Q&A/Tips for High Schooler with Low Vision, Goals for an AMD + more!

Have you ever wanted to sit down with me over a cup of coffee or better yet? A frosty Margarita and just chat about work? Have your questions answered? Or maybe you felt like, oh, I have this question, Kassy might have the answer, or might have a different perspective, I want to pick her brain. But I know picking people's brains hurts. So I'm not gonna just like ask. Okay, hang on, hold up, hold up, hold up! That's exactly what we're doing today. I've got some questions that you guys have sent in and we are going to answer them. They're going to range from work related to a few personal ones and then I am ready to dive in. Are you coming with?

In this podcast episode:

• Q1: What to do when a low vision high school student refuses to use their cane?

• Q2: What to do when a parent prefers to guide the student when you’re not present rather than enforcing the routes?

• Q3: What to do when OT PT refuses to work as a team?

• Q4: Do you need a travel fee when you contract?

• Q5: How do you find contracts?

• Q6: Favorite goals to work on for an AMD?

• Q7: Who is/are my heroes?

• Q8: What do the tattoos on your wrist say?

• Q9: How to use an iPad more for work?

• Q10: How do you wind down when you are going to sleep?

Transcript of the Episode:

Hello, hello, welcome back to the podcast today is going to be a new kind of format. I'm so excited. It is a total doozy. Okay, let's set the scene here. Right? Every Wednesday on Instagram @alliedindependence, by the way, if we are not friends. I post a question box on my stories and you guys get to ask me questions. Sometimes it's just really nice to be like, Hey, I'm feeling like I'm on a lonely island all by myself, who can I reach out to? You want to know what you can always reach out to me? Like it doesn't matter. Reply back to emails, ask me a question in my DMs. Wherever you are. Wherever you reach out to me, I'm happy to get back to you.

And on Instagram, this is our like, dedicated day time space that you know that you can just ask me any questions that you have. It doesn't matter if it's, you know, you just want to get to know me more, or you're having an issue with a learner or an admin or whatever the case may be. And one of the really cool things about doing this in a little bit more public of a manner is that other people get to learn from your questions, and you get to learn from other people's questions. One thing about me that you may or may not know is I invest a lot of energy, time and money in coaching programmes. I'm in a heart-centered business coaching programme that I love dearly, and I attend coaching calls with coaches on a weekly basis. I also have invested in another heart-centered but investment group where I'm learning how to invest and do so in a very spiritual heart-centered way, and I absolutely love it. And I get coaching from these coaches.

Now I show up to these calls. And oftentimes, I don't really have a question, I just know that somebody there is going to be going through something that I can relate to myself. And that's kind of the cool thing about having a community in that way to do that. Now, our communities are still a little bit spread out in that… we are on Instagram, or, you know, we're doing this here on the podcast. But even if these questions aren't questions that you have, right now, listen to them and see how they can apply to you. Because most of the time, if somebody else is going through something, you might be experiencing an issue very similar. Or, if and when you do experience something similar in the future, you'll already have an elevated different perspective than what you have right now.

The basis of all of this is that we can't solve our problems from the same level that they're created. And when we're looking at our own problems, oftentimes, it's like we're walking down the street in a metropolitan area, let's just say like New York City, right? You're walking down the street, and the buildings are so tall, that you cannot see past them, you can't see over them, you cannot see the horizon. And in order to be able to see the route to get to where you want to go, you have to be able to get to that penthouse view. And you have to be able to take on a different perspective. And oftentimes other people have already done the legwork for either what you are going through or what you will be going through. And they can offer a perspective that can help you get from the ground floor up to that penthouse view.

In our next episode, after this one, Jeremy Hill and Joan Broadbeck will be on this show sharing their funniest stories, their horror stories about why they keep the things that they keep in their car, trunk or boot, as Jeremy calls it, because he's from Australia. How they organise all of their tools and how they make sure not to forget anything. If you've ever forgotten anything for a lesson… I mean, we could all raise our hands here, right? This live training that they are going to be teaching on November 10, will help you to be able to get all of your ducks in a row to see how other people do things to get from that ground floor, all the way up to that penthouse. And during the live training, we won't have time for like the back-end stories. So we're going to be sharing some of those on the podcast in a few weeks before the training. And I absolutely cannot wait because getting to talk to them is always hilarious, you know, when people know the things that you've gone through, but you don't really have other people in your life who understand how hilarious some of these situations that you end up in are. And maybe hilarious and precarious are gonna be synonyms here.

That's what we're gonna be talking about in a few weeks in our live training, you can go ahead and go register for that at alliedindependenceonline.com/training, it's going to be at November 10, at 8pm, Eastern Standard Time. If you need to check what time that is for you go to timeanddate.com. And go ahead and just check that time zone for you. It'll also probably be on our registration page. And so when you get to the registration page, you'll click the link to reserve your spot or whatever the button is called. And then you'll see the timezone pop up right there. And you can do the math to figure out exactly what time it is for you. And that is going to coincide with early bird registration for the symposium.

Early Bird registration for the symposium is currently open. Very excited. And as you know, we like to offer a free live training to our community, just to like say, Hey, thank you so much for everything we wanted to offer you this opportunity to get to know a little bit more about us to help serve you. And if you want to see behind the scenes of what we got going on at the symposium, you can check that out at the very end of our webinar, there's no pressure doesn't really matter to me. You are your own adult. You make your own decisions but we are here and happy to serve you if and when it works for you.

Okay, ready to get into these questions? Because I know I am. We have 10 questions here. And I really just group them according to when they were asked. And then the last one, yeah, was asked pretty long ago. And it kind of rounds everything out.

Q1: What to do when a low vision high school student refuses to use their cane?

Here's what I think about that. So this is question one as a high school, low vision student refusing to use their cane. The first step is to get curious and figure out why are they refusing to use their cane? What are their fears? What are their drivers? What are their objections? Typically, when we hear people say something to us, the mistake we make is taking that statement at face value. And you can apply this to anybody, anywhere, in any relationship that you have with them. When we just take what they have to say at face value, it really negates what they are actually going through. If you've been with me for a while, you know that I follow the thought model and you can look this up more on the Life Coach School. Also if you are a member of clarity or impacting independence, you have access to a training that my personal life coach has done with us that teaches us how to look at our thoughts.

But basically, it goes like this. We have a certain circumstance that causes a thought. That thought causes a feeling. That feeling causes action. In the actions, cause a result and the results always lead back to your thoughts. So what you are looking at when somebody says something or refuses to do something, that's just their action, right? But what comes before that is a feeling and what comes before that is a thought. What you want to do as person with any sort of agenda, which we all have, is to try to figure out what is that emotion, and what is the thought behind that emotion.

A lot of times, for students who are in high school and have low vision, that emotion is shame. And shame is one of the heaviest emotions. And it's accompanied by fear, and anger, and grief. But at its core, what I have found a lot of times is that it's shame. They don't want to be seen with a cane, they don't want to take on the identity as a person with a visual impairment that uses a cane. And when we get down to the identity level, that's really hard.

They're also going through a lot of hormonal changes. And as we know, hormonal changes, often speed up vision loss in our learners and people with progressive visual impairments. So they're going through all of this all at the same time, I cannot begin to feel in my body, the overwhelming grief that those kids are having for who they used to be, who they thought they were going to be. Because for them, it may be becoming more and more apparent that they're not going to be drivers like their friends. They're not going to be dating, like their friends date. They're not going to be going to college like their friends are doing. And maybe some of them are, but their battles are going to be a lot tougher, and their road looks different than their friends.

And for a lot of our students who are in high school with low vision, they could pass at least until about puberty time. And then at puberty time the roads diverge. And they are really having to sit with the reality that they are different than their friends. And we all know that the primary goal of the prefrontal cortex is to keep you alive. And we as humans, we're social community. And we also know from history, when you're kicked out of your community, you risk death. I'm like a primal primitive way. Obviously, not right now. Now, they could just like, get a job as a coder, or there's so many work from home options, and you can get groceries delivered and like no reason not to be a tech bro these days, dude. You don't want to go anywhere.

However, primarily speaking is a lot to manage, along with everything else happening. So find out why. Then once you find out why you can begin to teach to the transformation. Because ultimately, as the O and M specialist, VI specialist AT, OT, PT, even parent, we have our life. We're adults already. We've been through high school, we've been through puberty, we figured it out. It's not our transformation that we're teaching to. It's not our goals that we're teaching to. It's their transformation. So if there are ways that you can get them hooked into whatever it is you want them to do, you can teach to that you'll have a much greater rate of success.

And one of the ways like teaching strategy wise, don't tell your boss I said this, okay. Do not tell anybody I said this. One of the ways I vowed high schoolers to work the best, in a non residential school area type of situation where like, everybody has a cane, you know, and it's like the cool thing to do whatever, but like normal high school situations, is to be sneaky about it. Like they don't want people to see them using a cane. Okay, like, go somewhere else. See if you could work with them after school when they're at home.

Or I had a learner my first year as a contract teacher, which was out in like, Man, I think a Friday Night Lights for this, it was like tiny Texas town, the entire school had to be funded by the football team. I mean, like, you could tell the athletics were almost a bigger portion of their school budget than like actually teaching kids, you can tell, you could just tell. And I had a student with RP, who was fine during the day. And his whole, like high school career, he had been kind of taught, you know, basically like, they turned off the lights in a room, and then he had to get around or whatever. And I was like, that's cool. But like, don't you on a date. I mean, it is fun. Don't you want to like go out with your friends, there's got to be a dirt road that you keep getting tripped up on over there, like, there's got to be somewhere that you want to go out with your friends and you have kind of a hard time. And although his friends were really great about, you know, keeping the lights on in the truck, when they were out partying on the dirt road, he needed to start using a cane. And so what we did was a lot of relationship building.

We listened to a lot… to SoundCloud. A lot. Because that's what he was into. He's into underground artists. And he wanted to tell me all of the Twitter wars and all this stuff. And we built a relationship. And then once our relationship was pretty solid, I got him to use a cane. Now, at first, he would only do it on the opposite side of the campus, from the athletics department. Our class was during varsity PE time, something of that nature where like, a good portion of the kids who were in athletics in the higher parts of it had PE during that specific period. I'm telling you, it’s all the Friday night lights. I've never even seen that show. But it was definitely something out of a situation like that. And so we didn't, I mean, he didn't want to walk around the whole school, that's fine. We found like a tiny wall that he would walk back and forth from. And anytime any kid came out of the stairwell near that wall, he would drop the cane and just stand there and definitely talk about SoundCloud. And after a while, he was using it back and forth, no problem and he need to get home. And then he got a job at night. And that was all on his own, not me forcing it.

So that's what I would suggest. And those suggestions come after years of studying that exact phenomenon that we just talked about. It was part of my professional development goals for a few years, because I also couldn't figure it out. Because it's a really hard and if you're feeling like it's really hard. Yeah, I feel you. These are gonna go really long.

I'm so sorry, I might have to skip some of these questions.

Q2: What to do when a parent prefers to guide the student when you’re not present rather than enforcing the routes?

Oh, my goodness. So on Instagram, at that time, I actually asked you guys, what you would do before I gave my opinion, and somebody who I respect so much. I don't have permission to say who it was. But she has done a ton of work that you may not see. She's very behind the scenes on a lot of things. What she said was risk assessment. Show them the risk assessment and have them sign and date it. And the way that I take that is remind them that the Para can, can support your learner in specific ways. They're not teaching, you know, they are reviewing, and they are supporting and that is absolutely in the green area of the risk assessment.

Also, I would say that parent needs training, and again to find out why, see things from their perspective. If it's that para has to get to the next class in five minutes and they have 19 kids to walk with and this one kiddo walks very very, very slow. Maybe something else needs to happened, maybe the teacher needs to come in and support the Para or maybe the kid can you know, have a buddy that they walk side by side with and not the adult. Anytime that you take a kid away from their actuals other students in their class, it decreases our social skills and their social capabilities.

Q3: What to do when OT PT refuses to work as a team?

We have this happen all of the time, especially if you're new to a district, you're itinerant, or especially if your contract, and they don't know who you are, if you're an orientation and mobility specialist, it is not uncommon to walk into a school, I just had this happen, where the people were actually very nice. And they said, Oh my gosh, we're so grateful you're here. What do you do? And how is that different from OT or PT? Because they don't get it? And that's okay, that they don't get it.

Here again, I would say get curious. Find out why are they refusing to act as a team? Did you make them mad? Did something happen with the other? O and M specialist, or VI specialist or somebody else? Do they have little… like clique going on? Or are there fears? Again, there's a situation or circumstance, there are thoughts that they have feelings, and then their actions, and the result of those actions, always go back to their thoughts. So figure out what those are.

And then this is what I would say. I know that this is not conventional wisdom here. But this is one of the areas that changed my life so much.

First, I'm gonna have you either read, skim, look up a blog article on How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Now, this is how to treat people one to one. But the way that he wrote it way back in the day still really applies to what's happening right now. If you want a little colloquialism that's a little bit more new age, and you follow Gary Vaynerchuk. I think it's more of an entrepreneurial person that people follow. He says Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, you don't just go in with your right hook, which is your ask. You ask them nicely, and you give them what they want. So if you can figure out a way to serve them, appeal to what they want, and then ask for what you need, you might have a better chance of getting it rather than just coming in and making demands. Of course, these are Instagram questions. I don't really know the whole backstory.

Q4: Do you need a travel fee when you contract?

Number four, and five are both about contracting questions. And then I realised I've been talking about this a lot. And I love it. Because it's something that I finally, after my… this is what, my fifth year doing it, feel like I can share more about how things have gone. And I've made enough mistakes and overcome them to help you not make those mistakes. The first question was, Do I have a travel fee when I contract? And the answer is yes, but not all the time. So everybody that contracts has their own way of going about things. Also, every school district has their own way of going about things. So you're gonna have to figure out what works for you. If you want to have a travel fee when you contract, set that into… into your negotiations before you start the contract. That way they know that it's coming. And then you can decide what you want that travel fee to be

Q5: How do you find contracts?

Honestly, through networking. When you start your own contracting business, you are a business and you're a sole proprietor or LLC business either way, or sole proprietor. And that comes with, do you have to do some marketing, that might just be sending a hello email to special ed directors around the area where you live. It might be letting other teachers know that you're open to it doesn't have to be like social media campaign or blog or that. Although I do suggest some sort of social media for it or website, at least where people can find you.

When you're contracting as a sole proprietor, you just need to reach out to people if you're interested in this. I've done three podcast episodes on that same nature number 99. Five Pitfalls of Becoming a Service Contractor; 107. 3 Apps that used to Make a Contract Teaching Easier, and 97. 4 Steps to Start a Teaching Business.

I'm laughing because I started off with the bad one, but hopefully it will help you overcome any obstacles. And then also if you're in clarity, there's a full workshop. So what I did was I took that podcast episode number 97 and turn it into a full blown Workshop, you get a full CEU. So if you're in clarity, I would take that. So that way you can get a CEU for it right? Just spending your time on it.

Q6: Favorite goals to work on for an AMD?

Favorite goals to work on, on an AMD as needed and here's what I think. It depends on what type of AMD you are introducing, and where in the goal that's going to be. So for example, if you are introducing a Connecticut style AMD, and your goal is that the learner is going to just push the AMD in front of them, then using the AMD for like a certain amount of feet, or whatever that is the goal.

So the goal might be a student will use their AMD for 50 consecutive feet when given X amount of prompts. You have everything there in that goal. However, if you are using an L bar, or a Y bar, or maybe even like a T bar, and the goal is to begin to use a cane correctly like hand and midline, but you just need more support with both hands are not ready to just use it with one hand, which is absolutely understandable.

You guys know, if you use the cane for a really long time, like it hurt your wrist, there's a lot going on, then the cane itself becomes the condition. So the goal might be when using their AMD, student will move their cane consistently in constant contact for 50 consecutive feet. That way, it's just where the cane itself is placed in the goal. And then how you're gonna teach it. I hope that I explained that correctly.

Q7: Who is/are my heroes?

Love this one and the person who sent it! Big, big hearts out to you. They asked Personal question. My mom is my hero. I know that's so like cliche. But I really can't think of anybody else who's had more of an impact in my life. My mom is the sweetest and scariest person that I know. She's really, really, really, really high up in the corporate world, which is so different from education. And her upbringing for me and my sister created these two powerhouse

women who are so strong and so independent and so driven. And we really just go for the things that we really want in life. And I'm in education. My sister is a nurse. And we both have, you know, huge hearts of gold, but we don't take it from anybody. And I mean, what better legacy to have than that. You know what I mean?

Remember, when I was 16, my mom made me take over the grocery budget. I was making $5 an hour, okay, after school of 16 I didn't even have a car. And she was like you have a job now. You're in charge of the grocery budget, and I had to plan all of the meals. I had to make sure it all fit in the budget. Everybody in the house got at least one meal that they wanted every every week. And if I went over budget, she took it out of my $5 an hour paycheck. So yeah, yes.

But if you're ever like mad, you're so driven like, Hmm, maybe because I was raised in a no-BS household. But we also didn't have that many rules. It was more of just like my parents were very strict, but not restrictive, if that makes sense. So that I've found to be… I found to be really nice. And I got a lot of my vocals out in high school.

So when I went to college, I made all A's and that worked out really well. I don't think I made all A's the whole time. My programme was really hard at the very beginning for me.

Q8: What do the tattoos on your wrist say?

If you've ever seen me in video and I'm talking, I have tattoos in Sanskrit on my wrist. You guys know that I am a certified yoga teacher. And I've spent over a decade of my life really dedicated to yoga. I don't do it publicly so much anymore. And my practices are definitely more of like stretching kinds of things than actual you know, prolonged yoga, but they mean strength on my left hand and serenity on my right hand. When I was 22 I got into this field. I wasn't even done with my masters and I had an O and M assistant who had been doing this job for longer than I had been alive.

And I don't know about you, but I was not taught how to be somebody's boss, let alone the boss of a position that was being phased out. There was no training on how to be an O and M specialist with somebody under you, as your first year of teaching. I mean, that was… that in and of itself was really the catalyst for me really trying to figure out throughout my 20s how to be strong, but not, you know, a capital B, and also how to be serene, but not taken advantage of. And, yeah, I still work on my balance every day.

Q9: How to use an iPad more for work?

Oh, my gosh, I love, love, love this question. I'm gonna just say right now, Google Suite. And I say this all the time. Man, I wish Google would sponsor us again. Google Suite Forms for data. I use Google Forms for so much. I keep track of my mileage, I keep track of my data. My Google Docs, I have a specific student profile, where I just like take little notes on each student. And I keep track of so much and I can have access to everything on my phone, on my computer, wherever I am, I can just log in. And it's right there. And sometimes, I just need to be able to access my documents. And I love it for that.

Somebody on one of our calls, actually it was the clarity workshop call about digitising your data, if you're interested in hearing clarity, go check that out. They recommended Good Notes for note taking. And so what they said is they can pull up a PDF right on it and it saves their writing. And then they can also erase it and it doesn't erase the writing on the PDF. Seems pretty cool and genius for their iPad. And I love absolutely love, love love that.

On our blog, we have a blog post teaching you how to hook your iPad up to Wi-Fi using… you can get like this little device that you pay for that is just… it looks like a little pager and you can have Wi Fi to that if you're using your iPad, for your learner's like off campus, you know if they need Wi Fi for routes or anything of that nature. I've used that in the past before. And that has worked really well.

I do have to at least I had to get in touch with my IT department because somebody has to pay for the service for it. However, it really helps with my learners who have like a phone or an iPad, and they can't access Wi Fi off campus. Or if I have an iPad and I want to have my learners use it, accessing it off campus without tapping into my own data policy. On my own phone. It really works very well.

Q10: How do you wind down when you are going to sleep?

And oh my gosh, I love love, love this question. For you, I would love to know, how do you wind down when you are going to sleep? Hit me up on Instagram. And let's chat about this. I have a soft spot for wind down routines a little bit more than I do for your you know, your typical morning routine. Because mornings can be so rushed, that it can be really hard to get into a good morning routine, unless you want to wake up super early. And if you do, awesome. I just have a harder time waking up early, earlier than my kids if I'm actually going to get sleep that night, because there's just not that much time between when they go to bed and when they have to wake up for me to have a like a good morning routine.

It's a personal note, if you don't know I'm a single mom, I've split custody. And so I very much have a split life. Half of my life. I'm with my kids. I'm doing single mom life, and we're doing that half of my life. I am a single woman and I do that

And one of the things that I really like to do when I don't have my kids is I love love, love, love, love to go Latin dancing, and I go to like ballroom dance studios and I will dance until 11 Midnight, depends. So on those nights when I get home, I like to eat. And then I like to take a bath and just like, get everybody else's energy off of me. And then I can start to wind down.

Other nights, I love to read. And I'm in the middle of two different books. I typically like to get my books on Libby. It's an app that connects to all the libraries. And then you can download whatever book you want on to your Kindle. And it's so lovely. The issue there is that you only have three weeks to read it, at least in my library, I don't know your library policies. So I'm typically in like a rush to read a book, or I have to like, give the book up and then wait for it. And that's a little bit of a pain.

So sometimes I'll also just like, buy the book in and of itself, because I would rather read a paper book. So the two books that I'm in between right now are actually, I'm reading, I would say, intensely, I'm reading a book called The Watch and Learn How I Turned Hollywood Upside Down with Netflix, Redbox and MoviePaths, Lessons in Disruption by Mitch Lowe,

I have not found a book that I love so much in a really long time. This book may only be good for you, if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, or if you really like business. Or if you like learning about how people take an idea out of their head and turn it into a billion dollar IPO company. And you know, who takes to be that kind of person. I find it all very fascinating.

The other book that I'm reading, which I would recommend to anybody, I started reading this on Libby that Library app and then I actually bought it so that I could highlight it and like soak it in. And I'm going to be reading this book a lot. But it does, it brings up some triggers for me, so I have to go very slow. And that is the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. This book really shares how trauma in your body can manifest in your life later. And I have found so many correlations between what life must be like for my learners’ with visual impairments, and how they act now. And I can just… it just lines everything up so much. It's phenomenal. So I'm halfway through that book. But I have to finish the one about Netflix first because it's doing the to the library in like a week. And I don't know that I want to buy that one. So I like to read.

Also, if I'm having anxiety, which I can tend to have is EFT tapping, you can look into it on YouTube or wherever in journaling. Now a big thing for me is that I don't have lights, like electrical lights on in my room, most of the time. It's either lit by candlelight, or the sun. And I don't have electronics in my room either. I typically turn my phone off when I go to sleep. And then I have a smart speaker and that's all. And that I think has been I would say game changer but like never really liked having lights. So if you're having trouble sleeping, those might help.

And of course having soft music, and everybody has their own that they really like. I like delta waves. And whoever wants to play that. I think, you know those people have got to be multimillionaires. We don't hear them talked about on like the billboards. But think about how much money you have to make. If your song is literally something that people are addicted to. It sounds like a great idea.

All right. Oh my gosh, I hope that this was helpful for you. I feel like we've been chatting for such a long time now. Join me every Wednesday on Instagram @alliedindependence for asked me anything. And make sure to keep your ears and eyes peeled. For all the goodness that is coming your way soon. In just a few weeks. We're gonna have a podcast episode with Jeremy and Joan. And then from there on November 10, Jeremy and Joan, again are going to be sharing with you how they organise their cars, what they keep up with them and how they make sure they're not missing anything when they're travelling on the road in our fall webinar on November 10 at 8pm Eastern. You can register for that at alliedindependenceonline.com/training. Alright friends. Until next time, I hope that you can take any of this information just to take a step forward.