills there. They’re actually the ones to teach braille. So they know braille. They know how to teach braille. They know how to teach that because they’re special education teachers. They know all of the, the modifications and changes to the curriculum that they can do to help that child to access their education, reading, math, writing, that kind of thing. Like how are we going to figure out how they can demonstrate their knowledge? And so that is also what they specialize in.
And you can see, like, this is a really, really important aspect. If you are a child, has. Uh, visual impairment. Also, I do want to say for hard of hearing an teacher of the visually impaired, you might be thinking, oh yeah, My, my child has glasses so that they need the visually, the teacher at the visually impaired. Like they would qualify [00:16:00] for that. But going back to our last series, which was the eligibility series, if you haven’t listened to both the deaf and hard of hearing qualification or the visual impairment qualification, I would encourage you to pair these together.
So if you are just joining me and you haven’t listened to that eligibility podcast series, I would go back and listen to that as well, because it goes through the qualifications for each category. And then naturally one of these people, depending on the category, of course, one of these people on the team might actually be your case manager. So if your child qualified under the visual impairment, you might have the TVI be your case manager.
They are the ones that are providing special education service. They are the ones that are helping your child access that curriculum. And they are the main person that you’re going to go to because they have the most knowledge in this very specialized area. And with that specialized area, Again, the TVI could be concentrated. If your district has a certain [00:17:00] program for blind or visually impaired people, then they might be focusing most of their time there. But they also might be really itinerant, which means that they just float around the district with whoever needs them in whatever building.
And so they’re teaching people across the district, but again, you know, in the districts that I worked at. Mid mid range districts. They’re not humongous. They weren’t teeny tiny. We had two high schools for context. I feel like that’s a good judge of how big the district is, but you know, this person would spend most of their time in one specific elementary school where we had those resources there, we had all the braille tools.
We had everything kind of centralized in that building, but then if she was needed at another building, she would just float to that, that other building. Right. So again, they might not be in your child’s school full time. They might be, and they might not depending on your child’s placement. And so just know that, that a lot of their job, again, because of that itinerant nature, a lot of their job is teaching, you know, [00:18:00] the paraprofessionals teaching, teaching the general education teachers, like how do we include this person?
How do we, you know, make it so that they can have access to the general education curriculum? And so a lot of the times you will see, they also have consult. Insult service, which means that they are teaching staff in how to provide services to your child as well. Widget. In my opinion is a great thing that has been shown to greatly increased access. When we have that concert services on there. It’s, it’s pretty incredible.
So hopefully that gives you a little bit of context for deaf and hard of hearing and and teacher of the visually impaired as well. So if you have any questions about these two specialists, how they fit on the team, what exactly they do? Please jump into the Facebook group.
Again, you can join that [email protected] slash podcast, or that link is below this podcast as well in your podcast player. And you can just hit that button and you can apply to get in the Facebook group and that group is only for parents. It’s just me and a bunch of [00:19:00] parents and we’re all in there helping each other, find these resources that we’re mentioning in the podcast.
Some of the people in the group have not heard of a podcast that we’ll talk about the podcast a little bit. Um, but it’s mostly in just helping you get the resources, get the context, get the inside knowledge . From the school side so that you can advocate better for your child. So we will do whatever you
In that group to connect you with resources as well. So thank you again for tuning into this episode. I hope that you’re enjoying this IEP team bonus series. Now, just as another quick reminder, those links to enter the giveaway are below this episode in your podcast player. So make sure that you’re rating and reviewing the podcast. This just allows me to have more exposure, right? The more that a podcast has readings and reviews, the more that it will show, it’s just an like an algorithm like Facebook is.
It will show them to more people to say, Hey, people have found this podcast helpful. It might be helpful for you too. So I really appreciate you helping me kind of [00:20:00] spread the word about this podcast. I love when you guys share it. I love when you tag me on social media, especially Instagram. I typically save Instagrams. If you have tagged me in them, um, in your review of the podcast, underneath my profile page, in my Instagram as well. So thank you so much for doing that. I know you guys are sharing it because we’re growing and I find.
And I hope that you find it helpful. So let me know if you need anything. If I can help you in any way, go into the Facebook group and let me know about bats and we will see you. Same time, same place next week. Thanks so much. Bye!