DISCLAIMER: Raw, unedited transcript from webinar. No guarantees are made for the accuracy of the content.
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>> I'm showing we are at the top of the hour. This is Robbin Bull  with an CBD and-- NCBD and I want to go over some housekeeping items . First of all, the phone lines have been muted to alleviate background noise. The question and answer session will occur at the end of the presentation, but you can write your questions in the chat box at any time. 
>> I'm going to start the recording now, you will hear an announcement momentarily and Linda, that will be your cue to start. 
>> This is Linda McDowell with NCBD and it is my pleasure to introduce the presenters  for today's webinar. This webinar is part of a series where we hope to discuss recent research findings from the field of deafblindness. We are learning about what we know, what we need to do,-- and there has been a focus on professional development and preparation so I'm pleased that Dr. Cathy Nelson  and Dr. Amy Parker here today. Dr. Kathy Nelson teaches at the University of Utah and is the coordinator of the Deafblind  teacher court nation and teaches courses in the area of early childhood special education and severe disability. She is very involved in promoting the role of a teacher of Deafblind . She had a long collaboration on child guided assessment process and has co-authored several publications. She consults nationally and internationally in the area of deafblindness and has provided technical assistance to programs serving children with sensory impairments and multiple disabilities in Russia and Armenia. In 2016 she received a Virginia-- from the Association and education rehab for the blind, the award was given to her in the work of deafblindness so we are pleased to have her with us. We are also pleased to have Amy Parker who has worked in the field for 25 years as an appointment counselor, a job coach, and home family specialist, advocate, and technical assistance provider. She says that her favorite role is that of sister to an individual with multiple disabilities including deafblindness. But she has numerous peer-reviewed and practice-based publication and she has presented at numerous national and international conferences. Currently she is working as product development project leader at American-- for the blind in Louisville Kentucky. As she mentioned, you are encouraged to ask questions or make comments and if you are interested in continuing in the conversation or issues raised by the presenters, or if you have only been able to listen to the recording and want to join the conversation, please consider an invitation to partner in national efforts to provide qualified personnel in deafblindness. By coming to the NCBD website where there will be  a place for ongoing discussion, she has placed a link to join the initiative where there are already forum posts that could use your voice as we seek solution for the need for qualified personnel for children who are deaf blind. We really appreciate you putting the presentation together and look forward to this time with you today.
>> We hope that will continue to be the case. 
>> To start out we are going to make a shameless plug for the American annals of the deaf, and the reason I'm plugging it is because it is the first dedicated publication that we've had in quite a while. It came out in 2016 and came about because Dr. Peter Paul who is the editor approached me and asked if I would be interested in editing a special edition. I said that is something that we need. It starts out looking at the whole theme of critical issues in the lives of children who are deaf blind. It starts out looking at the history and the evolution of the population and also the evolution of those critical issues, which issues have stayed the same and which have changed. Dr. Tanny Anthony of the Colorado services for children who are visually impaired and deaf blind did an article on early identification of infants-- and infants and toddlers and others did one on the state of research of communication and literacy, Timothy and Megan did one on social emotional development, Sylvia and Sandy did recognizing the needs of families and needs of children who are deaf blind and Elizabeth Hartman and others looked at technology implementation. Others did an overview of transition planning for children who are deaf blind. To anchor that I went to Amy who agreed to co-author an article on the comprehensive system of personnel development. We are pulling this from that article.
>> This is Amy, can you hear me? I wanted to add something that Kathy is absolutely right, the reason for this publication is leveling, and visual impairments and deafness who have a different histories and types of funding, sometimes we are just one small piece of a larger publication and what I love about the special issue that they did a beautiful job editing, is that it is the most recent synthesis of information. Mark is asking will there be a list of references and links? I don't know which mark it is but this link could be easily provided and I believe it is already in the library. It was shared and publicized in the intervener and deaf blind initiative on the website. So within the special issue there is a link to each article and each article has a whole host of references so thank you for asking. Back to you, Kathy.
>> The first thing we were looking at is, what is a teacher supposed to do? We went to our friends to come up with the definition of what a teacher of the deaf blind actually is. They should be able to collaboratively assess and be able to provide the services needed to meet the IEP of individual students. They may be direct services where they are working directly as a classroom teacher or may work with a child as an itinerant but are still providing direct service. These can include vision awareness, vision efficiency, auditory awareness, facilitation of communication and the variety of ways that individuals who are deaf blind communicate. Literacy, assistive technology, and basic curricular access. They also may do just a consultative role where they are planning with the entire team that would include the related service providers, classroom teachers, intervenors. They may provide support materials and you can see accommodations and modifications. On a consultative role rather than directly working with students. One of the challenges is that we have to prepare our university students to meet both of those roles because we don't know where they are going to end up.
>> Most states recognize the role of teachers who are deaf or hard of hearing or students with visual impairments but only three of them recognize the role of a teacher of deaf blind and that is Utah, Texas and Illinois. I will be talking a little bit using Utah as a case study of how we get to be one of those three as we go along.
>> One of the things that we found really significant looking at why do we need to have a teacher of the deaf blind, one thing is that there has been, and rightly so, a push to get intervenors throughout the country. That role is increasingly being recognized but in 2012, NCDB did a needs assessment and the focus groups reported that educational teams may advance the role of intervenors is the most important component without recognizing the teachers of the deaf blind. Sometimes we put the cart below the horse but there needs to be someone who can support that and deliver the educational component. Did you want to add to that?
>> I think you covered it directly. That's part of what we will get into when we get into why did we choose to frame this in a way that recognized both roles as well as a model for the field? I think you said it well.
>> Did you want me to take this one?
>> Hi everybody. The US Department of Education you all are probably really familiar with through technical assistance and deaf blind projects. I'm sitting here-- in a place that has its own history in terms of congressional funding. Also you are very familiar with others that have a history of congressional set aside funding. As you know, our funding has existed for at least 40 years through the technical assistance strand. Before that through regional projects where there were services delivered on-site to children but also that there was an outreach focus. The Department of Education has long been a friend to deafblindness but trying to help deal with the challenge of geography and low incidence. There has also been a history of low incidence personnel preparation, and I think in times past when you look at historical documents and records, there was more funding for more personal preparation in the past, some of the specialized funding was used to also support students with multiple-- multiple and severe disabilities. Those were important streams for us to look at when we were framing out this article. 
>> I just wanted to add that I am actually a product of one of the low incidence personal preparation programs. More years that I'm going to confess, but the programs have been around for a long time. They have been really sporadic and they come and go. We haven't been able to have a sustained effort. 
>> This is also a challenge that is more extremely faced in deafblindness but also a shared challenge in preparation for teachers of deaf and hard of hearing and teachers of students with visual impairments as well.
>> So recent efforts, efforts that our community has made conjoined with other low incidence communities that I mentioned, if you have the luxury to stand back and look at what our community is doing and look at what is being attempted here, it's pretty exciting to be at this point when you have national legislation to have had it introduced for a couple of sessions of Congress, to have different sponsors, to have bipartisan sponsorship, that is exciting and a step forward. I was thinking about something that Kevin, who is an act-- actor, he talked about that it is really important to know what you want in life. I see this act as a way for us to begin to define as a field what we want because if you don't and you don't know how to articulate it in a way that recognizes what is best for children or recognizes the role of technical assistance, that's what is excited about Cogswell Macy. Another thing that is particularly strategic is that when deafblindness has partnered with the other low incidence and deafness such as the 21st century communication or video description act we've had success in getting some things real. So it was important for that and also reflected in some of the efforts that Kathy-- Cathy was alluding to, these consortium efforts  to prepare future leaders in sensory disabilities. We will talk more about that but it was really an effort made, again to the US Department of Education and leaders coming together and saying we really need a specific focus in low incidence and sensory disabilities to ensure the future. In this act we won't have time to go through all of these pieces. I encourage you to read it again and the link is provided to the most recent version which was introduced in late February. Title III is the section that focuses on the educational needs of students with death by-- deafblindness. Part a deals with identification. This was a note from Amy. Many special educators, when they talk about well why would you need something like Cogswell Macy when you have IDEA?
>> You all know that there are needs more nuanced around activities particularly around students that are deaf blind. One of the articles in this issue really deals with the fact that even students who are deaf blind are under identified in the literature. We know that these kids can be hidden in categories like multiple disabilities or students with severe disabilities where those very special and unique sensory access needs are not recognized. It also deals with related service and adds specific language around the need for intervenors which is exciting for families, for the professional community, we recognized that this is a related service and are hoping that the language included will provide more recognition, more awareness and infrastructure at the state level.
>> Part C is exciting and I want to give credit to Robbie who helped work on this with other advocates to recognize what the importance is of having a written state plan. The written state plan, if the Macy act were to pass, it requires that each state have a written plan to help manage and support students who are deaf blind and families in their states. The language is rich in deals not only with evaluation and appropriate assessment, but it deals with having enough qualified personnel so that the numbers to have enough people who are prepared to be teachers and interveners, that is very powerful implementation language.
>> The other things are related to having appropriate evaluation of what is going on in the state as well as what is going on for students. The consideration of special factors language for students who are deaf blind is powerful language. It talks not only about communication related to American sign language, tactile communication, but information about tactile language or object symbols and whatever is appropriate for that student. It is broad language and we knew that it needed to be. The team that worked on this with the American foundation for the blind and others, and association for special schools for the deaf, I probably butchered that but you can look that up.
>> The act still includes technical assistance. The technical assistance infrastructure for parents and educators.
>> The last piece has interesting implications. Particularly with the new administration in Washington DC where regulations have come under particular watch. Obviously this language was written long before the current administration but it encourages the US Secretary of Education to have conforming regulations which of course we know in policy that they are meant to help states and entities deal with implementation. How do you take something that is law and implement that education systems? There is a lot of exciting language around state plans, how they could effectively implement things, implement a plan that addresses a need for diversity of students who are deaf blind. 
>> I'm going to take a pause and say we've covered a lot of ground and I probably missed something important. Is there something you would like to add about what you see going on within this very important initiative?
>> I don't but I would invite other people to make comments if they have any.
>> I see that Robin has put the web address in the chat part, thank you. Very helpful. 
>> On the slide there is a link to American foundation for the blind which has the complete text of the Cogswell Macy.
>> This is the comprehensive system of personnel develop. Do you want to take the first part or me go ahead?
>> When I approached Jamie about this article she said what I had been looking at early intervention system of personal development which was developed when the education of the handicap mandated early childhood education and a light bulb went off in my head because I was very involved. I'm in early childhood and also because I'm old and have been in the field for a long time. I started thinking about it and said this is really, in some ways we are mirroring what was done then but for a new field and what we really need is the comprehensive system of personnel development. So Amy and I worked to adopt that and this is what she's going to go over now.
>>  Thank you, Cathy. 
>> We needed something to look at each of these in a field. We could talk about the role of teachers, the role of the intervener, we could talk about needing both, but as a field we needed a structure to think about, well what are the elements that help it be strong? To not only prepare personnel but to implement plans to have a system that is more comprehensive? We've covered a little bit but the next one really gives us more of a picture. If we are thinking in pictures this slide is helpful. We borrowed this model. Cathy  and I approached one of the technical assistance centers here and said maybe-- may we use this graphic and reference what you've done? We would like to use it differently. We'd like to use this model to wrap our heads around almost an evaluation. What do we have in deafblindness? What are the elements and pieces that we have in place? And then to think of how these pieces work together to grow and sustain a field? Cathy and I knew that when we started piecing things together  we had some great conversations with people about these pieces that are out there but rarely did we have a chance to stand back and look at how they are working together. So think of these as interrelated and working together. The top you have standards of product is and standards that help guide the practice so that we know these are broadly all things that we agree on. This is what a teacher does. These are standards that say you are not something else, you are functioning in this role and have the knowledge and skills related to these standards. So we have that.
>> The next piece is the preservice training or personal preparation. When Kathy approached me originally, I hope she comes back in a minute we lost the camera but hopefully she's still on the phone.
>> Good. We knew there was limited information. There has been limited funding for deaf blind preservice programs or personal preparation. They are challenging to sustain but we wanted to say what do we have? The next is in-service training. You can refer to this as professional development. What is the piece of this model and how does it work with other pieces?
>> Leadership development has to do with the training of new leaders. One of the concerns that you see as people begin to retire who have had years of training, who will be the next generation and help sustain our field? Who is going to help innovate in ways where we need innovation? Leadership preparation is a part of CFP D and early childhood and but what does this look like an early childhood or deafblindness?
>> Then, we understand that one of the things-- Cathy is back, that's good.  In some of the work that Susan has led, the article that includes Cathy , Susan, Angel, brick, and Greg really talks about a synthesis of the research that does exist. That research should inform standards of practice. It should inform our preservice and in-service training model. In the center we will talk about planning and coordination and evaluation within the system. Of course in early childhood when technical centers look at the efficacy of early childhood models they use this framework to think about how are the pieces working together? How effective are they? If we were to think about this in Cogswell Macy terms, at the state level how does that state plan for a diverse population? How do they serve them? And how is that coordinated? You will see some echoes that was excited to say well here's the Cogswell Macy's-- consul Macy effort and here's this recommended model that evolved out of early childhood and has about 30 years of practice, research, and development around it. How can we look at this and think about where we need to go and what we currently have?
>> I'm going to stop talking and see if there's something you want to talk about. I'm certainly happy to adhere but you have a rich history and a perspective on how standards have been developing over time and how they are being used in teacher preparation.
>> I feel like I have been more a consumer of the standards that have been developed. 
>> From my perspective, I approach this more as an academic and to look at the documents of what we've had. What a beautiful is that this was private money and through the Department of Education with a model demonstration, there was an effort around in 1997, around how do we know what a confident teacher should have in that skill set? These are some of our first efforts around standards and nice documents were-- came out around that effort. Then in that effort it was also used by people on what was the division of visual impairment and is now visual and impairment and deafblindness. Competencies were reviewed, discussed for teachers and interveners. They use what is called a consensual validation process which is discussed a little more in the article that you can also look it up online. It's basically a process where the CEC looks at what the community of practitioners is doing, it is valuable, aligned with current literature which is very exciting, what do we know, what does research validate and we know this is what a teacher should be doing? They go three process where they involve a committee and a survey process so there are steps to that and it's really quite an involved thing. The last part of the process which is what makes the CEC unique is that it is nice that our competencies can be lined up and put within the other special education competencies. As unique as we think we are as practitioners or interveners, there are overlapping skill sets that have to do with good practices in special education. So the CEC takes all their different divisions and lines up competencies under seven standards and go through a process where a teacher of the deaf blind, do they need to know the other competencies that are general and generic? Yes they do. And on top of that there are some unique competencies and skills and knowledge bases aligned with that. If that is too confusing I'm not meaning to make it so, but it's a great way for us to frame what we know and what we can do so that when we are speaking to other special educators, our standards are lined up with theirs and then we can say there are some unique things and skills that teachers need to know in addition to what generic special educators need to know and it removes some redundancy in our thinking and when we line up standards. 
>> If there's something you could add to make that more clear I would appreciate it. 
>> I think you made it very clear. When we started, we looked to the standards and that is written into our state description of what a teacher of the deaf blind is and we just followed those directly.
>> They are very helpful for lining out personal preparation and training.
>> Let me sum this up. Future direction. What are we going to be doing? We have competencies already published which is wonderful. The CEC has a regular timeline for reviewing, validating, and updating competencies. As many of you may have seen, the CEC has been updating competencies for teachers of the visually impaired. If you look on the website, you see this word draft description of the role and function of a teacher of students with visual impairment. It is a draft because it is put back out to the field for people in the field to review and say the standards have been updated, a new position paper has been published that the field can use and the voice is wanted on that. The same process is lined for us to go through this so within the next 2 years, there will be a committee established to reveal, validate, and update competencies for teachers of the deaf blind and interveners. The last bullet, we will be reviewing current findings from the CDER innovation configurations, the research that has been published. New information that has been published. Look at the existing competencies for teachers and interveners and go through the systematic process that I described validating what we have. It's likely that many of the things published will be kept and some will be revisited. But that is the sign of a healthy field, that standards of practice are rigorously reviewed, lined up with research, are communicated with the field and they are fresh. They guide our work.
>> Now I'm going to turn it over to Kathy to talk about the next piece of the model. You can visualize that we are going on to pre-servant preparation program. 
>> One of the things we discovered or that NCDB discovered when we started looking at preservice preparation is that there are many different models out there and it was hard to gather all the universities that had at least some coursework which has been an ongoing process. One of the things people have done was infused them into existing coursework for severe disabilities. We also have it into early childhood because I'm here. Universities that have specific coursework are usually found in vision programs, severe disabilities, and in deafness and hard of hearing. Then there are some universities and it is very limited, who have deaf blind specific coursework leading to specialization or endorsement. Typically that has been interconnected with coursework in other disciplines and in our case the University of Utah worked very closely with folks so I'm borrowing coursework from both programs and from severe disabilities.
>> In Utah it is required by our licenses to also get licensure in another related area which is pretty typical that an additional licensure has been required. In Utah we pushed to make sure that happened because we are a low incidence area that I felt really strongly that we could not just take people out with deafblindness. They really needed to have the foundation to build on from another area.
>> Basically programs have developed in response to faculty trips and funding and knowledge of the field. My track position was actually split between early childhood and severe disabilities. When we got the endorsement in Utah, because deaf blind has always been my area of interest, I jumped on it from the perspective of my interest. Two of the people have written grants to get funding but they've been people who have background and interest in deafblindness.
>> Some programs have emerged in response to specific needs such as the connection between Boston College and Perkins school for the blind which came about because that's obviously where one of the big deaf blind schools is. The low incidence funding which I mentioned, we've had different programs throughout the country popping up and down and they have really been fabulous fulfilling a need of getting trained people throughout the country but it has not been that sustained of interest.
>> Some programs have been funded entirely from OSE F-- OSE P and some combination of the field. This is the and CBD work that they-- this is the NCDB work  they been compiling. 20 have been identified have been identified as having deaf blind themes or incidences.-- Or emphasis.
>> As of 2016 there were seven institutions that had specialization or graduate certificates. Boston College, East Carolina, Hunter, San Francisco State, University, Texas Tech, University of Utah and Utah State University which deliver through various models of distance technology. NCDB is working  is working to keep us connected and identify where those programs are.
>> I'm going to back up a little bit and tell you how we can to be where we are in Utah. One of the things that happened, I think some of you know John who was at NCDB and is still involved. John was, in Utah, our state office person for early childhood and sensory impairment. And he was very involved in setting up the system. As I look back I realize he was also very instrumental in setting up what has almost involved into a CFPD system here . We had a very politically savvy parent who got million dollars funding and a lot of you are aware that I think Utah has one of the premier programs which is interesting because the rest of our education is rock-bottom. We got a pocket of money through the advocacy of a parent and we used the state blind advocacy board is a coordinated effort and we looked at what we needed. The piece that has always been missing has been the piece of a teacher of the deaf blind. We talked about that in the advisory board meeting. Parents kept saying I think there needs to be teachers who are specially trained and the consultants felt like they had a lot of expertise but did not have a piece of paper saying they had this training. Sometimes that called things and to question more and it went on for years. I really wasn't pushing this through and didn't even know if a teacher of the deaf blind woodwork. I just bought, if it happens, it happens and went on for so long that we rolled our eyes and thought that's never going to happen. And then it went through when we were scrambling to set up our programs but I have become a convert to having the role of a teacher of the deaf blind recognized. Once we got the official endorsement I was able to go to my university and say we need to have a program to meet them. I feel like it is definitely band aided together, we had no money when we enforce-- endorsement went through and really had to set up a program based on not a whole lot. Fortunately we had a lot of expertise that we were able to get that program up and running and now that we have federal funding it has been icing on the cake but we know that we can do without it. Without that recognized role it is difficult to sustain university programs. 
>> We've talked about what they need and that needs to come from preservice preparation. In service preparation can only go so far but cannot go the complete way. They also need to be able to provide guidance to other educators and that whole process, we know that working with adults is by far the hardest part of our roles. We need to make sure that in the preservice preparation we are giving our students expertise in being prepared to work with interveners and other educators. The whole supervision and of other adults, and we need recruitment efforts. I think I can speak across the board and across the country where we have difficulty getting people into teacher education programs. It is a struggle to get enough students in special education and even more so in sensory impairment and deafblindness. I am beating my drum all the time but it is a struggle. We've been able to sustain our program and has been an effort. As the first group we have nine consultants in Utah which was the first group, I looked at it and thought I don't know. Is the program just going to die now? But I looked at those existing teachers with severe disabilities, and they also wanted expertise so we had a lot of people coming back to get a masters degree and they already have the licensure and says it's not going to take you anymore time, you can get your masters and get an additional licensure. So now we have expertise in starting to spread out throughout the state. 
>> One of the things we wanted to mention was making sure that professionals reflect the diversity of our field.-- Of Northern Colorado did one of the articles and one of the things they said that was striking is that 20% of the population speaks a language other than English but historically, teachers of the visually impaired and the deaf and hard of hearing have come from backgrounds that do not mirror that diversity. That is a major need, to make sure that we really do mirror that. They have some really good things in that article and it's worth people's time to get a hold of that article and read it.
>> It's required reading in the class that I'm teaching because we are so desperate for synthesis level work, we have the modules which are great synthesis work but I've made this special issue required reading. Each chapter is part of a module and this work is great. Do you want to continue with future directions?
>> Then we need to work on innovations and course delivery. I think that as much as I hate to give up my on-campus class, and I really like doing it on campus, but we need to look at innovation. Technology is improving daily. To be able to deliver that, and we need to look at field supervision. Even in a state like Utah we have got to start reaching out to the rural areas of our state. We are a large state geographically and we've covered the Salt Lake area well but have not really done what we need to in other regions. Field supervision is a challenge. We need to make sure that it is with varying populations and varying studies in-- settings and roles. We need to make sure they have the classroom teaching role because they may go be classroom teachers but maybe itinerant's are consultants. They need to have experience in all of those roles. They need knowledge knowledge that spoke broad and deep. They have to have knowledge and lots of things and sometimes that seems a little overwhelming but they have to support the college-bound students and prepare for those working on more basic ADLs. I think we need to look at we are not going to have one person who's going to be able to do that. I am not totally preparing my students to work with students going to college. I'm not able to do that. I need to really look at teaming and their skills. They need those skills in collaboration, coaching, and consultation. Professionals, paraprofessionals, families, related service providers, we are not going to train one person to do it all but these people better be able to coordinate services for kids who are deaf blind.
>> There's a comment from Linda saying many of the personnel prep programs that we have recently listed on the website in the intervener qualified personnel initiative have coursework that is online with added supervised experience. I think that NCDB and open hands open access has been an incredible use of technology. They have done such an amazing job of technology and the way that I've done things for years I have been so impressed and so amazed with how they've been able to bring the technology together.
>> Thank you, Linda. Here's the website for that. 
>> In future directions we need to look at collaborative funding. We cannot continue to have things band aided together but need to have a look at how funding can be spread across. We have to align and share resources with the other fields that we work with. We have to have resource sharing and that is part of our model that we are going to go into. We have to share those back and forth. We have to have innovation and course delivery and bridging whenever we can, of course work on fieldwork. They cannot be two separate things.
>> Then, leveraging for communities who have practiced for low incidence and students are isolated, we need to bring those people together. I was thinking back to when I got my specialization and I've lost track of the people that I went through the program with. It is nice to have a mechanism to connect to people that they can talk with each other.
>> Are there any questions or comments that I didn't get?
>> One thing that Mark addressed is the need for hybrid or part of coursework being online so that is one of the innovations as well as extreme collaboration models. In the article we talk more about this, how universities even sharing coursework or expertise, being in deafblindness is an extreme sport in the sense of collaboration. You talked about it at the local level. Collaboration with the teams and to make sure the child is getting what they need by collaborating with qualified features for the visually impaired as well as teachers of the deaf blind. You addressed that well.
>> We are going to go quickly through the model and even comments. When we go back to the CS PD, if you can visualize that in your mind's eye, remember the circles, in-service training, in some ways technical assistance model fits in and in some ways the technical assistance that we provided to the project network is also in planning and coordination. When Cathy  and I were borrowing this model and standing back and looking at it, we know that in early childhood they recognized that preservice gives you the depth that you need and core knowledge. But that's a part of life in a part of how we continue to grow and implement as professionals which is still a vibrant part of the model. In some ways the national technical assistance infrastructure, that has been the lion's share of the money that we've had so it was interesting to apply this model to deafblindness and see where we fit and what we have. Providing support at the local level using distance technologies as Mark was mentioning, leveraging those relationships and distance technologies which many people are doing with the use of technology, the use of modules to some degree and what some states are doing to leverage both distance and face-to-face support. State projects working together to streamline the production of products and reduce duplication. Some of that is what is in place currently. We talk about that a little bit. Future directions, the continued need for an online learning community. When you think about what we are asked to do to meet the needs of someone who is deaf blind, someone who may read braille and is using technology to plan to go to college and another person is at the emergent communication level that is just beginning to make connections between a routine and some symbols. When you think about the challenge of preparing someone, a teacher and an intervener to that person, we really are asking people to understand a lot so we need to do that extreme collaboration, networking, distance mentoring, professional development. And to be a little bit ego less and realize that for this student and family I really need to collaborate very well with other professionals in my network to make sure they are getting the proper consultation and proper support. Resources and information and opportunity. We continue to see a need for face-to-face learning which doesn't go away.
>> It is exciting to have these online relationships but we are nourished by times that we can be face-to-face. At the recent Texas symposium or when we get together for the Council for exceptional children, those times are important for solidifying learning and coming to consensus.
>> We had-- we need more alignment with our university curricula. I think what we are going for their was thinking about in service, it really is when someone has been trained and prepared in the ideal world, they have been trained and prepared and have come out of a program and are in the field and need the ongoing nourishment, we know that a lot of times it's also a way to feed personnel preparation programs. People realize I would like to go back and get training and become a teacher.
>> Do you want to talk a little bit about how some interveners in Utah in particular have, for lack of a better word, used that experience as a steppingstone to enter into a teacher of deaf blind program?
>> We would have almost all of our consultants who came up through the ranks starting as interveners and then we created them to come into the university program shamelessly so before we had the deaf blind endorsement, I was bringing them into other programs. So now that we have that we offer you-- a university credit for training and try to think of that as the gateway drug to get them into our programs and get it going but we look at the admissions committee and I'm not the only one that we look at the admissions committee. When we see those interveners we know we have the training-- they have the training we want and we grab that.
>> So now we are moving on to the part of the model which is leadership development. Cathy  took a look at what we have in terms of leadership development in deafblindness. 
>> One of the first things is looking at the professor it and we really do know through research that there is a direct link between high quality teacher preparation and training by teacher candidates so we have to have the supply of trained factor-- faculty. Now we are in a situation where demand is growing and supply is shrinking. None of us are nearing the retirement age or retiring. We start looking around and saying we are there.
>> There's also a diversity of special education career choices that are available to doctoral graduates. We train people to be professors and they find more lucrative positions or positions that may be closer to home so we lose people that way. Because there are not a lot of deaf blind programs there have not been any study looking at university prep and trends but there were studies done between 1989 and 2008 looking at programs in visual impairment specifically. They found there was very slow growth across all of those. They had difficulty recruiting faculty for programs to keep them sustained and there has been a continued trend toward money programs as opposed to hard money staffed by tenure tracks which encourages faculty of coming into those programs. Again you do not necessarily have the sustained programs. 
>> Fortunately since 2004, three projects were funded by OSEP  and the first one is an L CBI-- NLCBI in visual-- NLCVI in visual impairments and now we have NLCSD which is the one I've been involved in. But he prepares scholars in all situations which is amazing. They have support for travel, living situations, some fabulous enrichment activities, and all three areas across the country maybe most importantly is they have access to a cohort of students and sensory disabilities which is amazing. We have one doctoral scholar in deafblindness who were depend without the consortium but now she meets with those students and knows people across the country. The graduates of the program have collaboratively managed to get a lot of grants funded. Really when I start looking at professors in the field they are graduates of those programs and it is really a meeting. NLCSD has 30 programs across  25 universities. Four of them represent deafblindness. In the first projects there were three scholars admitted and 5 in the second. We are hoping that it will get renewed and we will get even more graduates in the future. I will say that even though it's not very many, there are several scholars who have done research 
>> In particular, the consul may see act is an effort to institutionalize our thinking around that-- the Cogswell may see act, is a model that other leaders and administrators understand. We talk about the role of leaders on the administrative level. We bring all of the depth of knowledge of how important it is to identify students and how important it is to serve them well. We start talking to teachers but those special educators and administrators need a model to understand how those services can be delivered. That is part of a political and advocacy effort and the CSB framework provides for lack of anything else a conversation tool to talk about in early childhood these elements exist that help sustain an early childhood model of service in a state. So here, leadership development, out of some of those scholarships we know that people have gone on to work at state education agencies and to go on administrative schools at state schools for the deaf and blind. They worked closely with the deaf blind-- deaf blind project who sees that at an hourly a level, and technical assistance projects that have an administrative rule and knowledge in deafblindness. We didn't talk about this as much but at the Masters level the Helen Keller Fellowship program was an innovative program that trained 46 scholars. I was talking to Christina before we wrote this article. We cited some of her thinking in this article, and it was a really great use of resources of collaboration and funding to get 46 scholars trained at the Masters level and what sort of things have been generated out of that. Teachers of the deaf blind are including structured, that's a part of enrichment and training. I know that OSEP loves that  but it's a great opportunity to maximize. 
>> We need to increase and sustain our doctorate level training and we need more hard money funding. We can't continue just on soft money, and a short term problem we are facing is that right now if you are going to take a program at the University most people come from the ranks of TBI's but we really don't have a recognized teacher of the deaf blind so we really need to start looking at standards of deaf blind credentialing who is going to be teaching these programs. Initially, this was a problem in early childhood when early childhood laws went into effect, there had to be some grandfathering because there were not people credentialing early. But some of the models have used national testing for behavioral analysts and using national testing and portfolio reviews which may be a direction we can go to. Right now we don't have a body that can look at credentialing. In the future thing as we hopefully get rolling, I just kind of realized that in preparing these, I'm going to switch really quickly. I don't want to talk about research because you are having a lot of webinars. Part of the spokes on the wheel is that higher education took coordinated efforts and the coordinating across states and universities to expand the evidence base. That has been one of the strengths of the national Consortium in preparing leaders, it has brought researchers together. We need to make sure that evidence-based practices are disseminated and integrated into those standards. Sorry for that.
>> Then the hub of the program is that planning coordination and evaluation which is really where we need participation of stakeholders and this needs to happen, we need parents, higher education, teachers, school districts, the state office. We need involvement from OSEP  at local state and national levels but we need to bring people together to coordinate it. You really need to have vested partners who will work together, and one of the things that we looked at and it comes from my experience in Utah, if that came from the advisory board of the state technical assistance project, and they can work to plan a decision that will make sense. We want to dictate it from a national level were each state needs to look at how this should be implemented, but then coordinate it with the national level technical assistance.
>> We need to develop multiyear state systems and plans that have all of those wheels included. We need to have processes to collect store and analyze data because one of the things we need to do is use that data continually to monitor and revise.
>> Amy? 
>> I was also going to add that I think we do have a powerful source of data in our child count, national and state child counts that can guide, but Cathy,  it was a nice moment of discovery to think about the CS PD model and think about the state deaf blind projects who may have a role in coordinating or in planning with state partners and I think that's already happening within some states where there is an extreme amount of collaboration with family part is, with the Department of Education, when possible with universities, those are all the stakeholders but formalizing that model a little more is an opportunity to look at how each of the pieces in that model can hopefully work together and nourish each other and not work at cross purposes but in a collaborative and harmonious way because our resources are so few. So our evaluation plan object gives. We thought about the model but knowing that that is at the center of this is to look at those pieces and ultimately the health of a system is our children being appropriately identified in order to receive services early? That very much applies in deafblindness and a part of early childhood. The number of children and families who receive services increases. Those families are found and identified, and that they are receiving services within that comprehensive system. Our families satisfied with progress? That is certainly a part of the early childhood model and has a lot of relevance for us in deafblindness. Do we see educational outcomes improving for students? That would be across diversity. We can look at educational outcomes for those with emerging language and for those that are going to college and everything in between. The number of teachers and intervenors increases. There is another layer and if we were being strict evaluators we would parse this out and say we have a word called competent. How do we know that a teacher or intervener is competently delivering those services are working with teams to deliver effective services which is another type of valuation, not just number. Whether it's working with an out-of-state partner or whether they've developed something that is in state, maybe they are working across a couple of universities and sharing coursework. What are those programs doing and are they adequate and sustainable? Personnel are retained and supported. Robbie has a saying, a field has people. When you have an identified role and you have people that are performing that role, sometimes when you don't have an identity, if that's not a recognized identity then personnel can go in a lot of different directions because people have to work and people have to make a living. Maybe they are working other related fields instead of the ones where they were trained. This key piece, the diversity and numbers of leaders increased so if more and more people are Latino we need educators who have lived experience that is so valuable and the number of leaders trained for administration or as Linda said, Masters level teachers who are at the practitioner level which is certainly very valuable, I'm not going to read these because we really do want to leave a moment or two for questions. These are questions that we could ask. I will say we need to partner with adults who can tell us what they believe about prepared teachers, what they should believe, no, and do. In conclusion, this quote is from our article but came out of a lot of thinking about what we found in published literature and from what we could put together. The hub of the model, it is the core from which all components in the system radiate. It can be conceptualized as an intertwined set of activities that require high level of participation of stakeholders in order to be effective. It occurs at the state and national levels and involves partners from pre-service, in-service, parent local and state education entities. It's easy to say but it's more like the extreme sport, extreme collaboration. That model creates a strong investment from diverse partners. And we have to know what we want like the actor said, we have to know what we want. There is a benefit in as being a highly connected network. We can rise to the challenge of working together and different parts of the model. If we concertedly work together and achieve a shared vision together in deafblindness, I think it is ambitious and fun to explore this model but we have to share the vision to be able to work on the visions collaboratively and sustainably.
>> If we build it they will come. So far that has been true.
>> We are about an hour and point but I want more comments, questions, thoughts about how different people are implementing parts of the program.
>> I think we're looking at the chat to see if there are other comments about working together.
>> I think we are at a point where people are wanting and needing a teacher and I think the time is right to get this ball rolling. Like I said, I was a slow convert to the idea of a teacher but I am a true convert now. It made what we have possible and I've had some really incredible students.
>> It is so nice to have Utah as a model where it shows that it is possible to have these pieces working together and have the teacher being sustained and for it to be sustainable. There are some neat things on the horizon where we can continue to talk about this but we have to really want it.
>> I would wish you good luck and I hope you go out to your states and really start working on this. It's one of those things get-- that can be built slowly but does not have to be built immediately and have everything in place.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you Julie, thank you all. It's always intimidating when I read the names that are here.
>> I could even call names and think about the ways that some of you are implementing pieces really well. It is nice to be able to meet with stakeholders and pull this out as a framework and have them talk to you about where to go and what to do.
>> Thank you for coordinating this and bringing us all together.
>> We just really appreciate both of you. It's a great way to get us inspired and just really hopeful that we can expand on all of this. 
>> Thank you so much. 
>> Thank you Amy and Cathy . 
>> Goodbye. 
>> [ event concluded ]