There are times when dire circumstances lead to the best ingenuity and creativity. After all, isn’t necessity the mother of invention? This fall, Joey’s Foundation is introducing a new inclusive learning opportunity to support Joey and children like him in maintaining their use of AAC despite virtual instruction.
By the time this post is published, Joey will have had his first week of on-line first grade learning. And, just like all parents and advocates of rising first graders, we spent the summer wondering exactly how this virtual school is going to go. There will be aspects of virtual school that will work even better for Joey than when schools are open in person… and then there will be aspects of virtual first grade that are difficult to juggle. (As a former first grade teacher I bow down to all of you virtual first grader teachers out there preparing to keep this energetic, talkative and excitable age group engaged on a screen all day.)
Every once and awhile you stumble upon a book that seems to magically connect with a particular student in a way that you could not predict. A friend had given me a massive box of hand-me-down books, and inside I found the wordless book, 
Now that Joey and I have been back in person for over a month I wanted to take a look at his data and see how he is doing. While I feel like we still haven’t gotten back into the swing of the eye gaze, I am very aware that what I “feel” might not always be accurate. Sometimes I need to step back and look at what the data tells me.
As a result of the COVID school closures, Joey’s school district sent home summer learning packets for every student. Every kindergartener in the whole district received the same packet of kindergarten practice work to keep their skills fresh over the summer. While I watched my own daughter do this packet one morning I realized that it would not be hard for Joey to work on this same packet – as long as someone was there to physically adapt it for him. 
s is laborious and time consuming for him. It certainly does not promote reading fluency or the phonemic process needed to decode unfamiliar words. But, if Joey isn’t read aloud, how do we know he’s reading?
