Optimal Evaluation Method for Students with Visual Impairments

Do your evaluation seem to take forever or not fully hold up at the end of your three years? I've got you covered with ways to make your evaluations easier, more objective, and more well rounded for students with visual impairments. These ideas will help O and Ms and VI specialists alike.

In this podcast episode:

• Introduction

• Evaluation Mistakes

• How to Overcome

• Recap

• Outro

Transcript of the Episode:

Introduction

Welcome back to the podcast friend. Last week, we dove into some personal stuff. So this week, while I grab your coffee, while you grab your coffee, we're diving into some optimal evaluation methods for students with visual impairments. These methods will help O and M specialists and VI specialists alike. Since those are the only professions I've ever had or trained for, those are the ones I'm vouching for. But if you are anywhere in the VI field, maybe you're a VRT, maybe you're a CATIS, take a listen. And then if it doesn't work for you, let me know. But if it does, also, let me know.

Evaluation Mistakes

When we are in our day to day activities, planning our lessons, our main focus isn't usually the evaluation that we or somebody else did three years prior. But if we think about it, that assessment should be the foundation, the guiding force, the exact map that drives all of our lessons today. Many struggling teachers are doing evaluations that end up as checklists, incomplete or subjective and they don't even realise it. Well not anymore! Not anymore! Here's the thing that people don't realise is that we have our own confirmation bias.

When I was teaching full time, I was at a school that had a lot of student turnover, this was the point of the programme. They'd come for about three years and then phase out of the school and we'd get more students. So I saw a lot of evaluations in about 10 years, I think I had 90 different cases. So as I'm sharing this information today, I want you to realise that what I've seen is a lot of people do things in the way that they've always done them, not knowing that they could be doing it better because nobody's ever said anything.

And if you're like most itinerant TVIs, O and Ms, you might have had the same students for so many years. Or even if you change students, the people writing the evaluations are your friends, because the students are in the same district. So you've all might have been taught to do things the same way. And there's nothing wrong with that necessarily. But what I've seen in the past 15 years is that a lot of evaluations miss the mark from well meaning dedicated O and M specialists who are trying to make an impact in the lives of their learners. But they're struggling, and oftentimes they don't know where they're struggling or why.

But if you trace back your path from where you are right now, in this exact moment, no matter when you're listening to this, if you can trace back all of the steps, everything should go back to the evaluation. Everything you're doing today, every lesson plan that you do today, should be reflected somewhere in that assessment. And if it isn't, then there is an issue. But creating an assessment that encompasses all of that information for three years. Man who has time for that. That's a lot.

So we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do we do this to our evaluation and write the checklist knowing or thinking that we're going to be the one there in three years and we're already going to have all the information that we're going to need for this learner or maybe we're so burned out or stressed out that we're just putting down what we can think of in that exact moment. Or do we would take hours and hours and hours and make this 10 page long evaluation that feels like nobody's going to read it in the first place. And you're probably just gonna have to redo it again for you to be the only person to read it. I get you, I've been in all of those positions. And I can tell you that every time that I was struggling with where to go next, it was because I didn't have a path to follow. And that path starts at the evaluation.

I remember one of my first years teaching, I asked my mentor, I will never forget what she said. He said, What should I do with this student next week? And she said, have they met their goals? And I was like, Oh, haha, funny. No, I guess that's what I'm working on. But like, we had been working on that so much that I kind of wanted to do something different. And then she followed up with well have they've met their goals? have they met everything that their assessments as they need to accomplish? And in those moments, I realised, right. So often, we want to deviate from this path. But we need to stay on it, we just need to find more creative ways to stay on it. If we don't set ourselves up with the right path in the first place, then we can't take the next step forward in the best way possible, it would kind of be like a plane leaving LAX, Los Angeles airport and wants to go to JFK in New York. Now, if it is just one degree off, it's not going to end up in JFK, it's going to end up somewhere completely different. And that's exactly what the evaluation is supposed to do. But we don't want to take a long time, we want it to be objective.

So let's get into this. This isn't going to be a full evaluation training, we don't have time for that. And we have all of that for you in our signature course impacting independence. But today, we're going to quickly review what an assessment is, the purpose of a mobility assessment, who needs one, how long they should take, and how long the evaluation should be when it's written, as well as my methodology for getting the most amount of information in the shortest least amount of time. Your evaluation is a snapshot of your learners skills at that moment.

My university professor Dr. Sandra Lewis, who if you didn't get the chance to learn under her, pick up a book that she's written, I mean, she's just one of the most amazing, kindest, endearing people who has such a deep understanding of this. And if we think about the evaluation, being a snapshot of the learners skills at that exact moment, then let's take that idea a step further. And think about it like this. If you were to videotape your lesson, what would the person who's videotaping you see. Think about like a parent, who is videotaping your lessons, what actually happened? Not what you perceive happened, not how great you think that the learner did, or how horrible, but what actually happened.

Taking our perspective out of it is really hard. It is very much the lesson of the lamp that has been coming up a lot in my life. And the lesson of the lamp is basically just saying that 20 people could walk past a lamp and all have their own opinions of it. But the lamp doesn't actually reflect any of those people's opinions of it. Their opinions are simply their perspective, based on their past experiences. And oftentimes we do that to our learners. Or we say, oh, last week, you could only cross a plus shaped intersection. This week, you can cross a T shaped intersection, you're doing a great job. Meanwhile, the learner’s 25. Is that actually a great job? It's all lesson of the lamp. So let's also think about that as we go about our lessons and our evaluations, taking just data taking our perspective out of it as much as possible.

The purpose of an evaluation is to convey to the other people that are working with your learner, what it is they can do and what it is they need to be able to do. Some mistakes that we often make within that are injecting our own perception, which we already talked about taking a really long time to do the evaluation, not taking data during the evaluation, and not observing in multiple areas.

How to Overcome

So the way to overcome that this will be the method that I use. I call it the optimal evaluation method. And what I like to do, here's just one part of it, there's a whole actual like, step by step of how I do my evaluations, what information I gather first, what information I write down before I even go and actually meet with the learner. But when you're in that moment, the key here is to look at things from a macro to micro perspective, you want to look at everything from a macro to micro level, macro being the environment, micro being the skills, you need to be able to mix and match different environments, and see all of the different skills within those environments, all the different lighting, sounds, and actual places on the macro level. And then also see every single skill in each of those environments. Because too often, we write things like learner can cross the street, but then it becomes a rainy day or then you get into a place with construction, or then like a bus drives by and those pieces of it have not been teased out.

In Impacting Independence will give you the skills and teach you how to elevate your evaluation. So that way you can create better goals, which will allow your learner to step right into the best version of themselves without burning out. Without you burning out. And this method will allow you to write your evaluations in possibly under two hours. If you plan it correctly, and you have the transportation all figured out already. Your evaluation can take two hours or less even if you've just met the learner. Now how long it's going to be? I do mine the way that I was taught at Florida State and mine end up being six to eight pages long. But they're one sentence and then spaced one sentence and then spaced. So it's not a whole bunch of just text. Because we know that people will skim everything, right? Nobody's reading actually eight pages, but they will skim it.

Okay, I know that this was a quick one, I want to make sure that sometimes we get in and out and get you back on the road to wherever you're going. We chatted about some of the common mistakes that teachers make when evaluating their learners, which are injecting your own perception, taking a long time to do the evaluation and are being as organised as you can be not taking data at that exact moment. Like in that moment, you need to be doing your New Mexico inventory, your Google Forms, writing it down somewhere that you will have access to it later. And then also not observing in multiple areas or under multiple conditions.

So a way to overcome that is by looking at everything from a macro to micro perspective. Make sure you get your learner in a multiple settings, multiple situations and look at every skill possible in each of those settings. Plan it all out in advance, and then move and that will keep you moving forward a lot faster and a lot easier. Now to keep it objective. Make sure that as you're writing, think about it from the perspective of what's actually coming through the lens of a camera. What would the parent actually see. This will come in handy so much more down the road as you write your goals, which will be the next step along the path of their independence. And then you can use those goals to create your lesson plans. And then you can create lesson plans that stay on the path even when you're bored of that lesson.

Recap

Alright friends, I know this was super quick. I hope that it was helpful for you if this information is something along the lines of what you would like to learn more about, then you will love our free training coming up on April 7, 21st century collaboration methods. After you've taught your learner's then the next step is role releasing and there are ways to do that which allow your learner to flourish so that way you can start to take a step back and watch them grow. We're going to give you the tools to have your co workers finally listen to you without you becoming the own police. I mean, and who doesn't love that. And ways that you can also celebrate your learner in the moment that will help propel them forward. All of that in the same live workshop. 

And it's all accredited, which is lovely. We love our partnership with ACVREP. And I'm so proud to be in partnership with them to continue to help our profession evolve. If you want more information about that webinar, you can find more at alliedindependenceonline.com/training. Alright friends, we'll see you same time, same place. Next week. We're all going to be using this information with our evaluations. I'm in the middle of writing two of them on the same time right now, to take a step forward. Talk to you next week.

Outro

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 customisable 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.