Are You Making Your Assessment and Service to Learners with CVI Fun?

First and foremost, our children with CVI are children. Children love predictable games, funny noises, and social interactions. Children like to play the same games over and over again. We can get our goals and objectives accomplished with learners if we understand what makes learners happy and what it is that they deeply enjoy. The parent is the most essential reporter of their child’s preferences. We need to move away from what we think children will like to what the parent knows the child will like. That is the basis for faster, fuller and longer lasting learning.

Some ideas, based on assessment of the child’s visual skills:

Instead of holding materials to gain a child’s visual attention and once they look you move on to another object, create a game that sparks a social, auditory and tactile sequence.

• “Find the pom pom. It is silver with many shiny streamers”. Once the child looks, wiggle and tickle their arm while making a funny noise.
• The parent reports that the child likes his/her feet tickled. Present an object that can represent that tickling game. “Here is the symbol for tickling. It is yellow and round like a ball”. Once the child looks, tickle their toes using a funny voice!
• For literacy, pick a predictable book with a distinctive colored cover. Make sure is enjoyed by the child. Once the child looks, “That is the Farm Animal book with funny sounds. The book is square with a green cover”.

Why? All kids are kids no matter their abilities.

• Creating fun, predictable interactions with children is the basis of a strong trusting relationship which allows the child to show you optimal skills in all areas. (Another plug for direct service to students with CVI)
• When interactions and learning are based on what the child likes, the memory of that interaction is solidly stored in the brain.
• Fun interactions guarantee that the child will be motivated to communicate at the highest possible level. (Expanded Core Curriculum area)
• Creating visual recognition using these “symbols” for games allows you to build a repertoire of symbols that will be the basis for choice making based on building visual recognition.
• When you see the way children communicate (large body movements, smiling, raising their arms or vocalizing), you can acknowledge that communication and help the child understand your needs for understanding their communication. “I see a big smile (touch the side of their mouth in an upward motion). When I see that smile I know you want more”. “I see a large body movement. That tells me you like this game”.
• You can build literacy choices and experiences supported by storyboxes, yet another set of visual opportunities. http://www.pathstoliteracy.org/storybox-ideas-norma-drissel
• You will have fun too!

Perkins 5th Annual Symposium

The Perkins 5^th Annual Symposium this July 11^th and 12^th, 2019 was a huge success! The first day there were three panels. The second day, workgroups formed to discuss the needs in each topic.

The first panel, Medical and Research, laid out the current state of medical understanding and research about CVI. The panelists lead by Lotfi Merabet, OD, Ph.D., were Sharon Lehman, MD, Barry Kran, OD, FAAO, Terry Schwartz, MD and Corrina Bauer, Ph.D.

The second, Assessment and Promising Practices which I led, featured Matt Tietjen, M.Ed, Sandra Lewis, Ed.D, Tammy Reisman, CAES, Christine Roman-Lantzy, Ph.D.

The third, Family Education and Advocacy, lead by Tracy Evans-Luiselli, Ed.D., featured Rachel Bennett M.Ed., Bobby Silverstein, Esq., Barbara Raimondo, Esq. and Monika Jones, Esq..

Repeated themes shared overwhelmingly throughout the panels:

• Kids can’t wait. They are in our homes, offices, and schools now in overwhelming numbers. Those numbers will continue to grow in the United States and across the globe.
• Parents and students are critical partners.
• Researchers, medical professional, educators and parents need more information about CVI.
• CVI is complex and needs a team approach for diagnosis, assessment and planned intervention.
• Individuals with CVI are unique and deserve unique considerations in assessment and interventions.
• We need more assessment tools and more researched interventions that work for learners with CVI.
• The infighting about the name: cortical, cerebral or neurological visual impairment is a roadblock to understanding, identification, assessment and service to individuals with CVI. Fighting about the name will impede progress in all areas especially in advocacy at the government level.
• Together with consensus, we can move this forward. If we are fractured, we will stall efforts for research, assessment, advocacy and service to students.

The overall issues were identified and workgroups formed to tease out details in the four areas of Medical/Research, Assessment and Interventions, Advocacy and the Higher Education training of vision professionals to serve students with CVI.

With Perkins support and commitment, the work will continue from the identified collective wisdom of the workgroups.