Finding the Spark and Fanning the Flame - Child Centred Team Process
January 16th and 17th
On January 16th and 17th, over 100 people from around the province met at Sunny Hill Hospital in Vancouver to participate in two days of inspiring and energetic workshops led by Linda Burkhart. Linda was making a return visit after her highly successful workshops in Victoria and Vancouver last year. Building on these past introductions to supporting switch-using students, this year Linda demonstrated specific strategies for working with students with complex and challenging physical, visual and communication needs.
The first morning, participants were introduced to concepts and strategies for learning and multi-modal communication for students with severe multiple challenges. In the afternoon, Linda demonstrated these in action while she worked one-on-one with a SET-BC student guest. To facilitate this important demonstration, Linda worked with the student in a private room while a closed circuit television system broadcast to workshop participants in the main room. Once Linda had completed her work with the student, she led a discussion with the whole group specifically focusing on dynamic assessment and the use of switches to support choice and decision making.
On the second day of workshops, Linda facilitated four school based teams from Vancouver Island, Prince George, and the Lower Mainland as they presented video case studies of their students. After viewing the presentations, groups of workshop participants worked together through the dynamic assessment and intervention observation process to bring questions and suggestions to the school based teams. Linda facilitated the larger discussions, adding important direction and clarification. While groups worked, Linda was able to meet individually with the school based teams to help them move forward with their students’ educational program.
Workshop participants felt they were very actively involved over the two days and particularly enjoyed the opportunity to see actual video footage of students and their teams. Comments from participants included…
“Linda’s practical suggestions, video-taped segments and responses to questions were extremely helpful to my learning.”
“As an Educational Assistant I found the examples of what works or doesn’t work with each child so valuable. I have taken back many ideas to try. I wish all the EA’s in our district could listen to Linda and be inspired.”
“Wow…So many wonderful things to try – simple ones I should have known – more complex ones that will make a considerable change…Linda’s knowledge is so wonderful but her risk taking on doing a new workshop with a live component was impressive, useful, and of spectacular importance for us to see…we are all the better for spending two days with her.”
We were so pleased to host Linda for the two days and really appreciate the work, effort and energy that both she and the five school based teams contributed to make this workshop such a great success. For more information on Linda and Partner Assisted Communication Strategies, please visit www.lindaburkhart.com.