Linda Burkhart
May 2007
More information regarding Linda Burkhart's work and resources
can be obtained from www.lindaburkhart.com
Linda Burkhart visited BC recently and presented two informative and inspiring workshops for BC educators who teach students with multiple challenges.
SET-BC Region 1 was very pleased to host Linda's workshop "Switching for Success: Access for Children with Severe Physical and/or Multiple Challenges". Over 60 teachers, educational assistants, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and SET-BC District Partners attended from Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. Linda demonstrated "light tech" to "high tech" approaches to motivate and teach skills in the areas of play, emergent literacy, and communication.
Linda then traveled to the Lower Mainland, where SET-BC Region 2 and Coquitlam School District hosted her presentation on "Developing Vision and Communication Skills for Children with Cortical Visual Impairments and Multiple Challenges." She described how to support the development of vision for these students, highlighting the work of Dr. Christine Roman, for an audience of 100 education and health professionals. Participants also learned about partner-assisted scanning and saw the positive impact of this approach through Linda's large collection of student videos.
Linda's workshops were described as "awesome", "fabulous", "dynamic", "wonderful", and "terrific". Many participants referred to Linda's energy, enthusiasm and passion, and appreciated her wealth of experience, illustrative video clips, sample materials, and many, many practical ideas. In summary, each workshop was a "very engaging day filled with practical information." Participants reported that they were excited to take the new information and strategies they’d learned back to share with their districts and implement for their students.