Division on Visual Impairments

DVI Quarterly Volume 58(4)

A quarterly newsletter from the Council for Exceptional Children's Division on Visual Impairments containing practitioner tips for Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments, Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialists, and other professionals.

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Interveners and Classroom Teachers You might be thinking that's great for mom and a baby or child, but what about school? As a teacher, I have to meet the needs of all my students. This is where an intervener for a student who is deafblind can be so helpful and, in my view, essential. As has been defined by Alsop and colleagues, the intervener's role involves three primary elements: developing a trusting relationship; helping the child gain access to information communication and social relationships; and using appropriate deafblind intervention strategies (Alsop, et. al, 2012). Importantly, interveners provide the proximity to respond to the child's subtle cues and fade away as the child gains competence in certain areas. As a teacher, you will also be an intervener as you work directly with your student with deafblindness. You will need to develop a trusting relationship and learn what you do with the environment, your actions, and your expectations that trigger your student to come out and engage with your lesson and what things trigger him/her to shut down into the box or flare up outside of it. Further exploration of these concepts and a Box of Deafblindness team activity can be found as a part of the Open Hands, Open Access Deaf-Blind Intervener Learning Modules which were created through a collaborative network activity that was led by the National Consortium on DeafBlindness. Please visit http:// moodle.nationaldb.org/ or http://nationaldb.org/ for more information on how to access this resource. 45

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