![]() ![]() For other students, several options might be appropriate, and then it’s critical to name the features that make that tool successful for that student, and “high and low technology” is not professional vocabulary for a stranger test. In some cases, one and only one specific language system or product may meet that student’s needs and it may need to be named. In the words of the greatest movie of 2003, Pirates of the Caribbean, the unwritten rule about not naming brands is “more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.” Individually, with the case conference committee, consider what the student needs and be clear about the features. Why had the IEP been written in such a way that one of our most vulnerable students potentially lost all of his access to language? The most common answer I hear: “I was told not to name the exact brand/type of device in the Assistive Technology box.” Yet none would match what this student had been using for years, the only way the team had figured out how to help him communicate what he wanted and gave him access to his education. The cases of DVDs from his video collection and the Speak & Spell from my childhood.Īll of those would satisfy the legal document. ![]() An alphabet board and an iPad with any random app.A picture of snack choices and an eye gaze controlled computer.“He has specific AAC tools? All the IEP says is that he gets ‘high and low tech AAC.’ ” When I recognized the student, I asked about the Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) tools that he had been using at his previous school. I got a friendly email from the new team asking if I could help them out. It’s important because in practice, failing “The Stranger Test” means you’ve failed a student, and that failure can mean, literally, life and death.Ī student I got to work with for a few years had moved across the state. Write and communicate in such a way that a stranger on the street would understand what you mean. My first year writing Individual Education Plans (IEPs) an administrator coached me in “The Stranger Test.” I would argue it was one of the hardest ongoing writing assignments I will ever have: everything you ever learned in graduate school, all the jargon and technical language, hide it. Failing “The Stranger Test” means you’ve failed a student, and that failure can mean, literally, life and death ![]()
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