Joe’s Success Story

There was never any doubt in anyone’s mind that Joe was a smart boy.  Ever since early elementary school, Joe was matching sight word vocabulary to pictures, following school routines with picture schedules, acing spelling tests and even handwriting familiar lines to the Dr. Seuss books that he loved so much.  We all knew that there was so much potential and knowledge to tap in to receptively and a hope for Joe to be able to expressively communicate in the future.

His parents were his biggest advocates.  They took him to private speech therapy, pushed his in- home therapists to make communication a main focus and made sure that the school district was doing their job to help Joe in all areas, especially communication.  His parents and IEP team participated in an assistive technology process matching Joe’s needs with devices and strategies to help Joe’s speech.  After many years of trying, Joe still resisted oral motor exercises and had difficulty producing intelligible words.  Parents decided to look at augmentative communication devices.

During Joe’s late elementary years, Joe became a proud owner of a Dynavox.  His IEP team and parents eagerly programmed the device with pictures and Joe began to use the device with prompting and in routine situations.  During Joe’s sixth grade year, it became apparent that Joe could read and comprehend most words.  He began reading a written schedule and shopping list.  He also began typing entire stories into his Dynavox.  Staff began writing requests on his Dynavox and started modeling using the device to communicate.  He still had a hard time requesting items, answering questions and making comments with the device.  Joe also began resisting using the pictures and solely wanted to use the device to type out words.

In his late middle school years, Joe made so many gains.  His Dynavox broke and Joe got an iPad with Proloquo2go loaded on it.  He began typing again on this program and started to spontaneously communicate.  He wrote, “Choir is fun,” on his iPad during an adaptive choir lesson.  Joe began to communicate through typing words when he did not feel well and what to do to make him feel better.  He saw the power of communication and what the device could get him.  For instance, he began to make requests such as what books he wanted to read during a free read choice time.  He began answering questions on highly motivating topics for him.  His verbal talking had increased as well and most of all his motivation to communicate skyrocketed.  When Joe realized he had a voice, he became happier and a leader in the classroom, complete with being a Bingo caller in the last month of his 8^th grade year.

As a professional, what I learned from Joe and his assistive technology journey is that communication has to have meaning to the student and that professionals need to honor a student’s personality.  Communication has to be authentic and important to the individual.  It is important to have routines and set up situations daily to give students the opportunities to communicate.  When a student begins to make requests, the professional needs to honor the request immediately.  Even though most of the adults in Joe’s life wanted him to use the pictures to communicate on his device, when we stopped pushing him to use them and allowed him to type, his communication took off.  I am so proud of Joe.  I can’t wait to see how far he will go in the future.