It's almost the holiday time. And instead of just doing fun lessons, let's do something that actually increase our students’ daily living skills, interdependence, and social skills along with their O&M all at the same time..

Links mentioned:
The Three Stages of Relationships by HealthyPeople, Blog

Transcript of the Episode:

Welcome back to the podcast! I think we say this every year but where did it go? All of a sudden, I'm taking out my scarves, and I'm bundling up with my hats and my jackets. And it's wonderful outside and cold. And I was around this other hemisphere. And I look back and the year has flown by. I feel like this year flew by faster than ever before. And as it is December when you are listening to this, and really not that far from December when I'm recording it. It's my absolute favourite time of year.

In the symposium Facebook group, we are having so much fun getting to know each other, we had a fake Friendsgiving potluck. And people said what they would bring to that and it was really cool to see their personalities come out, we'll be having more fun things going on in that group as we get closer to the symposium. And I have some really fun ideas to how to increase our community and networking as we get closer and into the actual symposium. If you haven't seen the agenda for the symposium yet, it is already out. So please go check it out because this year is going to be better than ever before. And we have people coming from all over the world. This global opportunity is one of my favourite ways to connect with people in the most efficient way possible.

Now, as an introvert, I still love getting together with people giving them hugs and saying hello. But as a mom of two, and somebody who pays for my own way to all the conferences and all that jazz. Sometimes the travel and being away from my family for an extended amount of time is just not possible to be able to have this elevated perspective. And these truly international conference level presentations at our fingertips, where we can get together with our local group of friends. And we can see some people or we can be at home by ourselves if that's what we want to do. Or we can be at work. Or we can cancel all of our students, which I highly recommend. So that way you can be focused right there. Or if you still have students that you need to see throughout the day, you can hop in and out and see them without really missing a beat because you still have access to all the presentations after the conference.

And so as we get into December, and we're really looking forward to all of the things that December typically brings. Here in the northern hemisphere, it gets darker outside, we bundle up some more things feel a little bit cosier people put lights on their houses. And we really lean into the season of giving, and the season of celebrating. There are so many avenues and opportunities for us to help our learners grow in ways that step outside of our usual boxes that we've typically kept ourselves in.

In clarity this month, we're talking a lot about soliciting assistance, and social skills specifically because you can travel all day and be independent and get to where you want to go. But once you're there, you're going to want to interact with somebody. And if you have trouble along the way, you're going to want to have the skills to be able to get the help that you need, and do so in a polite way that doesn't have people feeling pity for you, because there's no reason for a person with a visual impairment to have pity on them that society can sometimes put on them. And let's Face it, we pretend like we're an independent species like, Oh, I've got this by myself. But really, we need other people, we are interdependent species.

So during the month of December, I'm going to be hosting a workshop and our community call all based around increasing social skills, and how our learners can find a level of interdependence. And possibly help break them out of their mould of how they view themselves and their identity, especially if they're working through learned helplessness, which isn't their fault. It happens very often by well-meaning families, and loved ones. But don't worry, if you're in clarity, and your students are killing it in the area of social skills, and you're having an issue with something else, you know, you can always come on in to those workshops and community calls and still get whatever question that you have going on at that time, answered by myself and your community.

So in today's podcast episode, let's give you a little structure to this so that you can focus on other things while you're listening. We're going to go through three stages of development. And then we're going to go into lesson plan ideas, because it's really important for you to understand why I'm even bringing this up. Why are we not just making hot cocoa this year? I mean, we could, that's fun. But there are ways to elevate it. There are three stages of development when it comes to our dependence for independence, and then interdependence. And I have to give credit to Isaac Mila, who wrote this article on WordPress, and it just brought everything down to a level that I could understand it and share it with you without being too jargony. So thank you to him for his blog post. And what he says in here is dependence is the earliest stage, it's where everybody is born. This is a state where you as a person, you depend on other people for all of your primal needs. And he says that a dependent person believes that the world owes them everything that they need. It's good for a season. But as we get older, being too dependent on other people, will hinder us naturally achieving our highest potential, I ended that part.

And then we get into the stage of independence. And then this is the second stage of maturation. This is where you begin to take responsibility for your life, where the person begins to realise that they are responsible for their life and the choices that they make. In the article, The Three Stages of Relationships by HealthyPlace, they mentioned that the stage of dependence lasts until about the age of 15. And then from about 15 to 20, is a stage of independence. And now we don't just end there, we have all of those skills, like sometimes we are dependent upon other people to meet our needs. Sometimes we are independent, and we can meet our own needs.But then the next stage, which HealthyPlace puts at the age of about 20 and above, is interdependence.

Now, interdependence is when we realise that we can accomplish much more of a network with other people, so we help other people and other people help us. This is where I think the great quote from Helen Keller, I mean, all of our quotes are great, right? But this one really helps to understand when she says ”Alone, we can do little. Together, we can do so much.” As we're looking at age appropriateness of these skills. One could argue that being interdependent, or trying to increase those skills in our young learners is not age appropriate. 

And honestly, I'm gonna disagree with that point right there. Because we can all always be increasing our skills in the area of our independence and our social skills, and our independent and daily living skills. Because those opportunities that we get as children in order to better ourselves, they allow us to bring those skills into the future. And we get to then rely on the past memory of them. And we know that confidence is built simply by doing things. You can have confidence that something is going to work when you've already done it. And one of the mistakes that happens a lot of the time is that our learners and our students don't have enough lived experiences. When it's time to go out into the world. This isn't just something that happens with people with visual impairments but with people all around.

I remember being in college, and some of my friends didn't know how to do their laundry, they didn't know how to make a simple meal for themselves, simply because I guess it was overlooked in our childhood and adolescence. In my family, that was not an option, you had to do your own laundry. When I was 16, I was grocery shopping for the whole family. And at that time, man, I thought so many negative things about my mother. But then I was able to have those skills when I got older and when I moved out. Now, I still had to call her for some recipes. But you know, I could like, do things for myself that my friends did not know how to do.

But it's the holidays. So let's take this information and have some fun with it. I've got a few really great lesson plan ideas for you, that will help you guys celebrate the holidays in a really fun and giving manner while still working towards yes, of course, O&M but also all of the other areas in ECC. You can increase the difficulty of any of these lesson plans or decrease them, given your exact learners needs at this moment.

Ways to Stay Positive:

A few things that I've really been diving into and learning about that are more personal and professional this time.

1. Plan a Party

• First Day
  Yes, plan a full blown party. And I bet you're like, oh my gosh, I can't do that in the 45 minutes that I have. You're right. You can't. I mean, you could. But it would be difficult. I like to take this as a full unit, I remember being in a training for students with deaf-blindness, and learning about the importance of backward planning. And we all know the importance of backward chaining, love some backward chaining. It's kind of like that. But this is a conceptual idea of backward planning.
  When you think about it, it's not just students with deaf-blindness that need this skill of thinking abstractly and planning backwards. Everybody needs it. Kids are so in the moment, oftentimes what they're thinking, which is beautiful. But as we get older, the ability to plan backwards sets us up for success as adults trying to get jobs, making plans with our friends and enjoying celebrations. So on the first day, you're going to need about a month or so, for this unit. For four lessons. If you see the student twice a week. On the first lesson, you plan the events on the calendar. Now work backwards from the date of whatever party and it doesn't have to be in December, you can do it in January. But December's always really fun. And then you can incorporate budgeting into this lesson plan as well and theme of the event, who you're going to find, what foods you're going to get.
  Here are some party themes that have worked really well for me, pancake parties. So in that case, this was very teacher heavy, because you need a lot of help, but we had a base matter. And then each student could choose their own ingredients and then make pancakes. I will say that there's a little bit of morbidity in this, because with my younger students, the consequence of getting hit by a car is called getting smashed like a pancake. So that's where the idea for the pancake party came from because nobody got smashed like a pancake. You can also do a holiday themed party under the school year party birthday parties. In this case, it's December, a holiday celebration is not out of the norm.
  Now if your whole class is doing this, even better. If you work at a residential school and you have a whole class, or if you work in an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary team, and you can get the teacher on board or they're already planning a party, then have your student take some of the responsibility. Maybe they send out the invitations, maybe they bring aside. They don't have to do all of it. But as long as they are contributing in some way they're going to get something out of it. And of course you don't have to do all of these lessons. I know we only have two weeks in December and as you're listening to this, you may only have one week left and that's A-Okay. As always take what you need. Come back to it whenever it suits you. And there's no pressure at all to be perfect.

• Second Day
  You'll send out the invitations. This can also be grouped into day one. But if you're going to really make it like an O&M focused lesson, you can easily go to the post office you can include address system, you can buy the stamps, you can solicit assistance at the post office. You can include Braille or any literacy medium by filling out the invitations or making invitations on the computer, you can include assistive technology, the more than the student gets hands on with these activities, the more that it becomes project based learning and not just a lesson plan.

• Third Day
  You go shopping for the items. Maybe you guys are having games, maybe you're doing food items, this is a good chance to again, solicit assistance. This is a good chance to talk about how you act at a grocery store. This is a good chance to talk about the layout of the store, what kinds of things they sell, this is a good time to bring in budgeting include math skills, monocular skills, you name it, you could do it at a store, and you're not outside in this room. Bonus.

• Fourth Day
  This ​​is where you actually make the food items. Here's some food items that have worked really well for me in the past, I mentioned the pancake thing. And you can have your student make the batter. In America, there's like a batter kind where you put water in it and then you just shake it up super easy. They don't have to measure a bunch of stuff. And you could do it that way. I really like pudding because every cafeteria has milk and pudding mixes, you can just keep in a drawer and just have that whenever or hot cocoa; always a good one. Same thing. You just need milk and water and a cup and the microwave. Popcorn, chips and dip you can easily get like ranch packets or onion, dip packets and mix it with whatever the student can eat; sour cream, cream cheese, just make it a really, really simple ingredient right there. Or even just hummus if you want to buy that at the store.
  I also like to include cutting here, especially with my students who have OT goals and softer cheeses tend to be really easy to cut with the knives that you can get at the cafeteria or go ask your OT or PT if they have a knife that the student can use. And of course, crackers and fruit trays, although those can kind of get expensive, but they're still really easy. And then of course you can do things that all kids like like goldfish cheez its, pretzels. I mean, you name it, there's so many different options. That just depends on what your goals are and how much time you have and how much money you have. As always, I avoid peanuts, and anything that any student is going to have a dietary restriction to. So you can ask this teachers about allergies. And if your school has any rules about sugar, definitely follow those. You can have a lot of fun without too much sugar.

• Fifth Day
  Have the party. So you can make this until just one planning day and one actual party day. You can skip the planning and just go to the store. You can skip most of it and just go to the post office about sending invitations out. I mean, you can do so many different things in such a short amount of time with very little money to have a fun celebration. And even if it's just you and your student, you can make it really fun and really easy. You can also get mug cakes now. They like sell them at the store in the cake section. That would be a cute idea.

2. Buying Gifts

Soliciting assistance to buy gifts for a toy drive a food bank or gifts for their family. This is really easy and simple to do. But again, you can make it as long and elaborate of a unit as you'd like. I really like incorporating units into my orientation and mobility classes because it helps tie everything in together. And the unit is just more than one lesson plan that builds on itself. Just like any other class would have units of lessons. That way, they're not jumping from one idea to the next to the next and it allows our brains to simulate the information which we are all about. And again using the sun interact with the community in a way that helps your students gain independence skills, social skills and self determination skills will only help them in the long run. You can include budgeting identifying concepts around store, maps around stores cardinal directions. If you use those indoors, you can travel to the store there are so many different things that you can do within that. If you want to go to some stores that have some cheaper toys, that dollar store is always good Dollar General tends to have more things than just the dollar store. Five Below if you're in the United States. Some Walmart's and the spots section at Target are always good go-tos. You can always go to a boutique place as well, but they tend to have more expensive items. And then just have fun with it December!

These three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas here in the United States are really about reconnecting with your student having fun or rebuilding that relationship. And focusing more on the heart centred activities than necessarily HARD TO GO GO GO GO GO activities that you will jump right back into in January.

Speaking of January, I'm really excited for 2022 I haven't announced anything formally yet. But since you and I are like besties, I wanted to share with you that on top of the symposium happening January 26th till 28th, we’re also going to be focusing a lot on increasing the deliverables within clarity, making sure that everybody feels absolutely supported within that group. And we'll be having a TVI O&M day of training and also thinking about having an intimate retreat option this summer, somewhere on the west coast. So if you can travel and you want to meet up in person, let me know because we are seriously looking at those options and we will announce things formally as the ideas shape up and we can get incredible professional development and find amazing things to do on like half working half vacation kind of style, really connecting with our network of people with you guys and want to see you in person.

Summary

So hopefully you can take this information and use it to help you take one step forward this December. We’ve got our party lesson plans/unit idea as well as buying gifts for Toy Drive food bank, or maybe gifts for their family such as stocking stuffers in the little stocking grab those of the dollar store, Dollar General, Five Below, some Walmart's and the spot section of Target doesn't have to be expensive. And as always, you can find me at my happy place is Instagram right now. Feel free to send me a DM if you want to see the behind the scenes of my life. It's not that exciting. Check out Instagram Stories. That's where I hang out most of the time.

Alright friends, well, I will talk to you very shortly. And in the next few episodes, we'll be getting to hear from some of the presenters at the symposium and the bonus presenters as well. I'll talk to you then.

You know that feeling when you've been rushing around all day. Your kids need food your students need to be scheduled. It's five minutes before your next lesson, and you have no plans. Teaching during a pandemic has had many challenges. Wouldn't you agree? One of which being it takes so much longer to plan for a remote O&M lesson, then he did to plan for a face to face lesson. But that's not a problem anymore because my friend we have got you covered. Your Allied Independence community stepped up. And we've bundled together eight remote O&M lesson plans that can be taught virtually or distance all created by your community and customizable to your individual students unique needs in five minutes or less. You want ‘em? I know you do. All you have to do is go to Allied Independence online.com forward slash remote R E M O T E and grab your copy. Eight free O&M lesson plans so you can start spending your time doing what you do best and that my friend is teaching.