Event ID: 2544269 Event Started: 4/29/2015 7:00:00 PM ---------- Please stand by for realtime captions. >> I am glad that you guys are all here. You are all early. >> That is what happens when you get the transition folks involved in stuff. >> I know. You guys are on time. >> We do not let the grass grow beneath our feet. >> Like the rest of us. >> I am not saying that. >> I think you are, Mike. Let's be clear. >> Because of the transition, we have to prepare early, we have to start early. >> I get it. >> Do you know how to does? >> Transition is all about planning. >> I got it. >> Got it. >> Hi, all. >> Hello. >> There I am. I was at another meeting. I need to put the dial-up information in the room here. Hold on just a second. >> Do you want us up now or do want to call us up when we are going to talk? >> This is going to be an interesting experiment. Usually, for the drop it, we all start out in the room, everybody. >> Got it. >> But because we are going to be sharing the screen and I will have to -- I'm thinking that I'm going to improvise but I am going to have everybody show up, say hello, and then I think, when we get going, hi, Susan, we are going to shrink it down like this and the three of you can all stay there. And talk. When we are finished sharing, I am going to show everybody again. That probably will not work now that I'm thinking about it. That would require people turning their cameras off and on so my thinking will not work. >> We can't if you want >> Well, when I do -- what I do is usually when we start sharing, I make this bigger. I make this smaller. Like this. And I make this bigger. Usually, though, we have had very little -- we have not used these as presentation mechanisms but as drop in hosted conversations and whoever is doing it has a note in a notepad and as things come up, we share. What do you guys want to do? >> Shall we not invite all of the people to introduce themselves, Leavitt like this? And just open up with a share? >> Well, I mean, is this an informal coffee clutch dropping? >> It is a very informal coffee clutch. They have his -- historically they happened. >> I would not want to get in the way of history. >> [ Laughter ] >> All right. I need you guys to call it now. Put the number in. >> Sherri Nelson, now, we are good. We can do whatever we want. >> We love Sherri. What is your idea? >> [ Pause ] >> Are people showing -- if you are showing slides, then it is nice to have it this way, where you are just in the little four squares but if you are not showing a PowerPoint or anything, then I think that you can be full screen. >> All right, then I think it is not just about as being full screen but usually we include everybody. So this time, I just hate to deliver this study message up, okay, we will not all be here visible in the room. >> Can you hear me all right? >> Yes, Emily. I can hear you. >> [ Pause ] >> This is doing some very weird things. I do not know why. Stop moving. >> That was mine yesterday. >> Technology is so weird. Right? >> It is. Bill had. >> -- Go ahead. >> It is great when it works. >> It is a miracle when it hurts -- it is a miracle when it works. >> I was looking at something today and it looks like the camera was great and perfect in the beginning and great in the test run and moving along and halfway through got weird and a progressively got worse and you are like, what is that about? >> Good. Thank you, Robbin. >> Sherri? Do you hundred -- do have your camera? >> No. I do not have my camera. A sorry. >> Okay. I'm going to leave it like this. I will introduce you guys. We will leave it like this. Okay? So that people can seem -- we have got to go back. I will make you each presenters. Okay? So when your time comes, you will navigate your own presentation. Right? Is not good? >> Sounds good. Yes. >> Okay. And as I told my, -- as I told Mike, do you care if I am around like yesterday in the meeting, that person was really a timekeeper. One minute. >> Yeah. >> Shall I do that? Is that offensive to edit you? >> Well, let's agree on -- are you going to use a hook? Are you going to say -- is it going to be a friendly top? Is it going to be, a dislike button? Is it -- let's -- but I like the [ Indiscernible ]. >> It is so hard to interrupt -- what shall I do? I cannot put anything in the notes because people are not looking at the chat necessarily and you cannot see it. >> I can go like this. >> That is perfect. >> One minute. I will say, one minute. >> [ Laughter ] >> I hope that helps and when you go on past two, I am going to close your camera. >> [ Laughter ] >> Really? >> [ Laughter ] >> I have muted -- I'm going to mute myself until you want me to talk and we will reduce the background noise. >> Thank you. I am waiting to see who we got. >> Unless Susie, of course, you want to seeing. >> Do you want me to do that? >> You can do that. >> What little song would you like? >> You are a really good TA providers I figure I can give you a playlist and you can work from. >> [ Laughter ] >> I like that. >> Are you going to dance, Mike? >> Yes. Really. Friendship. Friendship. >> [ Laughter ] >> Let's go back. >> Yeah. >> Well, it is noon. Should we wait a few minutes? Or should be get started? I will let you guys go, Ellen, Peggy, Sherri, Annette. Hi, net. Hi, Jessica. I will give people another minute here. >> [ Pause ] >> Okay. 12:02 PM. I say we should hit it. Welcome everybody. To are catching up with transition hosted conversation. The format for these has traditionally been a little bit different, we have had everybody on the screen and everybody introduces themselves. This time, because we have three presenters and they have all created some really lovely PowerPoint's in which to talk about their work, I am going to leave it with not everybody in the camera if that is okay. If you have questions, just you can post things in the chat pod, you can put up your hand, and I will keep an eye over here in the attendees with a raised hand and I will just speak up. We are on a -- we have got one hour. I'm going to try to keep everybody to a 15 minute time frame with their presentation and then we will have time at the end to ask some questions and catch up. So thank you for all of you for participating and we have Mike Savini, Susanne Morrow, Emily Taylor Snell, and in case any of you do not know, there have been some really rich activities going on across the network in this last year, with -- related to transition so the three presenters here are going to give you sort of an overdue of a number of those activities and hoping to give you a sense of how we are all working to tie these efforts together. I am going to start the recording. There we go. >> This meeting is now being recorded. >> I will begin by turning everything over to the man at that there in the corner, Mike Savini. >> Thank you. Thank you very much, Gail can everyone hear me? I think that everyone can. I actually just wanted to start off first with think that I really love the snazzy title of catching up with transition because when I think about the time that I have spent with the two other ladies, Susie, and Emily, over the last year, two years, it truly is indicative of a race and today, between sharing what we have done in transition around the world, the ITT I stuff and then transition Institute, you will see that we certainly have earned the title. Themes to grow on. It has been -- as I said, it has been a pretty busy year for collaboration and I would like to give you all a thumbnail sketch, just to give you a sense and a flavor of exactly what has happened over the past year. Folks are, -- the hope is that we will pick this up at the summit and we will hit the ground running and we will have a great opportunity for more conversation, more dialogue, as well as an exchange of ideas that will help us move forward. In terms of, when I think about this past year, these are the things that really just jump out at me, collaborating without being redundant, I think that that is very important part of who we are. Sustained commitment and many of the key areas, as we were preparing for this presentation. Susie and Emily and I, there is probably a combination of 120 slides for one hour so, clearly, there is a commitment on the part of this network and you know that you are committed because you are able to pretty much generate 120 slides pretty quickly. The last piece being as of the lessons learned and every collaboration, every effort, every transition, what we have done this year, there has been an opportunity for lessons learned that the national level, at the state level, and how we interact with each other so each lesson that we have learned, I think, has helped us move forward and it is giving us greater opportunity to not make some of the same the states or to look at things a little bit differently as we move forward and move into further transitioning together. One of the things, Susie and Emily will talk about something that you are probably each of you has heard of on some level. ITT I, and the Institute but one thing that you may not have heard of is the effort around the role of the twig and for many of you, this is just a quick reminder of what we have done and we have identified in terms of the TWG work and one of the roles of the TWG is to revise and provide feedback, product development, and to identify and implement collaborative activities and there are a number of TWG is as you know for NCDB and this particular one that I'm going to be talking about is the transition one. The objective for the transition TWG, is to take a look at the ongoing efforts of the state deaf-blind project and really just trying to get a sense of what we are doing, collectively, as a network, to ensure that deaf-blind youth have access to the general education curriculum and will graduate from high school, ready for college and a career. Another piece attached to this but not necessarily within our grant is looking at the peace around independent living as well. That kind of came out as we had conversations it within our TWG about what makes sense for young adults and the independent living pieces of the entitled part about being prepared for college and/or career. The transition workgroup and I am very happy to say this that from the collaboration standpoint, I think that we have hit it right on the nail. Eight deaf-blind projects, with representation from both the state education department as well as the university, two national T AMD centers, pep net and in stock, were also part of our TWG and Helen Keller national Center is our TWG member as well so we had a real nice cross-section of network people within an entitlement services as well as eligibility services. Now, when we met as a TWG, we met it pretty much every other month and we tried to tackle this question of, what are we doing in terms of our network? Around the transition work. Pretty much this mind map here is essentially lots of different things that our network has either been engaged in or we thought that this would be something that we would love to participate in, but clearly, these types of activities that take us down that path of college and career readiness, we cannot do everything so we needed to really look at this in mind map and think about some of the things that we could prioritize. Reasonably address. So one of the things that we wanted to look at is what exists already within our network that we think is rooted in really good practice? Has got the various partners to it. It was built in a collaborative spirit. And it would be similar to I guess the low hanging fruit so this particular work scope, we identified five particular areas around what we wanted to do within the TWG and the first piece it was the self-assessment. And that really is looking at the transition rubric that was developed by area 4 a few years ago, five or six years ago, and that particular rubric -- we wanted to answer -- first we wanted to update it but within, as we updated it, we also wanted to look at the fine what college and career readiness means for our population, what does access mean? And what are the state deaf-blind project doing that they think that works in terms of how they provide the services? So the very first piece for our work scope was tonight -- update the transition rubric and the second part of our work scope was to narrow the focus and really narrowing the focus piece is, Jerry Petrov has been working on the national Post outcomes survey and you will be hearing about it in the next 10 days or so because we are going to be asking for you to help us disseminate and have our network complete this survey because it will help us with being able to move forward with the next piece of artwork are wound what is really -- around what is really happening with young adults in school, what is happening with them as they transition to either college or a career? Of this is the follow-up study for that and I think that it will be very helpful for us to be able to reflect on that data once it is completed and perhaps if we have that completed, before DB Summit, we meet -- we may be able to share some preliminary data and the third piece is the plan for change and this is the information brief that we would be building from the postal outcomes survey as well as a self-assessment to look at exactly what the issues are, what does the data say? And then identify the needs for change in a big piece here, too, is to look at one of the obstacles that each of the projects are facing as you are trying to drive technical assistance, multitier TA, with your stakeholders. Important, this is the third and important document that I think will help us really look at that objective around what young adults are doing to access the college and career. The fourth piece is implementing change at the state level and this is really looking at our multi tiered TA system, targeted universal and intensive TA, and there will be some opportunities there for states to be able to take this information, utilize the information from the other three buckets of work and perhaps inform their work as they move forward. Within their own state plans. The last piece is evaluation and, really, it is just trying to identify, looking at all of the data sources, and then thinking about -- well, how does this work? How has this been implemented? Where are those opportunities to make changes? What are the things that we would like to keep? Where are the areas that we feel need to be pumped up a little? So evaluation, then, in turn and feeds the self-assessment piece so this is the TWG work scope that we are currently working on. Again, narrowing the focus piece around the study, that will be the first thing that rolls out and then the self-assessment, we are hoping that we will have that out before the year is out. Okay. So I believe, in closing, thinking about collaboration and I began talking about just the work that we have done across projects, Susie, Emily, there are a number of other, I'm sure, collaborative activities that are happening as well but I saw this proverb, at it conference that I had attended and I thought it really resonated well with me when I saw it and it reads for those of you that are not -- that are on the telephone but not actually seeing this, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. And I believe this. The work that we have done with the state projects, it really embraces this and this is the segue into inviting my friend, Susie, to start with her presentation. >> Well, Mike, this is Gail. You are kind of a champion. You did that in exactly 10 minutes. >> [ Laughter ] >> I did. >> Look at that. >> A pure champ. >> I was worried about the waving of the arms, I think. >> I know. I told everyone, I told our presenters that I was going to be ruthless in the same way that the OC person was yesterday and with really telling people that their time was up. Okay. Here we go, Susie. >> I am sorry. I ran through all of this to make sure that it worked and I opened it at the end. I apologize. I hate spoiling the surprise. Okay. >> All right. The surprise factor is gone. >> I ruined it. Susie, take it away. >> Hi. I am Susie, Susanne Morrow the project director of the New York deaf-blind project and Mike, I love that proverb and it makes me -- it is applicable in many environments because my 14-year-old daughter who now runs track wants me to do a 5K with her and so that sounds very applicable and if you want to go fast, you can go alone. But if you want to go to the end, okay, we can make it together. >> [ Laughter ] >> I think we can extrapolate. Right? So the big idea of transition, we have New York State of course that is a big state so for our sort of selfish purposes, this past grant cycle time -- really thought through -- how can we -- obviously the issues are the same no matter where you live and no matter the population but just in terms of -- how can we think about outreaching and meeting the needs of this particular age group? This came up sort of an extensive longer ranging initiative. Everything has to have an acronym, so there it is. It is the ITTI which is good because it is the interdisciplinary transition team initiative and this started out -- we first did it alone, and it was an idea that I had that we piloted in the first year that we hosted a. We did alone, New York State, and then of things evolved and we started writing the grant, we said let's open it up. So here is kind of a definition of what the initiative is, that it incorporates evidence-based practices for the young adults, and of course including the entire transition team. Like I said, it began as a pilot project in 2012 so this is in the last grant cycle, and we focused mostly on team at downstate here in New York, because we wanted to try it out without taking it so much on the road. But we got some really great feedback from that, but of course, if you put a concentrated amount of time and some resources together for people, it makes it -- this overwhelming concept perhaps a little bit easier. So when it was time to write our grants and the government allowed us to do more of that sort of cross state lines sharing, a big group of us kind of came on board and said, yes, let's try to do this together. We really thought that all of these pieces that were -- we are aiming towards about sharing across the network, and not duplicating services, not duplicating production of things, that this might be a really great way to do that and incorporating face-to-face technical assistance obviously within our own location but then also being able to use a distance technology by using the Adobe rooms, for communication, direct communication with the teams, direct communication across state deaf-blind projects and then, of course, the NCDB site that hosts are private group. So this really grew quite quickly, quite fast, but again, I think that in a way that made sense because since it was piloted first and we had some good lessons learned and some pieces that we knew were helpful to people, that it could be beneficial for folks. So what does this look like? It is a multiyear process. So we are looking at essentially how this plays out through the life of this grant cycle. But then, looking at it on an individual academic year. So within an academic year, there are two large-scale face-to-face sessions, meaning a kickoff at the beginning of academic year add a wrapup session at the end. Then, monthly web-based meetings all throughout the, that have content delivered that is specific to transition planning. And, of course, you say the word transition planning and under that, you have this whole umbrella of all of these pieces that we all know that will make for self-determined young adults who are going into life after school. So there is surely a lot to cover. Then, each of those web meetings has what we like to call sort of the transition planning tool or a task and we essentially gave the transition teams a homework peace to complete after each web session and, again, it was for their own use, hopefully for their own help to help with the whole transition process. I will show you some of the content in a minutes. -- A minute. Obviously, individually with our states we went face-to-face to these transition planning sessions or whatever the specific teams needed in terms of levels of support. Then, there was an online community of practice that we use like I mentioned the NCDB site that was a great set to host resources and then in some places, there were more formal technical assistance agreements outlined and that was variable among the deaf-blind projects. The requirements for people to participate -- we are pretty serious about this but I mean, did -- we definitely are in New York and I think the other states would agree that there were some pretty specific parameters because if you are going to engage in this, it was a pretty decent commitment. So we had set the parameters up pretty clearly, obviously the team is currently working with a student, between the ages of 14 and 21 who is deaf-blind, and it does not fade in here but they also need to be registered with us. On the project. We needed to have the commitment of the family and the transition team members. And there is definitely variability in that, where sometimes the family was more of the lead and was pushing to be involved and sometimes it was the school team that was more of the lead. We did not necessarily care but we just wanted someone to say, yes, there is going to be a couple of us who are going to stay in this. You know? And of course, as much as possible having student led and student participation. Critically, of course, we need to have administrator by in and we really needed that administrative support because in some places, we need to get approval for release time for people to step away from a class, perhaps, or to stay after school. We really banked on the idea of schools that have professional development time periods already built into the schedule to see if we could take advantage of that. We definitely needed to get those pieces in advance approved, use of equipment and technology, as everything, you know that there are firewalls in schools and we had to jump through a few of those hurdles, and obviously technology requirements are pretty minimal in terms of Internet and web cam, although I think that we are quite used to having WebCam axes all of the time in the work that we do and some schools that do not use it as much so definitely something that you can consider and also think about the families and how they plan to participate. Some of the families actually went to the school and participated live during the sessions. Others just called in on the telephone. So again, just depending on life factors. Right? And we really wanted to encourage participation in the online community of practice. We definitely found with great variability but to know that there was one central location for items. Tons of benefits -- this is at least what we propose and now, a looking through it and reflecting back, I think that these are very valid points. Obviously, the big push about enhancing interdisciplinary collaboration. We know that everyone kind of works in a silo and we're really trying to get people on the same page, especially when they are talking about transition. The IEP planning process, we have seen great change in terms of what actually gets into the IEP's around transition. One of the pieces is that we have the teams reflect on what language is actually in the IEP on transition, and of course, it is quite frightening at times. So critical in terms of just what -- raising awareness on that. More written -- goals that are more person centered and enhancement of self-determined behaviors. Increased knowledge for the families about what is happening or where the options for life after school. So here is our little private group that Gail of course set up for us. And we do not need to read through that and most of you are familiar with these groups but it is a really great repository for a central location for people to go to. I just want to share this one tool with you. We have many, many, many that we have used over the course of time and this is a transition planning timeline that I had designed, trying to -- because it is a little overwhelming for teams when you sit down and you start to think about all of the pieces and information that need to be covered, it can be really scary. So thinking about it in terms of breaking down age range. So if the student is 15, what things maybe should the team and the family have considered and completed already? So you can go through and literally kind of do a checklist and so we decided that the whole ITTI a multistate group decided this would be sort of a platform to gauge where the team is currently and where they need to go and the pieces that they need to accomplish so there were some great tweaks on this tool from all of the states projects and kind of agreed that this was the final shot. This could be something that is three pages long. Right? Because there are so many pieces that we could consider but we wanted to make it very digestible and we want teams to be successful. Right? And families to be successful. So this is a document that I am happy to share with folks and we find that it is a great conversation tool with transition teams. Again, just to use it as a simple checklist and go back and reflect. I pulled up a slice of this just to give you an idea but you can look through these at a later time if you are further interested. The way that we broke it down, we -- like I said, there was a kickoff meeting at the beginning of the year, face-to-face, and then there will be a wrapup meeting coming up quite soon in the month of May and we really wanted to book added to really emphasize how important we thought that this is, and also to provide support to the teams that say, we, as a state project, we are going to be with you throughout the whole thing and we're here to help facilitate and help support. Then, you see that there was very specific content identified for the web meetings throughout and so than the teams could also look at that and say, we really need to jump on this web meeting on person centered planning because we have not done it yet or what have you. So we wanted to have that outlined in advance so that people could anticipate, because now teams could meet all the time and meet live for sessions which we understand and then, of course, everything was archived and recorded and teams very often, then, went back and reviewed them on their own time as did families. So this is sort of part of the introductory package and then we are. Live in Adobe. So our first kickoff session, you can see on the right-hand side, there is a whole slew of participants and here is where it went wild and crazy and I think where oh step would be really happy about this network sharing and collaboration piece because for this year, since there were more participants, meaning more participants in New York and across the network, with 16 other states, we designed it in a way that here in New York, we have three simultaneous locations downstate and then two further -- one in Western New York and upstate, all joining in Adobe live in the morning, and then the other states joined in for those time periods so we all met together to cover some specific content, some outlined the expectations of this initiative, and then we went off-line and at the teams all stayed in their location and we did that transition timeline so it was an actual activity for the teams and we also looked at designing action plans and it was very, very kind of tight agenda to walk through. Again, we want to take advantage of distance technology and you have to consider those with logistical or technical nightmares because there surely were some but it was great and here we are at the lighthouse guild that given space and one of our parents came and spoke about her experience participating through the ITTI so it was great to hear that success story and in the wrapup session and the month of May, we will have several success stories from different states, one of Emily's teams will share with us and one of New Jersey teams will share and so it will just be really nice to add that to it and the real-life applications. Here we are. You are all just wrapped with attention, the attention is just with us. Right? So not enough time at all to go through this but I have to say that we just recently had a reflection meeting amongst all of the states who are in this collaborative event or this collaborative initiative and we did a [ Indiscernible ], so looking at what worked and what did not work and the night -- the nice part is that the list of what worked is longer than what did not work. Do not worry. There is another page. And there is a lot of things and I think what we really -- the big part, Tulsa, is we have seen that it has impacted teams in a very positive way and people have been able to move through their initiatives and their activities in a way that they are able to capture next steps better and what have you. So the fact that we have some really great success stories probably speaks for itself. Right? Gail is not going to be happy by the second bullet to the bottom on the right of participation in the NCDB side was really minimal and we really struggle with that because we really want participation on different levels, but teams can only do what they can do and so we have to think -- we always have to keep assessing about what works and it may work for us because we're sitting here in this capacity but it may not work for others. So we have a really -- I think a really nice way to reflect on this initiative and, of course, we have captured evaluation data, self-reported change of knowledge and satisfaction from the teams and we are also doing a pre-/post assessment so we have some really meaty data to reflect on for this long your end initiative and Gail is waving at me so here is my perfect way to say we want you so now is the time that we are back and recruitment phase, we are going to kick off again, for next year so if you are teams are interested, I cannot believe I am saying this out loud -- [ Laughter ] -- if you want to find us, come on board. At this point, what is another 32 states or whatever? So we have our dates already lined up. One piece on lessons learned is that we needed to whittle down the number of web meetings. Once a month, is a little bit much of 14 so we are going to spread them out a little bit and I think that is a direct reflection on the feedback from teams. And that is it. If you have any specific questions about the initiatives, and even if you want to take a look at some of the tools, of course, email me. I am happy to sending salon. We also can add you to the group, to see some tools or what have you. It has been really a great partnership and collaboration and the most important piece we have seen impact in changes. So thank you for the time. And happy transitions. >> Thank you, Susie. You should take your daughter up on her challenge to run the five cake because you struck the time here. That was good. Very good. >> [ Laughter ] >> Next, we will hear from Emily -- Emily Taylor smell from Florida. Thank you to both Susie and Mike. This is great. I am really enjoying it. Emily. Sorry. I have to do something here. >> Welcome. And thank you Susie for setting things up as to what we have kind of done along the way and so I'm going to be able to share with you today something that is very near and dear to my heart, the transition Institute. Giving away some of my stuff already, Gail. >> Did I do this? I did this for every one of you so that nobody will feel slighted I went through to make sure that everything loaded for each presentation and left you all at the end. >> Not a problem. One of the things that we have been taking a look at is that it does take kind of a village to move this transition planning along. So I am going to talk about accessing the dream and really trying to help young people to be empowered. Olivas, we have a large variety of young people who we serve on the senses and what we looked at was for that 5% of young people who are going to be college and career ready, who are going to be able to access group discussions and presentations and role-play. We look at it and said, well, we do so much for our young people who have more complex needs, that sometimes these other young folks -- there is just -- it is just harder to locate them and harder to put some tools together to serve them so this initiative really kind of focus is on that particular group. What I'm going to share -- where are my -- >> The Aeros, Emily, are down at the bottom there. >> Do you have them? But there we go. There we go. We are in the middle of being very ambitious. We are going to be planning for two deaf-blind transition Institute for the summer. The first would be in Alabama. The second is going to be in Kentucky. In Alabama, it will be over the weekend of the 11th through 14 June. And in Kentucky, it will be 18 through 21 of June. The basic theme that we would like to focus on each year and be kind of interpreted a little bit differently each time but generally, it is about self-determination and accuracy for the young people to come together with their families and it to begin to take a look at -- what are some plans for myself? What do I want to do and let me share about other people and what they are planning to do so those of you who are not on the web and I -- you can see that I have a lot of pictures so I will give a little brief description, one that is a large group, about 20 young people, from one of our institutes and they have a picture of -- off-camera is one of the mentors and then in another picture, talking to -- one of our mentors also. I'm going to give you a little bit of background. We have been doing this Institute for about 10 years. It started out originally in Georgia. It kind of goes back to the proverb that Mike started out with. With, you can go fast alone or you can kind of go further when you have more people. So what we looked at is that we might need to join together to pool our resources and to have a large enough pool of young people to really have a very rich activity so started out with Georgia and then of his Georgia and Florida and now we're up to about 14 different states and we had broken out at just being in the southeast region and are beginning to spread into the Midwest and some other areas as well. The reason that we came together was that as deaf-blind projects we had some challenges in reaching out to this particular sector of our census. We realized that we need to inspire the young adults and trained them and their families on what some different things are out there that can enrich and approved their transition experience. The other is that it is a rude awakening going from the school system to the adult services. To the agencies. So we wanted to kind of help foster and build some collaborative relationships. The age-old piece of the limited resources and budgets is always raising its head so we figured that together we can do more by pooling our resources and that we really wanted to sustain networks not only a month us as deaf-blind projects but also with the young adults and their families and that has been a really nice outcomes were many of the young people many years afterwards still stay in contact. Some of the issues that we face with young adults is that especially for this group, many were in regular classes, and they might have been the only young person who had a combination of vision and hearing loss, some may have also been on the -- trying to receive special the club -- diplomas but they felt a bit isolated from sometimes within the school or even within their community. Many times they had limited access to information and virtually nothing related to having both vision and hearing loss and one of the complaints that we continually here is that you have to kind of choose whether you are going to be the blind person or the deaf person and then, always trying to explain the other half of who you are. So we wanted to bring something together that we really looked at the whole person. Also taking a book, Mike talked a little bit about some of the work that Jerry Petrov has done. We looked at some of the outcomes and high unemployment or underemployment, we wanted to see if there was something that we could do to help prepare young people to be more ready when they were getting ready to transition from their high school. A big part was young people may not have really identified themselves as deaf-blind. They were not even aware that there is a deaf-blind community or a deaf-blind culture and so for them, it was really a wonderful awakening when they got to come together and I was with a group who were developing from the Open Hands Open Access modules and one of the young men, George, who is part of that said to me that once he came together with a screw, he could be all of himself and he did not have to choose one side or another. What kind of brings this all together for us as a group during the transition Institute? I have two pictures here, another group where Janie is one of the keynote speakers and then, another role model is Cody [ Indiscernible ] out of Texas. Who is a weight lifter. He is deaf-blind with Usher syndrome. So one of the things that we want to -- we definitely want young people to be self-determined and advocates and we also wanted to take a look at this group and identified who were some young potential leaders. With that, we wanted to make sure that we always provided -- something that always had the result death blind role model to be the key presenters of the young people and families -- is a kind of see that someone has gone before that has had a career, that is raising a family and they can ask questions of how they did it. One -- we wanted to create a space where people can come together and share their gifts and talents with so many young people that are artists were poets words they do things in technology or in clubs and that we always build on a piece where they are able to share and that we motivate others. Pieces of this is that we want to have the young people let us know some of the things that they want. The beauty of this is that because we have a central theme, but we change it each year with the presenters and -- [ Indiscernible -- static ] and that has been very beneficial. From that, the young people [ Indiscernible -- static ] to be members. Family involvement, can be supportive and then, education works well a very strong network of Accomack. >> Amalie, this is galloping I am sorry to interrupt you but suddenly we are getting a bunch of feedback. >> Yeah. >> Are you -- >> Let's try this. Is that better? >> No. Are your speakers off? >> On my computer? >> Yes. >> Let's look and see. >> [ Pause ] >> It was not happening at the beginning. It just happened. >> No. I know. All of a sudden I got it, Tulsa. Nothing else has changed on my end but I hear feedback also. >> By the -- my speakers are down and I am off of the speakerphone. Is everybody else silent? >> Is everybody star 6 muted? >> [ Pause ] >> I will try again. >> There. That is much better. >> Is that better? >> All right. >> I am sorry. >> Go back to the speaker. Is that okay? >> I think it is better if you do not go back to speaker if that is okay. >> All right. So I have a series of picture and I'm looking at which one of the -- recipes for success? One of the pictures I have is Cody doing a presentation where he is doing a barbecue and each of the steps that he is preparing -- he has kind of a piece that it represents. Spending time with a young adult. So I have pictures of Vicki who is going to be are presented this summer. And then also where we have the mentors to do presentations with us. As well. Next, is that we always build in time for planning. The young adults -- we tried to build in time for them to present as well. So even though they may not be mentors, we try to cultivate strength amongst young people. Always build in the technology, to make sure that they are connected to social media so that they can be able to continue to be connected afterwards. Then, one activity that we have done that has been very successful is a Mike is a very creative role-play brighter and we have time where he creates a scenario, depending on our topic, and is outrageously showing the exact wrong way to do things. So we go through a bit and we stopped for a few minutes and talk about it and go back again and the exact same scenario is rewritten in the best way to do it and then we go back to that as well and that is a lot of fun and the kids really enjoy doing that. The last pieces that we always build in some fun time in the evenings and activities because we want to make sure that they build lasting relationships. What we have developed is a toolkit that is on the national DB website and if you would like to implement and build an activity such as this, we have a step-by-step tool that you can take a look at and there are video clips for that, things that even if you would like to pull some pieces out, Susie has written a very nice part if you are doing any type of an event that helps to train the SST's or interpreters or if you're just looking at tips for families or some things that young people have written and a nice video clip of what the family says as well are things that work. So again, national DB.org and you can find it there. What I want to wrap up with with this is to show you some of our young people who have participated in the past and what they are doing now. We are really fortunate that we have been able to keep touch with so many of our young people. So the young people that I'm highlighting and truly this is just a highlight -- I cut my slides down from about 40 where I included all young people to give you a highlight of different people from each state. David and Lisa attended one of the transition Institute and they are all -- and they have graduated from high school. So the first slide I will show you is a picture of George and Divya and they were part of a group that was called deaf-blind young adults in action which is now deaf-blind citizens in action and that cohort group had an opportunity to meet with President Obama in the Oval Office and Divya is interested in reaching out and making a difference for deaf-blind people also attended a Helen Keller world conference in Uganda and she helped to facilitate a two we color color program and George attend the Texas Tech University. He is at -- in honors College and pursuing journalism. He likes jujitsu, Brazilian I fighting and right now he is taking and Asian cooking class and he has no vision and he is just awesome. I have to take advantage of showcasing my daughter. She graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale with a baking and pastry certification and I have a picture of her with a two tier cake, white and with pink flowers. She has been working for the past seven years as a decorator at one of the grocery stores and she has been living on her own in the apartment, one-bedroom apartment on her own for the past year. A young man from New Jersey, John, it's very good with his art and he has developed a website where he sells his original designs. Greeting cards. He has graduated from college and he now works as an assessor and trainer for the national [ Indiscernible ] distribution program. Ashley, from Tennessee is in college and thinking about a career in early childhood. She is also very good with sculptures and she is a wonderful public speaker and one of our mentors. From Mississippi, we have Auto Owners Insurance, a picture of her rubbing a puppy and some of her arts and she does could -- digital computer art and she has gone to hell in color and she is now for independent living training, that she is participating in. Danielle is from Kentucky and she's going to be one of our mentors this year. She is on a partial scholarship that she got from NFB and she also contributed to a BookShare tech presentation that we did at PDM back in 2013. From Nebraska, we have a young man named Matthew. He is the youngest a board member of the national Federation of the blind -- deaf-blind member section, so really nice to have a young voice on that group. From South Dakota, we have Nicole, in college right now. Her goal is to live -- in New York after she graduates and would love to be a historian for a museum. From South Carolina, we had either party, she did attend college and she is very artistic, I have a picture of her with her two adorable sons, one of her sons is supporting one of her knitting creation, a had that kind of has a chicken and she sells some of her creations on a Facebook site. From Georgia, I had Jake and Kevin. They have been mentors for the transition Institute and these young men are technical gurus and contribute to many technical forms and the Jake enjoys being a DJ and Kevin has done a lot of things when he was especially in high school, with 4-H and won many awards and also runs a technical forum himself. Eddie, also from Georgia, is going to be graduating next year from Gallaudet in business administration and he is a health enthusiast and he has a blog on deaf-blind advocate so that is just a highlight of some of the young people who have gone through our Institute that give back and it is just a really kind of neat. We had one evening that we were chatting on messenger and by the time a week or so had passed, there were -- there were 16 young people that had joined on and had met each other from the different institutes. So congratulations, fireworks flashing for the different things that we have done and the initiatives related to transition. So that is it for me. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Emily. Going to stop sharing and now, this is an opportunity, if you want to show up -- turn your cameras on. You can. I will make this a little bigger but if any of you have questions about any of these efforts, about the national word that Mike is organizing in the TWG, Susie's work with multiple states in the ITTI work or Emily's work with the probably -- what? Other 10 states? Joining in the two transition Institute that will happen in June. Now is an opportunity to ask questions or share ideas. >> [ Pause ] >> You can start -- star 6 to unmute. >> [ Pause ] >> I think we just astonished them and their mouths are gaping open and they cannot even put words together. >> I know. I think that is it while. Everybody say -- we did not know half of what was going on. >> This is Emily. I was just looking at the commented that she would like to find out may be some of the young people doing -- some of the websites and to be able to support -- that is one of the goals that we have is to -- on our transition site, building a little bit more -- we will be able to highlight some of those talents that people have and put you together with their websites. I had to cut a lot of some of the young people I want to highlight it because when young lady -- she actually owns her own photography company and she is available to do all kinds of different things and she is living in Tennessee but is also out of Georgia. Lots of opportunities. >> Hi. Tony. >> This is Tony from Mississippi. I just wanted to put out there that, great job, everyone, by the way. Just awesome work and the recap -- I just wanted to put out there that I -- private chatted with Suzy to ask because I wanted to make sure that the young adults targeted under ITTI and in that whole process included the whole entire range of possible students. That we all know. On our projects. So I was asking her, for myself, so that I could think broader but I also thought, you know, maybe others might need that push as well to join in. If they know that it does not matter at all what type of student we are talking about. >> All right. That is it. Goodbye, you all. >> Yes. This is is a, and that is a great point and I should have mentioned that obviously the transition planning for all, it does not matter in terms of life experience and kind of even outcomes because all of our kids will exit the school system, so it is transition planning across the board. We have kind of in the past split into sort of track a back door track B and so have identified some different tools for teams who may be going in different directions so there are definitely ways to address all of the needs but yes, good point, I think that any team could jump in and could adopt this but I was teasing before that of course we would love more teams to drain and actually once you get past two, it does not really matter. So if you really actually were considering to recruit some teams and to join us, I would be happy to have a conversation about it because it is actually a bit of an easier running machine at this point than in the beginning. >> [ Pause ] >> This is Emily. We are in the still planning phases of the Institute and what we have done is projects to help to support this, we contribute $500 to the pot and then the host -- put together a variety of different things but I do not think that any of my team members will kill me if I say that if some of your states -- you may have a young person and if -- thinking that this would be a great opportunity for them to join in, if you can get them there and there will be a transportation fee and the pickup for people from airports, we will be caravan -- Carol Vining folks in the van so if you can get them and you want to,, come on down in June and it is going to be fun in either location. >> I know that last year both the ITTI work and the Southeast regional team at work, you guys met sort of off team time to get this work going. Have you thought about how you might use Summit this year at all? >> [ Pause ] >> Yes. This is Suzy. When we had our reflection called recently we talked about how important it will be to have some face-to-face time for all of the states and it -- and then to reflect and have a solid plan moving forward and then also to keep it as an open platform if new states wanted to join in and learn more about it so we did that face-to-face at the real face-to-face PDM last year and that was very beneficial. Yes. We definitely will take advantage of that time together. >> [ Pause ] >> This is Emily. We will do the same. We will reconvene and begin to talk a little bit about which state -- which state might like to host the following year and that open up to any other states that want to come in and join. >> Emily, would you imagine that over time you might get -- I mean, these have always been sort of geographically held in the southeast, maybe there might be an opportunity to hold them in other areas of the country? >> It is up to the -- who wants to host them. I guess this time around, we will pull from Ohio and Indiana. We are ready to travel. And expand. The reason that we are having two this year is because we wanted to kind of reach out to some other states that maybe have not been able to be a part of this before. So we are able to kind of pull that out and we want to have it and pull from those states. Absolutely. >> [ Pause ] >> This is Suzy. I have been at several of Emily's -- of these transition events because she has roped me and for some communication supports. Coordinating interpreters and SSP said of course these events you really cannot compare them because getting the teams together who sometimes have never met, of course, another deaf-blind person, it is so empowering to be a part of that and to see the impact that it makes. Lifelong changes. So kind of the partnering of the ITTI initiative and the transition weekends. I mean, you could not have I think a more powerful plan, thinking about empowering the teams and then empowering the student. >> I want to say that something that I had said to Jake three or four years ago, we can do TA for several years with a team and it is just transformative where you see young people go in a matter of three or four days. They come back end of -- energized and they are on top of it. Young people who thought that they were just -- did not have any goal at all as to what they were going to do -- being able to come back and tell their team what their self-determination means and what things are that other people are doing that they are then part of the global Explorers. I want to do it. So they are energized and it moves the teams so much further than what we can do on around. -- On our own. >> [ Pause ] >> Any other questions or comments? >> [ Pause ] well, I am with Linda. I am clapping. That was great. I really appreciate all of you, the three of you, coming together to share all of this really rich information with us. And thank you for everybody who showed up. That is great. We will put the PowerPoint if that is okay with Emily and Mike and Suzy up in the transition work group with a little summary and link to the recording so that you will be able to find all of the resources in the transition workgroup. Anything else? >> [ Pause ] >> We are right on time. Thanks again. We will see you all soon. See you all in Salt Lake. >> Thank you, everybody. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, everybody. Thank you all for hosting. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Goodbye. >> Goodbye. >> [ Event Concluded ]