S10 E6: Inclusive Education for Diverse Needs (including visual needs) with Dr. Avien Henry

This episode of Practical Access features Avien Henry, the Principal of the Children's Learning Center at Helen Keller Services. During this episode, she, along with Drs. Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines provide valuable insights into early childhood education for children with special needs. Dr. Henry's experience and strategies offer practical advice for educators and parents seeking to create supportive, inclusive, and effective learning environments for young learners with diverse needs. Also, she discusses the unique approaches and tools used in her preschool program to support diverse learners.

Resources
Link to Taptillo: https://www.taptilo.com/

Key Points Discussed:

1.  Dr. Henry's Background and School Overview:  Dr. Henry details her transition from working in public schools to her current role at a preschool specializing in children with visual impairments, autism, and other multiple disabilities. 

2. Transitioning to Specialized Early Education: Insights on shifting from a general education setting to a niche school focusing on early intervention and specialized needs.

3. Parental Partnerships and Communication: Emphasis on working closely with parents as partners and maintaining open communication to understand each child's needs better.

4. Classroom Setup and Instructional Strategies: Utilizing visuals and tactile elements, structured and small group activities, and specialized programs like touch math to support learning.

5. Movement and Safety in Classroom: Balancing the need for movement with safety, especially for visually impaired students. Strategies include guided exploration and consistent classroom layouts.

6. Inclusive and Structured Environments: Creating inclusive classrooms that cater to various needs while maintaining structure. Importance of functional and purposeful classroom setups.

7. Technology in Early Education: Discuss technology like Tactillo, a tactile device linked to an app that facilitates braille learning for visually impaired students.

8. Early Intervention and Advice for Parents: Dr. Henry stresses the importance of early intervention and encourages parents to seek support and trust their instincts regarding their child's development.

9. Closing Thoughts: Dr. Henry advises parents and educators to be proactive in supporting early childhood education and to seek appropriate resources and interventions.

Transcript

Lisa Dieker: 
Welcome to Practical Access. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Rebecca Hines: 
And I'm Rebecca Hines. Lisa, I'm so excited because today's guest is going to talk to us about a population of kids, both age-wise and ability-wise, that we haven't had a lot of opportunity to explore.

Lisa Dieker: 
Yeah, we're super excited to have with us today Dr. Avien Henry. And Dr. Henry, we will let you kind of tell us a little bit about what you do and about your school to help our listeners frame the great conversation we're going to have today.

Dr. Henry: 
Great. So again, I'm Dr. Avien Henry. I'm the current principal here at the Children's Learning Center at Helen Keller Services. We are a preschool program in Brooklyn, NY. We service students ages three to five years old with special needs. Our specialty is students with visual impairments and other multiple disabilities, and we do also have a large population of students on the autism spectrum as well as some kiddos with Down syndrome.

Lisa Dieker: 
Got it. Well, we're so excited to have you.

Rebecca Hines: 
Yeah, that's great. So we have a lot of questions for you. So let me start by framing this. My understanding is, did you come into this position working with this really specific group of children? Did you come into this from a general background? My understanding is you were an administrator elsewhere, and now you've come into this really niche school. So can you just tell us a little bit about going from one more broad setting into this one?

Dr. Henry: 
Yeah, most definitely. I always say I came back home because when I started my career in special education, I was a TA in a school similar to the one that I'm in now. And after a while, getting my special Ed degree, I did go on to the public school setting, which again, I was in a very niche position. I was in district 75, which is the largest special education district in the United States here in New York City. And I was an assistant principal there for a while, K-8 setting. But I really, really missed being with the babies. That's where my heart has always been. I love early intervention. I love preschool. I love really setting that foundation. I took the position here at Helen Keller because of the shift in the population of students, right? We specialize at Helen Keller in students with visual impairments, but there's been this large increase of kiddos on the spectrum. And being a vendor of the Department of Education, we do have to be open to preschoolers with various disabilities. So they started taking a lot of kiddos with autism and really wanted a principal who understood that population as well as the other disabilities. So that's how I ended up taking this position. For me, it was a mesh of everything that I really love and really like to work in. So that preschool setting along with the kiddos with autism, so I enjoy it here.

Lisa Dieker: 
Well, you know you're after my own heart. So you know I'm flashing back here as I sit and listen to you. So I'm actually the parent of a young man with today we know Tourette's and a learning disability. But one of his really difficult ticks was a tick of his eyeball, and we didn't know it. And so, you know, again, we believe you know that got in the way of reading early. And so I'm going to put on my parent hat for a moment, and if I knew what I knew today, I probably would, you know, first of all, I would be driving to New York and putting them in your school. But I would love to hear your advice, and for those parents, often in three to five, we don't know what's going on. We just, we can smell it, we can fill it, we live with it, we go home to it and cry just like any parent does over a tantrum, but we feel like the tantrums or the struggles are different. What do you tell parents when they drop their three-year old off to you? You know, what are some things that reassure them that, you know, it is a different world today, and as you said, you're the change agent making it happen? What advice would you give the Lisa Dieker several decades ago dropping her three-year-old off at your school to kind of help me get started, especially in the relation of not being able to read and struggling with the visual part?

Dr. Henry: 
Yeah, I think most definitely, the fact that we're here to work as partners with you, right? So if there are any issues, our door's open. Any questions, anything that you're wondering about that you can definitely access, we are here in order to support you as well as you are here to support us. So we always say the parent is the first teacher. So knowing as well what's going on at home, what are the issues you're seeing, how are you able to communicate with your child, and what are you seeing going on in the home setting helps us understand as well what's happening in the classroom. And then we're able to communicate back and forth. And I think just having the idea that we can have mutual trust really helps our parents feel comfortable with us. We have kind of an open-door policy here, so our classrooms are set up where there is a full window screen at every door. So parents are able to peek in during the day and see what's going on so that we are able to really gain that trust in them because it's really hard, especially at that age where they're young and you're not sure what's going on, to trust somebody else with your child. But having that open door and that communication, I think really helps.

Rebecca Hines: 
You know, that's a great statement to remind us all that parents are the first teachers. So I'm just curious coming into a specialized school such as this as the person peeking in the windows, what are some very specific things that you see your great teachers doing with kids that are something that could carry over at home for any of our listeners who have their own children or are working with young children with these kinds of needs?

Dr. Henry: 
OK, so there are a couple of things. I know for me, so I'm also a board-certified behavior analyst, and one of the things that I've really tried to put in place here are evidence-based practices that can really work, not just with our kiddos on the spectrum but for all of our students. So all of our classrooms have very specific structure in place. So peeking in the windows, you're definitely going to see a lot of visuals in the classrooms for our kids on the spectrum. And then our kiddos in the classrooms that have visual impairments, you'll see those same visuals but they'll probably be enlarged. They're accompanied by Braille, there's a lot of physical symbols for them. So you might see, you know, there's a picture symbol for lunch, but in the visual classroom for that kiddo with visual impairments, there's a spoon that represents lunch for them so they can feel what's happening next, right? So that's one of the things I really try to make sure and all of my teachers do on a regular basis is really having those visuals and those symbols that help students know what's happening next. We have a unique population. We have some kiddos who are on the spectrum and visually impaired, right? Imagining that, you know, there's all of these things going on with your senses. You can't see, there's, you know, you have the lack of understanding when it comes to structure and things like that. You really do need a lot of information and visuals and input to understand the world around you and what's happening next. So making sure those things are present is one of the most important things in all of our classrooms. So peeking in, you'll definitely see a lot of that. You'll see a lot of small group work. We have some large group work sections, but the majority of the time, our kiddos are in groups of two and three being led by one of our teachers or teacher assistants or one of our therapists so that they're really getting the content and the skills that they need in a smaller group setting so we can help them really master them before they move on to kindergarten.

Lisa Dieker: 
Right, and I love that, and I can just imagine what that looks like. I love this spoon example as a really good clear example. So one of my passions and love and some work that we're actually working on here at the University of Kansas is access to numeracy. You know, we've done better for visual impairments with literacy. I mean, again, as you know, it's not perfect, but it's definitely much different than it was 100 years ago and even five years ago. But I'm curious what I might see in the numeracy realm that might resonate with teachers because that's an area that often we're pretty resource-limited in the field of special education that might help kids with those basic numbers and understanding representation and concrete materials in the mathematics world.

Dr. Henry: 
Yeah, I mean, I think this is something, just in general for preschoolers, having access to a lot of manipulatives, right? I know that one of the things we use in one of our classrooms is touch math. So touch math has the large numbers and the different physical parts to it as well so that they're able to get that one-to-one correspondence right. Just in the natural world too, just walking around and counting things. I know for us, we do a lot of walking throughout the school. We're very unique because we're a school within an office so they do a lot of walking around the school as well as the office. So they're able to touch things. All of our walls, it's very unique, we have tiles on them. So a lot of times they'll walk through and just grazing across the wall, they're able to feel the number of tiles that are on each wall so that even helps just embedding it throughout the natural day and throughout the activities that you do naturally in the classroom really helps our kids gain those concepts.

Lisa Dieker: 
Love it, thank you.

Rebecca Hines: 
So those are all some fantastic points, and even for myself in training and teachers, the idea, you know, we do visual schedules all the time for different populations of kids but adding that textile, you know, approach that, that I mean tactile approach that allows them to feel it, that's a great reminder even for me as I'm trying to prepare teachers for kids of all abilities. But I'm curious, can you tell us a little bit, I'm going to broaden it back out just a little bit about what are the percentages of different types of kids at your school? I'm just trying to envision, you know, what percentage of kids may be on the spectrum versus the percentage with hearing loss. I'm trying to wrap my mind around how this is going.

Dr. Henry: 
Yeah, so right now we have a large percentage on the autism spectrum. I would say about 70% of our students are on the autism spectrum, and then we have another 10% who are visually impaired but within that visual impairment, we have kids who have other disabilities with their visual impairment, and then the next 10% is a combination of our kids with Down syndrome. We have some unique disabilities. There's just been a large increase of kiddos on the spectrum.

Rebecca Hines: 
Yeah, I think we're seeing that everywhere, and I know that parents are eager and desperate to find, you know, places to get support, especially for the young children because it's difficult to know what these kids will be able to do when they enter kindergarten and so that kind of intensive support I know is important and very welcomed.

Dr. Henry: 
Yes, most definitely, and like I said, we have that unique population of the overlap between autism and visual impairment, which we have quite a number of those kids over the past two years.

Lisa Dieker: 
Well, and it's a given, you know, in most of our podcasts somewhere we mentioned the word universal design for learning and it, and it's a given that that's kind of in the DNA of your lessons, but I am curious about one aspect that I think also we struggle with that, you know, all three-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and five-year-olds like to move, and yet you have some unique opportunities because I don't want to be touched when I move and when I do move, I can see that you're moving and it's dangerous. So how do you kind of, you know, help us understand if we were in your school visiting what are some things you do to help promote movement but also safety of movement because I think that's a big struggle for a lot of younger teachers and teachers that have children that are younger, yes, not younger teachers.

Dr. Henry: 
Yeah, most definitely. The thing is too, we do encourage it a lot. We have actually two movement programs going on here. We have visiting teachers that come in and help with that, but just in the classroom in general promoting the movement, guiding the students so we really wanted to promote independence as well. But at the same time, we want to promote the safety of our students. So with visually impaired kids, maybe just giving them a finger to move forward, we promote a lot of verbal direction with our visually impaired kids — what is in front of you, what is behind you, what is the side of you, next to you, what area of the room you're in. One of the things we do at the beginning of the year is just taking in our visually impaired kids before any other kid is in. We give them their own time to go in and touch and discover the classroom. We try not to move furniture around too much for those kids because once they learn the setting, that's what they know. So having that availability as well for them so when we are doing a movement into activity in the morning meeting area, they kind of already know the space around them. But again, having the staff there to really monitor and make sure they don't bump into anything too hard, but again, it's giving them that independence, providing them with opportunities to learn the area and the classroom and not changing things around too much. We spend a lot of time setting up the classrooms before the kids start to just make sure that the teachers are comfortable with it as well as them thinking about what may happen throughout the school year.

Rebecca Hines: 
I love it. So my final question is what I'm hearing from you. If I were a teacher in a classroom that here in Florida would be considered either varying is exceptionalities or multi varying exceptionalities for kids who are more high-need students, two things that I've heard you say one is structure. I love that you explained you can have both structure and movement. Structure doesn't mean we can't move; it just means we structure the movement. I love the idea of having things on the walls to help our kids with visual and probably also help with kids with ASD who just like to have a routine and a pattern and visual schedules that may be literally visual but might also be tactile or whatever else is needed. Is there anything else I would need to know if I were setting up a classroom to be so inclusive of different disabilities so not a whole school? Let's say I'm in a regular public school, but I'm setting up a classroom beyond those two things. Do you have any other specific tips that come to mind?

Dr. Henry: 
I think the other thing that I would think about, and this goes for visual impairments and autism, is always thinking about what you're putting on the walls as it relates to do we actually need it? Is it functional? I think, especially as a new teacher, you want your classroom to look pretty, and you want to have all these wonderful things on the wall, but if it's not serving a purpose, it can become very distracting for our kids with visual impairments and our kiddos on the spectrum; it can become overstimulating for them. So really thinking about and being intentional about what you're putting on the wall and asking yourself does this serve a purpose for my students? Is this going to help them be more independent? Is this going to help them learn a new skill? Is this going to help me structure the school day? If the answer is no to any of those, then you might not need it on the wall. So I think for me, that's one of the biggest things when I look at the population that I'm serving right now. 

Lisa Dieker: 
I love the theme less is more. So my last question is gonna be is more, more, or less, less better, you know, and that would be in the theme of technology. So I'm kind of curious, you know, like I love seeing AI. I often when I'm with my wonderful friends who consider themselves a blind person, they teach me technology I didn't even know I needed to know. But I'm kind of curious what you're seeing is either AI or some basic technology that you found really helpful specifically for kids with visual needs because that's not just a low incidence population; it's one that most technology is visual. And I'm kind of curious what you're seeing as kind of game-changers or things that are emerging that you found helpful for this young population.

Dr. Henry: 
So this school year, I came across something really, really cool. I have a couple of kids right now who are visually impaired but they are just visually impaired, so they are pretty much typically developing for preschoolers. They are ready to start learning their letters and learning how to read. I came across a device called Taptillo, and Taptillo is pretty cool. It's a tactile device that links to an app, and it allows our kiddos to simply learn Braille but through touch. It's simple Braille. It breaks it down by letters, and then the kids can move up to word sight words and multiple-letter words. I really like the app because it has a physical device, but it also has the app. I like the fact it has the app because we can link it to the teachers' phones as well as the parents' phones, and they're able to also learn Braille and learn what the Braille looks like as a child is learning it and seeing what words they're up to. So to me, that was one of the most amazing devices I found this year, and we're starting to implement it with three of our students, and we're super excited about it because it also allows that parent connection as well because it has the app that goes along with it.

Lisa Dieker: 
Yeah, and I know Braille is the game-changer for future employment, which is interesting because most schools don't teach it, and yet we know that we've, we have a Ph.D. student who not only knew Braille but was, you know, a wizard in using that tool. But again, the accessibility of that often isn't available. So that's good to know, and we will definitely link that to our website for the podcast that folks have a chance. So any last words of wisdom you would like to give families before we wrap up today?

Dr. Henry: 
If you are looking for a school or you're thinking something's going on with your child, then follow your heart. Definitely look into what may be going on. An early intervention and preschool are one of the game-changers again to get that going and really get some good support in that area to get our kiddos as independent as possible so that they can have a great foundation for the rest of their schooling. 

Lisa Dieker: 
Well, thank you, Dr. Avian Henry. We appreciate you and your leadership, and if you have questions for us, listeners, please send them to our Facebook page on Practical Access, or you can send us a tweet at Access Practical. Thank you again. 

Dr Henry: 
Thank you!