Seminars

Presented by the Innovations in Special Education Technology Division (ISET)

Every IEP asks whether Assistive Technology is necessary to implement this IEP.  In this seminar, we will discuss the foundation of AT evaluation and consideration, followed by some of the most common AT tools implemented in our schools and some of the challenges and strategies for effective AT implementation. During the seminar, we will share specific considerations and practices from multiple states across the US as examples.

Learning objectives:

1. The participants will gain an understanding of AT evaluation and consideration processes.
2. The participants will discuss ways to include AT considerations during the IEP development.
3. The participants will discuss specific AT implementation strategies from multiple states. 

Speakers: Aleksandra Hollingshead, Don McMahon, Diane Bryant, and Lauren Tucker

Presented by CEC and the Diversity Committee

By the end of the seminar, participants will understand the importance of implementing both culturally responsive strategies and special education strategies as special educators to promote social and academic growth. 

Speaker: Dr. LaSheba Hilliard

Presented by the Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities (DADD)

In the current educational environment in which there is a more purposeful focus on diversity and equity, we must consider disability within the construct of diversity. This panel will discuss current research and realities for providing equitable access to the general curriculum across content areas for students with extensive support needs.

After this seminar, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss innovations in providing access to the general curriculum in English language arts, social studies, math, and science for students with extensive support needs from recent research.
2. Describe how to enact the least dangerous assumption through the universal design for learning framework, evidence-based practices, and standards-based instruction.
3. Describe specific strategies for viewing intersectional identities of students with extensive support needs as assets, rather than deficits. 

Speakers: Bree Jimenez, Dr. Leah Wood, Dr. Pam Mims, Dr. Alicia Saunders, and Dr. Jenny Root

Presented by the Division on Career Development and Transition (DCDT)

Doing the work to become a culturally responsive transition professional is a multi-layered, ever-evolving process. Educators must “talk the talk” AND “walk the walk”. Transition professionals continue to support students from diverse cultural, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds different from their own personal cultural backgrounds (Shim, 2018). A hallmark of high-quality transition planning is the involvement of the students themselves. This means incorporating student interests, postsecondary aspirations, and personal values. The intersectionality of each individual directly influences this process. Developing individualized annual transition and postsecondary goals through the lens of culturally responsive practices allows for student voices and choices to be heard, respected, and amplified. This seminar will provide teachers with practical tips, strategies, and case study examples to practice infusing cultural responsiveness into transition planning.

Speakers: Tracy Sinclair, Joshua Pulos, Joana Idakwo-Agha, and Stacie Dojonovic

Presented by the Division of International Special Education and Services (DISES)

The COVID-19 pandemic taught us about the importance of paying attention to global connections; in some ways, we are still dealing with global supply chain challenges. Recent climate change-related weather extremes remind us of how interconnected and interdependent we find ourselves in the 21st Century. Classrooms in the United States continue to diversify due to immigration and an influx of refugees and asylum-seekers. Each of these factors points to the need to prepare globally competent P-12 students to meet the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. The first step is to ensure that pre-service and in-service teachers attain the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to develop intercultural and global competence.  

This seminar will explore the preparation of globally competent special educators using culturally responsive pedagogies, culturally sustaining pedagogies, study abroad programs, teacher exchange programs, digital connectivity, and more. After this seminar, participants will be able to: 

• Define global competency. 
• Explain the need to prepare globally competent teachers. 
• Describe examples of how university faculty prepare pre-service and in-service teachers. 
• Summarize examples of how in-service teachers prepare P-12 students to become globally competent. 
• Identify ways to integrate culturally responsive/sustaining inclusive practices based on their individualized context. 
• Identify ways that they may begin/continue in their journey to become globally competent educators.  

Speaker: Nicole Declouette, Clara Hauth, Rebekka Jez, Nicci Dowd, & Tanya Pinkerton

Presented by the Teacher Education Division (TED)

Teacher Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs) show promise for addressing the critical need to increase, strengthen, and diversify the educator workforce. Educator preparatory programs (EPPs) can play a significant role in co-constructing the design, launch, support, and implementation of RAPs in partnership with local school districts. This mutually beneficial collaboration can (a) increase EPP enrollment and degree completion, (b) support tailored preparation of teachers, and (c) lead to improved K-12 student outcomes. This seminar discusses the important role EPPs play in the development of RAPs by highlighting mentorship, coaching, funding, and related program content including modified program experiences.

Objectives/Participant Outcomes - Teacher educators will:

1. Understand essential components of Teacher RAPs.
2. Learn the various models in which RAPs can be implemented along with the benefits and components of each model.
3. Grasp a clear view of possible costs and return on investment of effective RAPs.
4. Analyze opportunities to modify and enhance current programs to meet the needs of students who matriculate through a RAP.
5. Determine how to conduct research to evaluate best practices for RAPs.

Speakers: Lois Kimmel, Dena Slanda, Shauntice Wheeler, Sara DeLano, Amelia Brown, Kate Hall, and Susan Keesey

Presented by the Association for the Gifted (TAG)

Children with disabilities can have significant strengths and talents that also need developing. These “twice-exceptional” gifted children with disabilities are often confounding because they require strengths-based education that focuses on the development of their abilities while also mediating the impacts of their disabilities. This seminar explores twice-exceptional children from diverse viewpoints: their characteristics and needs, educational strategies, mental health supports, and collaboration approaches. Participants in this webinar will be introduced to practical, evidence-based strategies that allow them to advocate for and support these complex learners.

Speaker: Dr. Claire E. Hughes

Presented by the Division for Communication, Language, and Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DCD)

Over the last 30 years, children who are Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) and who use Listening and Spoken Language have benefitted from early identification, advances in hearing technology, and enrollment in early intervention programs at early ages. While these changes have led to improved speech and language outcomes, many children who are DHH may continue to require special education support for equitable educational and social access during the preschool years and beyond. For children who are DHH, access to special education supports and services hinges upon the ability of school-based special education practitioners to employ evidence-based, ecologically valid assessment practices and interpret their results with an accurate understanding of the eligibility criteria under hearing impairment. However, this can be challenging given the diversity of educational and professional backgrounds and perspectives of providers on educational teams, complicated further by a lack of shared coursework and practical experiences.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act ([IDEA], 2004) mandates that special educators consider a child’s academic, functional, and developmental performance through the lens of meaningful participation in school-related activities. Because norm-referenced assessments involve a small number of isolated and discrete tasks, they are often less effective at providing documentation of functional performance or meaningful participation in naturalistic contexts where language demands are embedded and often complex (Heilmann et al., 2020). Conversely, ecologically valid assessments provide information about how a child’s capacity affects interaction in daily activities and routines, such as playing with friends, storytelling, engaging in a conversation, and participating in language-dependent classroom routines.  This seminar will identify potential research to practice gaps between recommended practices for assessing young children who are deaf/hard of hearing (DHH) and actual practices in local school systems, particularly for determining eligibility for special education. We will define what it means to implement ecologically valid assessment practices to determine hearing loss's educational impact. Finally, balancing sensitivity and feasibility, we will work together to develop an interprofessional, evidence-based framework for assessing preschoolers who are DHH across all developmental domains recommended by the National Association for State Directors of Special Education ([NASDSE], 2018). 

Speakers: Kameron Carden and Kristina Blaiser

Presented by the Division on Career Development and Transition (DCDT)

This interactive seminar is designed to provide educators in schools with evidence-based practices for delivering transition services that promote post-secondary success. Participants will be introduced to promising strategies that can help students achieve their post-secondary education, employment, and independent living goals. Through discussions and group activities, participants will learn how to incorporate these factors into their transition education service delivery to better support the adult life outcomes of students with disabilities.  

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the promising factors for post-secondary education, employment, and independent living success.
2. Learn how to use evidence-based practices to develop and deliver transition services that support post-secondary goal achievement.
3. Identify potential barriers and explore strategies to overcome them.
4. Provide participants with resources so that they can enhance their transition services and develop plans for implementing evidence-based practices in their own schools.

Speakers: Al Daviso, Dawn Rowe, Stacie Dojonovic, and Malarie Deardorf

Presented by the Division for Emotional and Behavioral Health (DEBH)

Starting the year off right is crucial for both students and teachers alike. Throughout this seminar, participants will be introduced to some of the adverse childhood events that could influence student’s academic, social, emotional, and behavioral performance. Emphasis will be placed on providing strategies to build strong relationships with their students, use student assets to understand their strengths, and how to create positive behavioral supports that improve behavior in the classroom. Participants will have the opportunity to apply concepts learned to their own students in our application portion of the seminar.

Speakers: Dr. Gwendolyn K. Deger and Dr. Eric Common

Presented by the Division for Communication, Language, and Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DCD)

This seminar addresses the eight components of self-determination, as proposed by Wood, Fowler, and Test (2005). It will then provide strategies for professionals and families to support prelinguistic and early linguistic communicators to successfully demonstrate four of these components: self-awareness, self-regulation, choice-making, and self-efficacy.

• Self-awareness begins with understanding one’s body and includes self-recognition. Over time, the individual develops preferences that are expressed through self-advocacy. One instructional strategy is to teach vocabulary to support self-awareness, including me, you, mine, yours, my turn, and your turn.
• Self-regulation involves being able to manage your own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It includes modulating your responses to stimuli. Self-regulation can be supported by recognizing and naming a student’s emotional state and by working with the student to identify what can support them to calm down or to increase their energy and attention.
• Choice-making is a component of self-determination and has been recognized as a communication right (Brady, et al., 2016). Authentic choice-making needs to be differentiated from merely participating in a choice-making routine. Authentic choice-making means that the individual selects a truly preferred option (Bruce & Ivy, 2017). Strategies to support early communicators include providing experiences to support understanding of the options, using representations/symbols that are already known by the individual, and teaching a dependable selection response.
• Self-efficacy is one’s belief in their ability to be successful and is related to the concept of mastery motivation. Strategies to support self-efficacy include careful selection of instructional targets, appropriate levels of prompting, and reinforcement.

This seminar will provide opportunities for participants to generate additional strategies associated with the four components addressed above and will include an activity on classroom supports for self-determination and a second activity on individualized supports. 

Speakers: Jennifer Ward and Susan Bruce

Presented by CEC

Annual goals are the IEP team members’ best estimate of what a student will learn or be expected to do in the next school year to address the effects of their disability. Unfortunately, writing measurable annual goals has often been a difficult task for many IEP teams. When a student’s goals are not measurable, the IEP team cannot monitor their progress, which makes IEP goals meaningless. The result can be frustrating for parents/caregivers, administrators, and teachers, and may lead to state complaints, hearings, and litigation. The purpose of this seminar is to present a clear and simple three-step process to develop measurable annual IEP goals and discuss user-friendly ways to monitor a student’s progress toward achieving their academic and functional goals. 

Speaker: Dr. Mitch Yell

Presented by the Teacher Education Division (TED)

Teacher educators know about the importance of accessibility as an essential aspect of course design and collection of learning materials, but we often find ourselves overwhelmed with all that this responsibility entails. In this seminar, we will use the Choose Accessible Learning Materials initiative (CALM; Bugaj, 2018) to demystify the process of creating accessible learning materials and to shift our thinking to viewing accessibility as a starting point, rather than as an accommodation or afterthought. Participant Outcomes:

During the seminar, participants will have opportunities to (a) See examples of accessible learning materials from special education teacher preparation courses, (b) See differences in accessible & inaccessible learning materials from the user’s (student) perspective, (c) Ask questions about and get support for modifying existing course materials to make them fully accessible, as well as creating new materials, and (d) Discuss the importance of modeling the CALM approach with teacher candidates.

After the seminar, participants will:

1. Understand the essential elements of creating accessible educational materials
2. Understand the role of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles in creating accessible educational materials
3. Identify the advantages of applying CALM to instruction & course design
4. Be able to model the creation & use of accessible educational materials for teacher candidates
5. Be able to locate, use, and share credible and useful resources to extend their learning and teacher candidates’ learning

Speakers: Dr. Kate Peeples and Dr. Allison Kroesch

Presented by The Association for the Gifted (TAG)

Identity formation is a significant developmental milestone impacted by both giftedness and factors that comprise one’s self-conception. Cultural identity refers to how children define themselves as they discover where they fit in the world based on gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, family structure, religion, and more. The positive formation of a child’s understanding of self as well as their differences from others must be nurtured in the classroom, home, and community. Families, caregivers, and educators share primary responsibility for ensuring that young children learn about their culture in positive and supportive ways. This seminar focuses on strategies and best practices for supporting a healthy cultural identity in diverse gifted learners.

Speakers: Mary Slade, Angela Novak, and Javetta Jones

Presented by the Division for Early Childhood (DEC)

Let's talk about how to plan for days that include the fun, laughter, and smiles that make up the best days for children and the adults who support them. Best days are the result of intentional planning grounded in evidence-based practices. Join us as we discuss resources to support you in planning embedded, individualized, and developmentally appropriate opportunities that meet the needs of the children in your classroom. 

Speakers: TBA

Presented by the Division for Emotional and Behavioral Health (DEBH)

In a school where student behaviors are more intense and frequent than before, it can feel like trying to find the right behavior management technique is impossible. However, there is an untapped resource that teachers can learn from on how to motivate students to change their behaviors in a way that is both positive and engaging for students and is both familiar and interesting. Welcome to Behavior Land! During this seminar, participants will be introduced to the intersection between game theory, motivational theory, and behavioral management pedagogy to develop classroom or individual behavior management plans that are both engaging for students and game-changing for your behavior management toolkit.

Speakers: Dr. Gwendolyn K. Deger and Dr. Eric Common

Presented by the PROGRESS Center

Are accommodations Specially Designed Instruction? What about UDL or HLPs? This interactive session will help demystify specially designed instruction, or SDI, for students with disabilities and clarify why accommodations, UDL, and HLPs are not SDI. Participants will gain access to freely available tools to assist with the design and delivery of SDI to meet the unique academic and functional needs of students across grade spans.

Speaker: Sara Evans

Presented by the Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities (DADD)

This seminar will introduce inclusive practices and anti-ableism in special education and apply theory to educational frameworks and classroom strategies. We will review UDL, I-MTSS, RTI, PBIS, and SEL through a critical lens. Finally, participants will investigate practical applications of socioculturally sustaining practices.

Speakers: Marcus C. Fuller, Elizabeth A. Harkins, Martin Odima Jr., and L. Lynn Stansberry Brusnahan

Presented by the Division for Early Childhood (DEC)

"It's all about relationships". Easy to say but it is one of the most complex things we do. Intentional relationship building is a skill we can learn. Building partnerships with families of young children with disabilities, with other professionals, and with community members is critical to our work. Join us to learn more about resources and supports for intentional relationship building.

Speakers: TBA

Presented by Complex and Chronic Conditions: The Division for Physical, Health and Multiple Disabilities

Join us for this seminar and learn practical ways to support students in general education classrooms, who also have complex support needs.  

Speakers: Dr. Allison M. Kroesch, Cate C. Smith, Robbie Hampton, Denise Griffin, and MariBeth Coleman

Presented by the Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE)

Special Education teachers and specialized instructional support personnel continue to face the many challenges our profession brings; compliance paperwork, individualized instruction for each student on their caseload, inclusion activities, the continued impact of the COVID-19 shutdown, and many more. CASE Leaders will share best practices for supporting special education staff throughout the school year.

Speakers: Kindel Mason, CASE President and Dr. Kevin Rubenstein, CASE President-Elect

Presented by the Division of Visual and Performing Arts Education (DARTS)

In this seminar, information will be shared on how general and special educators can step into engaging learning experiences with their students with the arts. This presentation will focus on active and dramatic strategies, dramatic inquiry, and adaptive art for PreK-12th grade learners. A range of active and dramatic strategies will be shared, as well as resources and recommendations for making the arts accessible for students with exceptionalities. Participants will learn about how they can incorporate dramatic inquiry into their specific learning context and will participate in designing their own dramatic inquiry learning experiences for students. Dramatic inquiry incorporates social imagination of play and dramatization to create a shared fictional context that is meaningful to students as they make meaning (Edmiston, 2014). Dramatic inquiry supports multiple modes for meaning-making and encourages educators and students to use multiple modes, such as movement, drama, music, visual arts, talking, and writing. With the mantle of the expert approach, students are positioned as experts as they collaborate with their peers and teachers to make meaning to solve a problem that is of interest to them. For example, students can be positioned as paleontologists commissioned by a local museum to create accessible exhibits about paleontology and dinosaurs that can be shared in an upcoming exhibit. Examples from previous units will be shared with examples of how IEP goals, curricular goals, and social-emotional goals were incorporated to support the needs of individual learners. In addition, information will be shared for supporting family involvement and partnering with organizations within your community for support with planning, such as museums and universities. Lastly, educators will learn how they can design adaptive art experiences to make the visual arts accessible to a range of learners with exceptionalities. Examples and information will be shared about adapting tools and art techniques to provide students with access to art experiences and expressing themselves through the arts.

Learning Objectives - Participants will:

1. Learn how they can incorporate multiple modalities to promote learning with the arts for students with exceptionalities and their typically developing peers.
2. Learn strategies for how to authentically embed IEP goals, curricular goals, and social goals into dramatic inquiry lessons.
3. Learn about how dramatic inquiry can increase student engagement, social interaction, and opportunities to respond in the classroom.
4. Identify active and dramatic strategies and tools they can use to engage learners with exceptionalities and their typically developing peers.
5. Identify how they can make visual arts accessible for a range of students with exceptionalities.
6. Identify how they can adapt art techniques and tools to provide opportunities for students to express themselves with the arts. 

Speakers: Kathleen M. Farrand and Susan Loesl