Perkins Webcasts:
Distance Mentorship
By Megan Cote, Jon Harding, Bob Taylor — Read full transcript
Distance mentorship is about building a relationship and serving as a mentor for any member in a team. Megan Cote from the Kansas Deaf-Blind Project, Jon Harding from the National Consortium of Deaf-Blindness, and Bob Taylor from the Kansas School for the Blind discuss a distance mentorship model was developed in Kansas and the benefits of this model in demonstrating student competence, supporting transition, and professional development.
Chapters:
1 — Introduction; 2 — Building the Team; 3 — The Technological Components of Distance Mentorship; 4 — How Distance Mentorship Works in Practice; 5 — Beyond the Monthly Meeting; 6 — Conclusions.
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Webcast Transcript:
CHAPTER 1: Introduction
NARRATOR: Perkins & The National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness Present: Distance Mentorship with Megan Cote, Jon Harding, and Boy Taylor.
HARDING Distance mentorship is the idea
that you're building
a relationship,
that you're serving as a mentor
for a person, or sometimes
multiple people in a team.
You know, "team" is such
a strong concept in schools,
and we want to support
that concept.
COTE: Right now, we have
approximately 150 kids,
and we're only a few
part-time staff members,
and so it was really hard
to be able to take the time
and the expense
to drive all over the state
to be able to see these kids.
And so we were looking
for a way to do two things:
one, provide good
technical assistance,
and two, be able to do it
more frequently
with teams that are in more
of the rural parts of the state
where it's harder for us to
reach them on a regular basis.
And then the other piece of it
was we have a good relationship
with some of the folks at the
State School for the Blind,
and they were seeing some
of these same students
on outreach services as well,
so we wanted to be able
to combine and work cohesively
as a team to make
unified recommendations.
HARDING: I'll answer a little bit
differently.
I think one of the motivations
for us was the recognition
that there were several agencies
serving kids who are deaf-blind
but didn't always
coordinate together,
communicate as well as we could,
so when we thought about this,
we thought,
"What is a way that we can
really work together,
build some trust
and do something fun?"
So that was another
motivation for it.
*****************************************************
CHAPTER 2: Building the Team
HARDING: Multiple agencies were serving
kids who are deaf-blind.
We had the School for the Deaf,
we had the School for the Blind,
we had the Deaf-Blind Project,
and I happen to represent
the national project in Kansas,
but we had independent wheels
spinning,
and I thought this was
a great opportunity
to kind of reset
these relationships
to build trust
amongst the consultants. And so that was really
the core original team.
COTE: Yeah, and then for the school
team, it just depends
on who's on the kids'
individualized education plan.
So if the related
service providers
happen to be an OT,
a PT, a speech path,
they may have a TVI that works
with them, they may...
you know, the parents may be
really regularly involved
with what is happening
at the school.
It could be the principal
is really involved,
or even an assistant principal.
They could have social workers
involved.
I mean, it can go really deep,
so some of our teams
are 15 members strong,
and some are the kids
that are still, you know,
it's mom and dad at home
with the child
and related service providers
pop in from time to time,
and so those teams
tend to be smaller
than the kids
that are in school.
NARRATOR: We see a page from a
Web site titled "Blake's Wiki."
It is a distance mentoring
resource site
for a young girl, Blake,
who is deaf-blind.
Included in the information
on the page
is a listing of team members.
There are four consultants and
five educational team members.
HARDING: It's really critical for us
to say you have to have
a relationship in place
before you start this process.
COTE: I think it's vital, like,
I don't think you could do this
unless you have
an existing relationship,
because there's
a certain amount of trust,
trust with what's going
to happen with the content
and trust with, as a consultant,
how I am going
to behave with them.
And I think without
that level of trust,
they're a little less sure
of being forthcoming
about the problems that they're
actually going through
and owning it and being honest
with it,
because there's a certain amount
of vulnerability that's involved
with putting yourself out there
on a video
for a bunch of people
to scrutinize.
So they have to have an existing
relationship with us
to believe that we're going
to be kind about it.
TAYLOR: So this team-building
is pretty important.
You've got to be flexible.
So the person walking in has to
be able to work with the team.
I mean, you have to have not
just good communication skills
but good listening skills.
So the premium value
is team collaboration.
And then from there,
you start using technology.
So it's not technology
solves the problem,
it just gives you
that Swiss army knife.
*****************************************************
CHAPTER 3: The Technological Components of Distance Mentorship
COTE: So we knew
we wanted regular video,
and then we knew
we were going to need time
to gather, as a group,
if you will, virtually,
to be able to talk more about
what their issues were,
because sometimes it's hard
to fully explain the coaching
of what we're wanting
to do through typing.
And so we were able then to say,
"Let's try for monthly meetings,
"see if it's reasonable
for your team
and see if it's reasonable
for ours."
HARDING: We also recognized
that we needed to communicate
with each other as consultants,
so we thought, "Oh, you know,
what's out there?
"We don't have a lot of money.
"What could we pick
that would allow us
"to build an electronic
repository
"that would allow us,
as consultants, to communicate,
but also to communicate
with our teams?"
NARRATOR: A clip
from an online meeting
to develop
a person-centered plan
shows video from participants
at two locations.
One consultant is in his office,
while at the other location,
several members of the team,
including consultants, teachers,
and a young girl
in a wheelchair,
are together in a classroom.
There are notes
about the meeting
on the left side of the screen.
COTE:
And then we bought Flip cameras
for each of the teams
that we were working with,
and sometimes we would buy them
for home, too,
depending upon, you know,
if we wanted to make sure
a lot of video
was being taken at home,
because they were having
concerns at home,
and we wanted to make sure that
it wasn't being left at school
when it needed to be at home
and vice versa.
So we bought ten Flip cameras
and then would just farm
them out to the teams.
We knew that we needed
regular video
to be posted
to the team collaboration site
in order to be able
to watch progress
on whatever the strategy was
or the skill or concept was
that we were trying to impart
onto the educational team.
TAYLOR: So we started adding things
called, like,
a team collaboration site
or a wiki, okay,
and we invite people,
so we have more people
talking together,
even though they can't be
in the same time and space.
So we started taking
the previous videotapes
that we were sending us
or they were sending them,
and now they're being shared
on one place.
So now we have something
that we could talk about,
we could leave messages like
on a blog or interactive blog,
and the wiki became something
that we can grow with each team
a little bit different.
NARRATOR: On the Web page titled
"Blake's Wiki,"
we can see several folders
and their contents.
Among the folder titles we see
as the page scrolls are
"Meeting Notes," "Blake's Maps,"
"Evaluations," "Resources"
and "Video Clips."
There is also an area to post
comments or questions.
HARDING: Our thought process
is that really
the meat of it really should be
what I call the electronic
repository,
the meeting place
in between the times
that you're going to do
the monthly Web conference.
There should be constant
dialogue there,
there should be questions
posted up there,
there should be videos.
We should be posting resources,
just-in-time resources saying,
"Look at this article."
And what I often talk about, I
call that just-in-time learning,
what we find is
if we post a four-page article,
sometimes that's too much.
We sometimes have to go through
and say,
"Read this paragraph
from this article.
We think it's relevant for what
we're talking about here."
The technology at first
is up-front,
it's a little bit
of a hindrance--
again, you're changing behaviors
and changing, you know,
the way you do business--
but over time,
our goal is really to have
that technology fade,
to make it almost automatic,
that we know when we show up
on a Friday at 10:30,
we're going to be ready to go.
And for the most part,
it's that way. *****************************************************
CHAPTER 4: How Distance Mentorship Works in Practice
COTE: Sometimes the teams
only have 30 minutes
to meet with us,
and sometimes they can meet
for a full hour,
which is a real luxury,
so we have to take the window
of time that they afford us
and try to let them drive
the agenda for the meeting
so that we make sure to hit
what they believe is
the most pressing issues
that they have
so they can leave satisfied,
feeling like they gained
knowledge that they needed
in order to change
their behavior
or the student's behavior
that next day,
to make it a richer program
for the kid.
TAYLOR: You've heard a picture's
worth a thousand words,
and, well, video's even better.
(chuckles)
It catches positioning,
it catches the pacing
within the routine,
it catches hand-under-hand
versus hand-over-hand,
it catches the symbols
that are being used
or the lack of symbols,
it catches the variance
between trainers
if there's more than
one person involved.
And this alone is much better
than a linear checklist.
NARRATOR: In a video clip that
was posted to Blake's Wiki,
we see a young girl
who is deaf-blind
in a wheelchair with a tray
across the armrests.
On the tray is a pan
containing warm water
and a knobby yellow ball.
Using a hand-under-hand
technique,
an aide encourages the girl
to explore the pan and ball.
HARDING: The concept is that we're just
going to take a snapshot--
a video snapshot, really,
if there is such a thing--
that we say, "Show us something
that's going well.
"You pick something that you
think is going well,
"or conversely,
things that you want help
"or you're struggling with,
"and let's use
that three-, four-,
"five-minute window of video
and analyze that
and reflect upon it."
I mean, reflection is
such an important piece of this
as consultants,
but also as a team.
They don't have time, typically,
to think about
what they're doing
or to remember
what they've done.
When they watch themselves
interacting with a child,
as we all do, we say,
"Wow, I didn't realize I was
doing that, I had no idea."
And there's a million
opportunities for us
to look at that video,
and it has to be an interaction
between a service provider
and a child--
or two children, sometimes,
their peers--
but it should be an activity,
something with a goal.
COTE: We just requested a minimum
of two videos a week,
less than five minutes each,
where they do a little bit
of beginning explanation
about what it is that we
were going to be viewing
so that we had some background
contextual information
for what we needed
to be watching for.
HARDING: Tell us how the child
is feeling--
did they sleep last night,
did they have trouble
with their G-tube--
so we know what's going on,
and that helps us contextualize
the situation.
They become much better at that.
They'll point the camera
at themselves and say,
"Okay, this is Sandy,
it's third hour,"
and it really helps us,
to do that.
But we're looking
for a snapshot, a small window,
where we can dissect, reflect
and then hopefully generalize
that to different activities.
TAYLOR: So now we're going
to reverse things.
We're going to change
how we're going to do it.
NARRATOR: In a video clip,
we see three consultants
sitting together
on one side of a table
as they conduct
a video conference
with an educational team.
The team is visible
on the screen of a laptop
that sits on the table
in front of the consultants.
COTE:
And there are times, too,
where what we're recommending
as a unit
is not what they're ready for,
or they want something else
at that particular time,
or it might not be the direction
that the parent is interested
in going at that point in time,
and then we have
to respect that.
And sometimes, as professionals,
we're coming at it
from a different angle
where I may be thinking about
the general ed setting
and thinking about what to do
to accommodate that
general ed setting,
and another coworker might be
thinking about the vision part,
"Let's think about the vision
and what needs to be happening
with this child's vision."
So sometimes we don't...
as a DMP team, as the outside
people coming in,
we don't always prioritize
the goals the same way also.
So it really helps
to get buy-in from the team
to kind of drive
what they want to learn next. *****************************************************
CHAPTER 5: Beyond the Monthly Meeting
COTE: I recently went
to a parent-teacher conference
and instead of the teacher
pushing a piece of paper
in front of the parent
with data on progress,
they already had the team
collaboration site up
on the SMART Board
in the classroom
and said, "Let's start
with the first IEP objective."
She was going to trail
the hallway a certain distance.
She said, "Let me show you
her progress from August,"
and she showed her August,
and she said,
"And now in February."
And so the parents
were able to, like,
visually take in
at that moment
the progress that
their child had made,
and even though they had had
access to the videos all along
and had been watching them,
when you watch the beginning
and you see the now--
you know, sometimes
the middle can blur it--
the progress was phenomenal.
So that's been
a really fun thing,
to see how the teams
have taken off
with using these team
collaboration sites
to empower...
demonstrating competencies
on the part of the child.
It's been really neat.
NARRATOR: In a comment written
on Blake's Wiki page,
her teacher describes posting
a video of Blake interacting
with a peer in her classroom.
The teacher indicates that
she would like some feedback
on the communications cues
that Blake appears to be using
to indicate when she is
interested in an activity
and when she is finished.
TAYLOR: We talked to this new teacher
about the site,
we invited them to the site,
she looked at all the videos
on there,
she saw the comments on there,
and all of a sudden I got a
phone call the following Tuesday
and she said, "I never dreamed
so much information
"could be in one place.
This is going to make it
a lot easier."
HARDING: You never know
where it's going to go.
I think we've had
some surprises,
people who we didn't anticipate
would really be drawn to the
process and really enjoy it,
and people we assumed who would
who weren't very
comfortable with it.
But the transitions are really
critical because we have kids
who may move from a preschool
setting to a kindergarten
or from kindergarten
to first grade,
and the entire team changes.
And they may have a stack
of papers that say,
"Here's the IEP,
here's what you can expect,"
but that really
doesn't tell the story.
A video is very powerful;
they can see the routines
that we've been working on,
they can see the activities, all
the conversation that we've had,
all the investment
of time and energy,
and hopefully direction
and progress, and say,
"Oh, I get that."
We've had new teachers who say,
"Oh, this is fabulous,
I did not expect this,"
so it's very powerful.
COTE: The other cool thing that we've
been able to do is
pull in other professionals
across the country
when we have needed
some extra help.
There was a student
that we were all
sort of in a disagreement about.
She was pushing on her eye
at certain times of day,
and the school team was thinking
that she was doing it
as a negative behavior
and they wanted to extinguish
the behavior,
and through watching the videos,
my gut was telling me
something different.
My gut was telling me that
when she was pushing
on the corner of her eye,
she was doing it when the visual
demand was higher to her.
And so we were able to send
the video to her eye doctor
to watch the video and say,
"What is this?
"Is she trying to focus
"or is she trying to do some
self-injurious behavior here?
What angle should we take?"
And luckily,
I was right that time
and she was doing it to focus,
but if we couldn't have brought
in that other team member
from the outside,
they could have potentially
gone down
the "let's try to extinguish
this" route,
which obviously then
down the road
would have elevated her behavior
because she would
have been frustrated
about the fact that
she wasn't able to focus in
on what it was
that she was trying to look at.
*****************************************************
CHAPTER 6: Conclusions
HARDING:
It doesn't replace...
I think for T.A. providers,
it's in no way replacing
what they do.
We don't say,
"Throw out what you're doing
and just do this exclusively."
It's an accoutrement: it adds
richness to what you're doing.
As I described earlier, I think
so many providers, at times,
are lonely and frustrated.
They want to spend more time,
they want to build
relationships,
they want to get to know people,
they want to feel that
they're connected to the people
they're meeting and supporting,
and this really allows...
it gives them permission
to set time aside
to investigate, to explore,
to build relationships over time
and at the end of it say,
"That was really neat.
I made a difference,
I feel good about that."
And I know that when we withdraw
or when I withdraw,
they will continue to implement
the things that I've taught them
and make a difference.
So that's the process that
I think is really valuable
and why I would encourage
somebody to do it.
NARRATOR: The Distance
Mentoring Project
has created teacher resources
using some of the videos that
educational teams have posted.
We see a video clip of Blake,
the young girl
who is deaf-blind,
and her teacher, playing
with a yellow plastic lei.
Graphics have been added
to indicate the times
when good techniques
are being followed,
such as the teacher pausing
to wait for a response
before continuing the activity.
TAYLOR: The whole purpose
of this process
is to get away
from that expert model
and to build collaboration
with teams.
The end result, really,
is so they can solve
these problems on their own.
COTE: Sometimes you feel like
the lone ranger, literally,
while you're driving out
into the Kansas fields,
trying to find a house
on a gravel road.
You just feel like,
"I hope I have the wisdom today
"to give these parents
or this team
whatever it is that they need,"
and that can get lonely
over time.
And so it's just been very fun
to feel like we're
finally going deep.
And people ask me all the time,
and it's part
of the accountability
as a State Deaf-Blind
Project Coordinator,
"Are you making an outcome
for the kid?
"Are you changing
teacher behavior?
"Are you changing
student behavior?
"Are you changing
the quality of life
"for the parents
and the families
as a result of the work
that you're doing?"
And I feel like now I have
something that I can hang on to
and say, "Yeah, look, it's here,
it's right in front of you,
and we absolutely are, because
you can physically see it."
So for me, it's just
been really rewarding
to be able to feel
the camaraderie,
feel the frustration together,
feel the joy together,
and also be able to feel like
I can finally show,
visually, an outcome.
You can see the difference
in what's happened
for the teachers,
you can see the difference
in what's happened for the kids,
and you can see the difference
in the confidence
that the parents have gotten
as a result of this interaction,
so it's been awesome. *****************************************************
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Chapter 1 - 1:49
Chapter 2 - 2:52
Chapter 3 - 3:44
Chapter 4 - 4:14
Chapter 5 - 3:46
Chapter 6 - 3:08
