Webcast: Learning Disabilities Program Outcomes Based on Bridges to Practice - New Hampshire

Transcript - Learning Disabilities Program Outcomes Based on Bridges to Practice - New Hampshire's Presentation

Patricia Nelson:
Good afternoon from the humble State of New Hampshire. Someone said, I think it was Evelyn, who said you could probably reach it by throwing a stone across the border. We have two tasks this afternoon. The first task is to be able to give you, to the best of our ability, the accomplishments that we have been able to do in New Hampshire with Bridges to Practice over the last four-I was going to say four odd years. I didn't mean it quite that way. The second task is to keep you awake. To that end, our presentation is in three parts. The first part will be an overview, which is-is that blurry? OK. The first thing I noticed when I pulled this out is that it is sans serif. I did make my apologies to Pat Anderson before she left. Debbie Teska, [sp] whom some of you may not know, Debbie is our fearless leader from New Hampshire without whom we would not have been able to accomplish many of the good things we do. She is going to do the first part, which is give an overview of Bridges to Practice in New Hampshire. Then Linda, who has spent a lot of time working with other agencies and doing system integration is going to do her presentation. Last but not least to keep you awake to the bitter end, we are going to do an interactive presentation on teaching adults who are learning disabled how to advocate for themselves. We've spent a lot of time talking about very technical things related to learning disabilities, what they are, how they work, and so forth. This afternoon we are going to spend some time-you are going to spend some time going through some activities that you can use with your adult learners on teaching them how to advocate for themselves.

Debbie Teska:
Thank you, Pat. Good afternoon. I appreciate your letting me come and join you after you have been working so hard all day. As Pat mentioned, New Hampshire is just across the border. I was just a few miles from here. I thought I would come join you to talk a little bit about what we've done in New Hampshire from the point of view of the Bureau of Adult Ed. New Hampshire is a small state. We have about 8,000 adult education learners enrolled last year. We're a state with limited resources. You hear us talk about that all the time. Our total adult ed budget is about 3.3 million, which amounts to $412 per student. A lot of people in our state talk about the New Hampshire Way. Sometimes that means any way that doesn't require raising any money for education. On a more positive note, I think sometimes it also means trying to be creative, trying to be pragmatic and do as much as possible with somewhat limited resources. I think most adult educators can relate to that.

Before we talk about the particular things that we've done, I want to tell you as somebody who has come a little bit late to the Bridges process, how very much I appreciate what all of you have been doing. I think sometimes it seems slow. I remember in 1970 - some of you probably weren't born then. In 1970 I was a volunteer adult ed tutor. I remember having a student who was obviously very intelligent, but who could not learn to read. I remember saying things like, I don't know what it is. It's like there are short circuits. It fades in and out. From that day when we didn't even know the words, learning disability, to see that now many, many adult ed teachers not only know about learning disabilities, but know something about how to help people compensate and some strategies for teaching and some places to get resources I think is tremendous. Not an overnight success, but it's a very important success.

Because we have limited resources, we've tried to focus on three areas. We've tried to focus on continuing staff development and think about how we will try to continue that after the end of the Bridges project. We're trying an experiment that started last year with some part-time LD consultants. Finally we are trying to focus every time we possibly can on getting out the word about GED accommodations. Adult ed teachers have participated in LD training starting at the beginning of the Bridges project. There are several of you who were involved in offering those trainings and in doing full-day training and an entire staff development conference devoted to learning disabilities. More recently we have been trying to offer something from Bridges at every staff development conference. Right now we figure, to the best of our ability, that 60 percent of our current staff have received some Bridges training. Our goal is certainly for it to be 100 percent. Every time we talk about learning disabilities, we come back to realizing how very important it is for students to become self-advocates. That is where the right training, The Right Question Project, training that Pat will doing and talking with you a lot more about comes in.

We ended up last year, as a result of the good work that Linda is doing with TANF clients, being one of the eight states invited to the Bridges symposium to talk about how we might work with other agencies. As we worked to try to put a team together, one of the things that came out of those meetings was that we started inviting people from other agencies to come to Bridges training. It was a win-win situation for us. We are offering training, for example, in the rolling north country of New Hampshire where there might be only a few ABE teachers who were able to come. When we invited people from both Rehab and TANF and Corrections and Employment services, we filled out the workshop. At the same time it gave us an opportunity for adult ed teachers to form some good connections with people from those agencies. 50 of those people were trained last year by Linda and other Bridges trainers.

What we do we hope to do to sustain momentum now that the Bridges money is gone? Our people with Bridges training in the state-five of them, including Linda and Pat, have been meeting with me every couple months during this year as an advisory group. What our plan is-in the New Hampshire Way, we are thinking we might not be able to offer full Bridges segments in the future. We've developed, based on Bridges, a sequence of four staff development sessions-modules of two hours each. There will be one about introduction to learning disabilities and legal issues; one about characteristics of LD learners; one about informal assessment and ways to get information for formal assessment. We'll also do several options for people who want more training on strategies. We'll do one for math and one for ESOL and one for writing and one for reading. We're in the planning stage for this at this point. We hope that on an ongoing basis, we would offer at least one of these segments at every staff development conference.

I don't know if other states have the same issue. One of the big things for us is the that fact that so many people are part-time teachers. We have some wonderful people who have stayed for many years in adult ed and who have great experience and wonderful training. We also have turnover every single year as people need to go off and take full-time jobs. We think if we offer these things on a rotating basis, we'll expect that every new teacher will get some training in learning disabilities right away. Pat has an excellent program for training new staff each year in the state. We're going to add learning disabilities as one of the segments of that training. Then we hope that in the course of every two-year period all teachers will have at least eight hours of learning disabilities training. This, again, is our less-than-perfect, but we hope way better than nothing New Hampshire approach.

We have a great model in New Hampshire of Linda working full-time as a consultant with TANF clients who are in adult ed. That makes the rest of us jealous. People haven't had access to a similar resource in our regular adult ed classes. We decided that while we could not afford a full-time consultant we would try to add two part-time LD consultants. Both of them are people who are adult ed teachers with experience. They are both people with special ed degrees. They are people who participated in the Bridges symposium in Alexandria with June. They are in two different parts of the state. Our state is not too huge. People can go from top to bottom in about 2.5 hours. These two women are accessible to people in different parts of the state. Here's how we defined their role knowing that they couldn't do everything. We said, they are consultants. They are not going to be teaching individual students. They can go in and do some assessment. They can do a screening. They can suggest strategies to teachers. They can work with the teachers and with the learners on seeking formal assessment. We also expect that they will provide information on an ongoing basis now that Bridges as a project will be completed. They will make sure that ABE directors have information about legal issues. They will be sure that teachers on an ongoing basis get some information about learning disabilities. They will try to keep people up-to-date on the resources that are available. We pay them for four hours each a week on average. You can see that this is not the perfect solution, but they've accomplished a lot in the year that they've been on the job. They've consulted in 38 individual cases. They started writing a column. We have a newsletter, as I think all states probably do, for ABE. They started doing the LD corner. That it is everyone of the quarterly publications. They have also pulled together a lot of information that many of you have provided over the years-Bridges information into a packet for program directors on ADA and accommodations. They've also compiled an annotated list of resources. How many of you remember the old LD kits that people did in New England before Bridges? We still have those kits, but a lot of newer teachers didn't know about them. This summer the consultants went through and annotated them and selected some new resources to add to them so that we hope people will know what's available. They are working on the continuing issue that I heard you talking about as I was just coming in, about the difficulty of finding affordable formal assessment. We don't have a great, perfect solution. Every time I find out about a psychologist who will do something pro bono or find out what Voc Rehab can contribute in particular cases, they are gathering this information and can make it available to the next person who asks.

Finally, GED. I happen to be the GED Administrator for the state. I try to take advantage, particularly this year when everybody wants to know about the new GED, to always tack on something about accommodations in everything that gets sent out. I will give you afterwards some things that I've worked on. We have put together a six-page booklet that we send out to every high school counselor in New Hampshire and to other people who ask about the GED. It has a full page of information about accommodations in it. I put together a chart - LD Accommodations and other GED Accommodations At a Glance - to have a quick handout for people who are wondering when to use the L-15 form and when to use the SA-001 form. Some of you are very familiar with those. If you are not, they are the two ways in which you can get some kinds of accommodations on the GED. Then I heard from a lot of examiners who said, if somebody says I need accommodations, I don't know how much to ask them about-is it emotional? Is it physical? Do you think you have a learning disability? I don't want to put them in the position of being asked to disclose something they are not comfortable about, but I want to give them the right form. They asked for something that would have a quick synopsis of which forms go with which kinds of disabilities they could hand out to somebody who requests that so they could make their own decision about what form to ask for. That is an ongoing effort trying to be sure every examiner knows about accommodations and encourages them.

I have found that once a GED examiner has a student who has been struggling, maybe for years, when that person gets an accommodation and successfully passes the test, that examiner is hooked for life and will now see beyond the time and effort that it can take to work on providing accommodations and are happy to do it because they have seen the happy result. It's probably not what it should be, but I'm happy that the number of accommodations requests went up from nine to 34 last year. Most of those were appropriate and were able to be granted.

That's where we are in New Hampshire. I'm proud of what we've accomplished, but knowing there is a long ways to go and trying to do it in a way that is affordable for our small state but that makes a difference for adult learners. Thanks.

Now the person who does the wonderful work that we've been talking about, Linda Swenson. [sp]

Linda Swenson:
Thank you Debbie. I have an assorted job. I work for the TANF population. I cover the whole state of New Hampshire. As that person I go around the whole state. I've listed all the areas here that I go to. Sometimes I have long drives. Sometimes I have to stay overnight. I do screenings of TANF people who may have been referred to me. I created a whole referral process with the help of Lynn Winterfield [sp] in Health and Human Services the first year I began this job. There wasn't any way to go out and figure out who should be referred, who should be assessed or anything like that. I'll talk a little bit about that today. I learned a lot from Pat this morning. My print is much too small, but I did use the right kind of font.

Here is an overview of what I've put together. There is also a poster here with similar information. In a screening process-I have a referral process, an ABE GED. We have one process that comes from the classroom teacher. Every student that is a TANF client going into ABE GED class must be screened using the learning needs screening - Nancy Payne's version of the 13 question. All the people doing that have been trained to use that instrument. Then, if they have a score of 13 or over, they can be referred to me and I will go in and do my screening. In addition to that, they may go into class. They may have a lower score. They may have a low tape score. Then I can also be called in. Or they may be in class and not be making progress. That would be another reason for me to be called in. At that point, I would be doing a more intense screening. Before we get to that, we had to develop some psychologist guidelines for the psychologists:
Expectations regarding accommodations for the GED school or workplace. We were getting many psychological reports back that did not fit our need. They were not applicable for GED accommodations. They didn't list any accommodations or strategies for the classroom or the workplace. Deb very gracefully put together a little packet. I have a packet also that explains what we're expecting from our psychologists. These are not the Voc Rehab psychologists that we have contracts with. These are private psychologists. I have a few in the state who will help us out at a lowered rate. I'll get to the Voc Rehab part later.

When I come in and look at the screening-I am using Savai [sp] screening, which Massachusetts developed. I've added a few things to it. I look at the screening interview as being extremely, extremely important. It was mentioned this morning that if you have a good screening interview, you probably don't need to do a lot of testing. So I take the time to listen to the client, listen to what they have to say about how they feel about their education, what they see their strengths or weaknesses are, what they see their goals to be, the kind of family history they come from. Are there other disabilities or health issues in the family that may have prevented them from learning accurately? I talk a lot about their talents, their dreams. Some people say they just want to get C&A. Some girls will say, and occasionally a guy will say, I'm afraid to tell you what I want to be. I am afraid. Then they come out with a 12th grade reading level. Then I say, tell me. What is your dream? What do you really want to be. If they've got a 12th grade reading level, they've got the potential, not under TANF funds probably because their time would be up, but some time in their life to go back to college and become who they really want to be.

I think it's important to listen to who that student is, that person is, that client is and where they want to go with their life. If they don't have a clue, then I ask, if you could get up on Saturday morning what would you do for fun? What do you like to do when you have nothing else to do? Sometimes it comes out to be arts and crafts. It might come out to be music or dancing. It might be hiking or biking. Then I get an idea. Are they an kinesthetic person who might do well in a job where they have a lot of movement. Would they be better off in a job where they did crafts or did hands-on projects. That gives me some indication of who that person might be and where they might be going. As a part of that, I take a short look at the achievement part. It's still informal assessment. Writing the alphabet can tell us how they sequence things. Are their letters frontward or backwards? How do they do that? Then we do a word recognition, which is a grade list. That tells me if they can read words in isolation at the fifth-grade level, third-grade level, eighth-grade level, whatever. The word analysis test tells me how they do their decoding. Can they decode words? Are they able to read multi-syllable words? What happens in the application?

There is a component on spelling. The spelling component starts with very simple words like dig, and the word ate. I can't tell you how many people spell the wrong word ate when I've said, he ate his banana for breakfast. I get eight. I get eat. I get ate. Many people cannot spell that word ate when it's related to "I ate a banana for breakfast". Then it gets on to the multi-syllable words. It gives me a good idea of how they sequence letters together in a real word. Are they misusing vowels? Do they confuse their consonants? Do they reverse letters? An awfully lot comes out from just looking at that. Then they need to write sentences from a sentence prompt. The sentence prompt is, the directions are really difficult to comprehend. It starts out that they are asked to write a complete prompt and include three ideas in one sentence that they can do in three years. A lot of people confuse that. Sometimes I get three separate sentences with three ideas. Sometimes I get one sentence with one idea. It gives me another idea of how they sequence things together. Are they printing? Are they writing? Are they using capitals in the middle of words? Do you use cursive? What is their spelling like? How do they sequence a sentence? Are they getting a good sentence or are their words all mis-sequenced? Do they do run-on sentences or no sentence at all? That gives me an idea of that.

Then when I do the oral reading part, I do a comprehension and error analysis. I follow the running record format of that diagnostic informal reading assessment. Through that, I'm able to find out if they can decode. Again the decoding shows up. Do they reverse letters and words? Do they add endings? Do the perseverate [sp] and read a word the same as it was above. Do they skip lines? Do they have to point with their finger? An awfully observation goes into this. The questions on this particular packet that I'm using, which is the Burlington Well Reading Inventory, asks questions that relate to main idea, to cause and effect, to detailing, inferencing, and so forth. I get an idea of their comprehension. What are their strengths and weakness? What do we need to look at when we want to go back and help them with their reading skills. Sub-tests on this particular screening assessment are oral word repetition, which gets into the auditory processing that we've learned a lot about today. The months forward and backwards gets into the sequencing with known items. Do they know the months? Can they say them forward? Can they put them in order backwards? Then I get to observe the kind of strategies people use. Do they spell January, February, March, April? And then go they April, March, February, January to get it backwards? Do you see them using their fingers? Do they use a lot of self-talk skills, a lot of facial expression when they do that?

Then we move into digits forward and backward, another sequencing tool. Now they don't know this series of numbers like they know the months. It's all brand-new information. I find that practically every student I work with, every client I work with has a weakness in this area. Then I do a pod that's a visual-to-motor memory, which is a drawing that they study for 30 seconds. Then they need to go back and draw exactly what they've been studying. Some people draw whole to part. Some people draw part to whole. Some people draw the part straight across a line. Some people forget the appenditures. I learn a lot about how this person processes some visual information and if they are a whole-to-part learner or a part-to-whole learner. Maybe then we can use that in the application of their daily lessons.

In reporting back on this, I write about a three-to-four page report for each student/client. I try to have a team format meeting. The student, the teacher, the employment support counselor, myself, and other pertinent partners could be a part of that meeting. We review the report. Then I can do follow-up consulting if needed on some of these cases. I am getting more and more follow-up consulting on people I've screened a couple years back who are still having problems.

Another component in the educational section and the background history is I ask the students what they think would help them in class. It's the beginning of an advocacy. We brainstorm all the ideas or the strategies before I even write the report or go back to the staff with that report. They then have a place to input what they feel would help them out most. I've found that's helpful too. Now I have set a process. It's this particular process that was created. I also have another source of getting referrals, which is through the New Hampshire Employment Team. I've brought brochures of the different components of the New Hampshire employment program for people to take if they want to see what the New Hampshire employment program does, which is a part of the New Hampshire Employment Security Program. There is a group there who are support counselors. When these clients come in, before they've gone to any education classes, the support counselor interviews them. If somewhere they should begin to self-disclose or if they should indicate that they don't know how to read or they've had problems learning or anything like that, the support counselors will refer that client to me. The bulk of the people I see are through the New Hampshire Employment Team. I don't see quite as many through the school. The advantage of getting them through the New Hampshire Employment Team is by the time they get to the school setting, their report is all done. Maybe they've already been diagnosed or are in the process of getting diagnosed so the strategy is set. The student already feels much more comfortable about going back to school because they've come to know a little bit more about who they are as a learner and feeling more comfortable with the school setting.

Audience Participant:
How long does the screening take? How long do you spend with a student [inaudible]?

Linda Swenson:
It's about an hour to an hour and a half to do the screening depending on whether a person likes to talk and share a lot about themselves, then it will be an hour and a half. If a person is very, very quiet, they don't have a lot to share, then it's an hour.

If any of you want a copy of that screening and that whole process, I have put together a booklet. I didn't bring one for everybody. It is available. If you give me your name, then I can send copies out to you.

In addition to Bridges training, I do a training for the employment team people. They have a partnership. In that partnership we come together and we meet. It would be some Welfare-to-Work people, employment counselors, Voc Rehab. It could be Step-by-Step and Week-by-Week, which are programs that come under the New Hampshire Employment Team. I go around the different parts of the State and work with the different agencies. These are the kinds of things I talk about. I use Bridges information in doing this. I talk about the introduction. One of them is sometimes we'll have them write their name backwards with their left hand or the opposite, non-dominant hand just so they can an idea of what it feels like to have a fine motor disability. Then they will share their name, job title, agency, and how it felt to do the assignment. Then we talk about an introduction to learning disabilities. We hear the characteristics of the learning disabilities. I use the same packet that Martha Jean showed us this afternoon. That is from Bridges, at the beginning of the book. I like that packet. They share how they play out in the school and the workplace and they write and then compare LD to a slow learner and a developmental delay.

That is another overhead chart that I have that shows-it's a graph. As Pat said earlier, sometimes you have to put a triangle or a shape on it so that the lines don't get mixed up when you see it. The developmentally delayed person is flat in the lower range. The slow learner has some variable between reading, writing, math. The learning disability person usually always grows in an average to above-average range. We do see some scores that do fall in the low average range. People get a visual idea of what it looks like. Then we present and explain various types of learning disabilities - dyscathia, [sp] dysgraphia, [sp] and so forth as has been talked about here today. Then we do an overview of the legal issues. We talk about the agency's responsibilities. We talk about the client's responsibilities. I always ask who the ADA contact person is.

Then we talk about the learning disability experience, which is drawing the star. I guess Ann is going to want to leave right now. This star has been very, very busy this afternoon. I am going to pass out some stars. I am going to pass out some mirrors. How many people here have done this before? Raise your hands. Oh my, this is almost-well it will keep you awake anyway.

It will be a good lesson to see how well you've improved since the last time and what strategies you can incorporate. We need one mirror for every two people.

You have to listen very carefully to the directions. People get mixed up on these directions. You are going to have two partners. One partner is going to hold the mirror up like this [holds mirror perpendicular to table]. The other partner is going to put the star on the table like this[places star picture under mirror]. One person is going to draw the line to the star like you've done earlier today. You're going to be doing it now by looking into the mirror, not at the paper. Take an extra piece of paper. You have to hold it like this and adjust it to a point where the person who is doing the drawing can only see the star in the mirror. It takes some adjusting to only see the star in the mirror and not on the paper. Since you've done it before, you'll know how to do it.

Linda Swenson:
What if I tell you that you have 30 seconds left to finish it. 30 seconds. 15 seconds. Seven seconds. I see people giving up. Time. Time. Put your pens down. Change partners. Change partners. OK, who over here didn't get to do it?

OK. First I'm going to ask you all to reflect on how you felt doing this and what kind of coping strategy you may have used to be successful. A lot of you have done it before, you may have developed some coping strategies. Ann.

Ann:
I think maybe it's gets better if you've done it more times. I did better than I've ever done before.

Ann:
I think it was remembering that I had to do the opposite of what felt right. It was a little less frustrating, although certainly there were times that it felt just awful.

Linda Swenson:
This is first group that I've done it with that had done it before. It's interesting to get a little different feedback, which is what you've just shared. Louise.

Louise:
I had to hold Ann's hands. I think I reached a frustration level so quickly because I have done it before and I knew that feeling already of getting so frustrated that I immediately went right there.

Steven:
I noticed normally in a classroom situation when an individual is having difficulty, you look at your partner's work. In this instance, that didn't help at all.

Maureen:
I am going to comment. It is so interesting that with practice for Ann she developed a strategy that really worked and was effective. For Louise it was almost more paralyzing only you didn't think holding onto a hand helped. That is an accommodation, I'm afraid. It focuses on the individual nature of how we all learn and practice.

Evelyn:
I also set her up because she said she was going to do better than me, so she had these high expectations.

Jackie:
I couldn't make it move. I was going outside the lines and everything.

Linda Swenson:
I guess that's a characteristic of blaming it on somebody that we can see in the classroom, isn't it. Cheryl, how about you?

June:
I could do it in one direction. As long as the pen was coming toward me, I could draw a straight line. As soon as I tried to turn the corner and go the other way, I lost completely all the control I had over this. This is the weirdest thing I've ever done. My brain stopped. It would not function at that point. I tried moving the pen in all different directions, trying to pick it up to see which way it would go. It wouldn't. I've never done this before.

Evelyn:
Talk about added pressure. As the person who developed the activity, not that Jeanne had high expectations. The whole activity is based in brain research. It's fascinating watching the different developmental stages and the importance of developing those brain pathways no matter what you are learning. I think it is always exciting to see it in action.

I knew my hand was going the wrong way. I could feel it. If I could just make my hand go the other way. It was so hard. I would get stuck in a certain spot. I would be going left-right, left-right. I was saying, just to up-down, up-down. It was so hard to get my hand to do that. Even when I did, it would be just a little ways. Then it would start going the other way all over again. I usually do this with a presentation and don't sit down and do it myself. I think this is only the second.

Debbie Teska:
There is a place right here that still hurts. I guess [unintelligible] the term brain cramp. I feel like I know what it feels like now. It hurts. You try so hard and it just won't happen.

Pat:
Similar to Anne, I knew what to do intellectually, but physically I couldn't do it. There is a disconnect there somewhere. I'm not sure what it is.

Linda Swenson:
I think what is interesting is from what Evelyn talked about way back. In Newport you talked about the neurological pathways and how they have blocks in them. I took that seriously. I have the great fortune also to go the national training, the International Dyslexic Society training and the LDA training. I alternate years and go to one each year. I always go to the brain research. That is a priority for me. They have learned now with the different scans. I guess the latest is the PET scan. They can look at the brain now. They can show that 26 areas of the brain light up under this scan. The ones that are working the hardest have a brighter color, a more intense phase. They have proved that with practice that people, as Ann found out, can make those lit up areas smaller after remediation. I think that is fascinating. What those lit up areas are doing is burning glucose. As the fellow from the CASS program spoke at LDA, he said he didn't want to go the grocery store on Saturday and have to burn glucose. When they changed the coffee to a different aisle, he had to burn glucose. He didn't want to because that shouldn't be a project where he should have to think about what he was doing.

The other analogy I've used for this is to bring it into a different vein to help people understand it better. I think about a river coming downstream. Then I think of a pool. These would be the lit-up areas in the brain. The water comes into that pool. That's information. Pretend it's not water. It's now information. It swirls around in this pool. If you've ever watched a pool of water in a brook, it has to swirl a whole while before it continues on out. Somehow that processing can be slowed down. The person with the learning disability may process a lot more slowly than somebody else. They've got to take that information. They've got to get it in. They've got to sort it out. They've got to spin it around. They've got to get it back out. The person with the auditory processing, Martha showed what that was like. The person with the visual. We've talked about that. You see how that processing can become distorted as that information goes through the brain and swirls around. The same with the reading, the spelling, the writing, dysgraphia, [sp] fine motor - all of those areas. Those are some analogies that I've drawn to this. I do this with everyone in my training because I think it helps people get an insight neurologically and realistically as to what it can feel like to be in class and have this information given to you and not be able to get it clear, not be able to process it accurately.

As I get to the end of that presentation, we do an evaluation of what the workshop is and complete a form so that I have some feedback as to what I need to change next time. I learned a long time ago, I never use a flipchart. I have this dysgraphia, whatever, whatever, whatever. I was at a presentation. It was one of the first ones I did. I was using a flipchart. I was highly criticized for my spelling errors, which were really dysgraphia because I hadn't sequenced my letters properly. Now I go to the overhead and to posters and things where I can do my spell-check. Sometimes I still miss pieces. That is a strategy that I've had to come up with. You won't see a flipchart up here. I won't be writing anything down. I would ask for a scribe if I had to do that. That covers that area of it.

If we look at numbers, though the TANF program, I've now screened 201 clients. That number may be higher. I used to average eight people a month. This month I had 15 referrals. I'll get them done sometime before summer. The referrals have increased. The last tab I did at the end of the third quarter for this year, I was up 19 percent over a year ago in my referrals. It's becoming popular. I'm getting more opportunities to go out and speak to groups. I've been invited to speak with a Voc Rehab group in one of the cities in New Hampshire. I met a woman last week when I was at work and had to do a stay-over in a motel. She was with the North Women's Business Women's Association. She is starting to see problems with the people that she works with. She has invited me to speak at their conference next year. That is exciting.

I want to look at some of the people that we work with in some of these trainings. We've talked about partnerships. Under TANF here-I don't think you can all see this. But I didn't know how big the room was or how big I had to make my fonts, how big I should make this poster because I didn't have all the information I needed. So I did the best with what I had. You see, getting information is very important to do a perfect presentation.

Under the TANF, that is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, we have the New Hampshire Employment Program. These are brochures up here for you if you want them. Under that we have employment job readiness and training. That is the purpose of the employment program. Then we have Step-by-Step, which is another program that works with career guidelines. We have LEAP, which is Life-Skills for Employment, Achievement, and Purpose. We have the Welfare-to-Work. We have Adult Basic Education, GED, and Family Strengths. These are what we call the partnerships. When I go out and work with the NHEP training these are likely to be the partners that are going to be at that meeting. When I do a training, I am reaching all of these people. I have listed the locations up here, some similar to what I have over here. We've trained 52 staff in these trainings. It could be more than that, but that is a good estimate - about 52 staff people that we've trained from these different agencies.

I won't talk about why. This is two posters. We need to talk about systemic change. As Deb mentioned, because of this referral process that I put together and the work I did with Lynn Winterfield in Health and Human Services, is a part of why we were invited down to the symposium in Virginia. As we were invited, it was suggested that we bring people from many of the different agencies that service the TANF population or the LD population in New Hampshire. The agencies that we have-the partners here. We have Adult Education; Health and Human Services; TANF; the LD consultant, myself; Voc Rehab; Parent information Center; Corrections; Southern New Hampshire Services which is Welfare-to-Work; the Work Enforcement Act; and New Hampshire technical and community colleges. We went down and talked about the different things that we saw as successes and the different things we saw as needed to happen in our state and on a national level. We came back to New Hampshire and we decided that we would wanted to be a task force and help with some of the issues and bring along what was mentioned earlier today as a seamless process for the TANF population. All these agencies do work with the TANF population. They do have learning disabilities. Our goals are to collaborate and share information on how the TANF clients are served through a united effort.

Create a format of uniformity to be followed when identifying clients with learning disabilities and share and dissemination information and resources regarding learning disabilities. It's a pre-fledgling group. We met maybe five times. A lot of what comes out of that group is sharing with each other what the other group is doing or what the other agencies are doing and how they are doing it. That has been such a strength and a wealth of information that people have brought back to their own agencies. That has become significant. As a part of this, Deb put together a package to go out to the area psychologists. Eventually Voc Rehab will adopt that process and eventually, in time-because everything is a process and change is slow - that information that Deb has put together will be distributed to psychologists that work through Voc Rehab, the ones that Voc Rehab contracts with. This is where we are seeing the bulk of the reports that aren't applicable to the GED. We have copies of that to hand out for you also.

We're in the process of getting together some resources. We've talked about different resources already in the area. Under my budget, I've been able to obtain a number of different books and video tapes. Through that, I'm going to be putting together a whole list that can be shared so that people can access that material throughout. We have the toolkits, but that is basically for ABE. I serve so much of the TANF population that we want to make this available to the other agencies in the State so that they'll be able to review them, look at them, and find out some more information that will help them work with their clients.

Linda Swenson:
That is a long story. It is money that comes from Health and Human Services that goes through Adult Basic Ed that gets sent over to Second Stop who writes me checks.

Ann:
It's such a wonderful service. It's very interesting to try and relate what you do to thinking about what happens in our state and trying to figure out, who would hire this person.

Debbie Teska:
It essentially comes from a contract that the Bureau of Adult Education has with the Division of Health of Human Services. The money-they pay for it, we do it.

Linda Swenson:
The first year I think I worked 12 or 11 hours a week or something. Then it grew up to 20-something hours a week. I'm still not full-time, as you said. I wish I were full-time. I'm still part-time with a lot of reduced hours in the summer and maybe 30 or 32 hours a week in the winter. Lately it's been about 40 because I've had this great increase and influx of referrals.

Steve Brunero:
You mentioned a screening tool that you are using that is used in Massachusetts, I think.

Linda Swenson:
Yes, the Savai screening tool. If you want a copy of it, I can get you a copy of it. This is my booklet that contains all of it.

Linda Swenson:
Yes. The only thing I've got to change on that is I've add in the visual-motor component, which I have learned from another workshop. If people want any information on these or any handouts, you can check with me. I'll get them to you.

Audience Participant:
Did you say you have the packet that you hand out to private psychologists?

Linda Swenson:
Yes, in here some place. Here are some copies of the sequence that I use. This is what you saw in the overheads, if you want them for future reference. You can pass them down. I must add too that I got a couple contracts to do some training in a high school. I use the Bridges material in the local high schools when I do their training before the teachers start school in the fall. They receive that very well, the characteristics and so forth. I'll leave the other handouts up here on the Employment Team and things like that if you want to get it later. I know your packets are getting full.

Patricia Nelson:
OK. We're all done working now. You guys are going to do the work from now on in. When we work with our adults with learning disabilities, we're trying to accomplish two things. We want them to be able to achieve the academic goals that they have come to us with, whether that be learning how to read, whether that be getting a high school credential, whether that be English as a Second Language. We also want them to be able to participate in society à la EFF to learn how to be effective workers, citizens, and family members. One of the elements of being an effective worker, citizen, and family member is the ability to advocate for oneself. In New Hampshire, there were two initiatives that were going on almost simultaneously. One, of course, was Bridges to Practice. Concurrently, while we had adult educators involved in Bridges to Practice, we were also in a multi-year contract with The Right Question Project, which is a non-profit agency that is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I need to tell you upfront for truth-in-advertising, I am also a paid consultant of The Right Question Project. I am passionate about what they do. It may come through. I think you ought to know that. Its not an advertisement it's just another piece of what I do. I have alot of information that I will give you when we finish. They do have a website, http://www.rightquestion.org for going into that information.

Essentially The Right Question Project is designed specifically to teach low-income adults how to advocate for themselves. As we got more into the Bridges work, it became incredibly apparent what a perfect mix The Right Question Project was for working with our adults with learning disabilities for two reasons. Number one, we want our adults to be able to navigate the complex systems that they have to navigate. We want them to able to speak up for their rights, whether they are in the workplace, whether they are in the welfare office, whether they are in the Voc Rehab office. Also, most if not all-not all of course, but many of our adult learners with learning disabilities also have children with learning disabilities. They also, in addition to learning how to navigate systems for their own needs also need to learn how to navigate the systems that the education establishment throws at them. The Right Question Project grew out of a family-or parent learning project in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which was established primarily for the purpose of working with parents who wanted desperately to be involved in the education of their children, but they were terrified about going into the schools, principally because they did not know the questions to ask. Through a process of trial-and-error and working with these parents and trying multiple things to help them come up with their own questions, The Right Question Project finally came up with a process that we call the question formulation technique. This process turns over the process of asking questions for parents to them. In other words, if a parent were going to an IEP meeting, that parent would not sit down with an educator or the counselor or with an advocate who would then give them a list of questions to ask. They would go through a process whereby they would learn to ask their own questions. We have learned from people going through this that low-income, low-literacy, adults with learning disabilities can learn to think and act for themselves through this process. I speak from personal experience. I have seen the most amazing and most phenomenal use and application of critical thinking skills come out of people who couldn't read by going through this process.

I could stand here for the rest of the afternoon and talk to you about this. I believe that one of the best ways to figure out what is going on with this is to experience the process. I am going to turn you into a group of parents or adult learners. Depending on what task you get, you will be one or the other. I'm going to take you through the process. Then we will have time to talk about it and debrief on it. In order to do that I would like to form three groups. I think if Maureen you, Steve, Louise, and Anne. Felicia, Jackie, and June. Then maybe you four guys can work together. That way I don't have to disturb anybody too much. The first thing I would like you to do is get in your groups. You are going to be writing on newsprint. I'm going to ask each group to please pick someone who is willing to act as a recorder for the group. That is your first task.

OK. Normally in a group one of the things that we work towards in working with learners is to have them come up with their own issue, come up with their own concerns and use that to formulate their questions. Because you are new and you haven't experienced it before, and in the interest of time, I am going to give you what we call a trigger or a concern, an issue that you need to deal with. Up here we have two issues. One, from an adult learning perspective and one from a parent with a child with special needs perspective. The first one is your request for accommodations on the GED test has been denied. The second one is the STED team informs you that they are changing your child's placement for next year. Your task is to pick one of these two things. In the interest of democracy, I'm not going to tell you what to pick. I'm not going to assign it. I'm going to trust that there will be at least one group that will do each of these.

This is your task. I'm going to give you 15 seconds to pick which one you want to work with starting now.

OK, perfect, then you guys, whatever one you choose. The next thing you are going to do is brain-storm as many questions as you can about your issue. You must follow these very specific rules for brain-storming. These must be followed religiously.

Only questions can be written down. If somebody makes a statement, the recorder will simply say, would you please rephrase that in the form of a question.

The questions that are formulated must be written down exactly as asked. For example, if you are the recorder and you think that it might be phrased a little bit better, you may not use your initiative to do so. You must write the question down exactly as it is posed.

Thirdly, you may not stop to answer, discuss, or evaluate any question that has been asked.

Patricia Nelson:
That goes for everyone. The recorder should not see him or herself as isolated from the group, but should feel just a free to formulate questions as anybody else.

Are you ready to begin? You are going to have about seven to eight minutes to brain-storm as many questions as you can. I will be the Gestapo making sure that you follow these rules.

OK, finish writing that last question. Now in your small groups I would like you to move to the next step of the process. I want you to now-now you may discuss. You may evaluate. You may select. You are going to go through your list of questions and, if I did things right, you should have a colored marker different from the one you worked with. I want you to decide as a group the three questions that you feel need to be addressed first. If you only had time to ask three questions, which ones would you want addressed first? You have about two minutes to do that.

OK. Do you have three? Next step. I want you to look at the three that you have prioritized. Now I want you to pick out the one of those three that you consider to be the most important at this point. One minute.

Now, in this first portion of the exercise you have formulated a lot of questions. Right now I want to take a minute and look at the kinds of questions that you have formulated. Essentially if you look at your list you will find that you have formulated two different kinds of questions. Closed ended questions and open ended questions. A close-ended questions, as you probably are aware, is one that can be answered by a yes or no or a one-word answer. An open-ended question is one which requires more detail, more discussion, and more explanation. I'd like you to take a minute and go through your list. I would like you to mark with a C three questions that you think are close-ended and mark with an O three questions that you think are open-ended.

OK, are we all set? Any questions at this point? Alright. I'd like to take just a minute and focus on close-ended questions. What, in your opinion, do you think are the advantages of asking close-ended questions?

Offscreen participant:
There is no debate. You are not going to get into a big discussion.

Patricia Nelson:
OK. Thank you. What do you think are the disadvantages of close-ended questions?

Offscreen participant:
One disadvantage is also an advantage. There is no debate.

Patricia Nelson:
Thank you. Now looking at open-ended questions, what do you think are the advantages of open-ended questions?

Offscreen participant:
It's more of a cooperative process. I think there is more involvement.

Patricia Nelson:
Thank you. What are some disadvantages of open-ended questions?

Patricia Nelson:
OK. Thank you very much. The purpose of the discussion, as you can see, you have readily identified that sometimes an advantage, in the same kind of question can be a disadvantage, which is perfectly true. To go through this exercise is not try to teach someone that one kind of question is better than another. The purpose of the exercise is to get people to think about the kinds of questions they ask and to begin to think OK, in this situation what is better - for me to ask an open-ended question or a close-ended question? Think about the person who has been denied GED accommodations. They go up to Debbie Teska, who has denied her and says, is there any appeal? Close-ended question. Debbie can say, no. That's it. But if she goes up and says, Ms. Teska, what is the appeal process. Open-ended question. She has to give her more information. She can't be shut off. As people go through the process, they begin to learn the difference. We'll talk a little bit more about some of the other things formulating the questions can do when we get to the end.

OK. You are doing very well. Now I asked you at the end of the last exercise to come up with, of your three questions, the one that you considered to be the most important. I would like you now to take that question and write it at the head of this new sheet of paper. The next step that we're going to do is called, Branch Off. You are going to take that new question, which you are now focusing on and you are going to brainstorm as many questions as you can about that question, following the same rules again. Writing only questions. Writing them exactly as asked. No discussion, evaluation, or judgment.

OK. You have about one more minute. OK, thirty seconds. Finish the last one you are working on. OK. In the interest of time, so that we can explore some other things, I am going to explain to you where we go from here with this process. The next step that I would have you do is take the questions that you have just formulated and brainstorm from your branch-off. You would then pull out the three most important questions that you would want answered right now. So that if you were to go to a meeting with Debbie Teska, the GED Administrator or go to the Special Education Team, and you could only ask three questions, which three would you want to ask. Not that in any case, you are going to throw away the rest of the questions. You are going to hold them. They are going to be beneficial at a later date.

Then the next thing, since the whole purpose of this is to get people to take action independently, instead of a person like you - a teacher, a counselor, an advocate - going to the phone, picking up the phone, making the appointment and so forth and telling them what to do, the student then sits down and discusses, what am I going to do to get my questions answered. They then come up with their own action plan. They may decide, depending on what the situation is, to do these calls on the telephone. They may decide to do it in writing. They may decide it to it in a face-to-face interview. In the SPED team, obviously, there are certain parameters there that they would have to abide by.

What do you think is the difference between your saying, OK, Linda I want you take these questions and I want you to call Debbie Teska on the telephone. I'll get her number for you and I'll make the call. What is the difference between that and Linda sitting down and saying, I've decided that I'm going to do thus and so with my questions. What's the difference?

Patricia Nelson:
Ownership. If it's her plan, she is going to take ownership of it. She is going to do it. She is going to identify what she feels capable of doing. If I take someone in a basic literacy class and say, now I want you to write down your questions. I want you to write a little note to Debbie Teska and we're going to mail those off. Right away they are setting them up for failure and they are going to back off. By letting people define their own action plans, they are more accountable for it. They develop the skill in doing it. They are much more capable of being able to carry it out and much more willing to carry it out.

Looking at some of the things that we did earlier on when you were brainstorming, I made a specific point of saying that only questions can be written down. They must be written exactly as asked. For this point in time I want to look at these two. What we are interested in here is getting students to begin to ask questions. If you think about your adult ed classes, how frequently is the lion's share of questions asked by students and how frequently is the lion's share of questions asked by teachers? I don't know if you are familiar with Neal Postman, who is a professor at the University of New York. He has written such books as Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Teaching as a Conservative Activity. He also has a new book-well, it's been out for a few years. It's called Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century. It's a comparison between education in the 18th century and education today. Today doesn't come off as great. What he says in that book is something that stood right out to me. He says the skill of asking questions is the single most important intellectual skill human beings have. Is it not unusual then that that skill is not taught in school in any systematic way. The purpose of taking students through this exercise is to get them to formulate their own questions, not your questions - their questions. The questions they come up with for a particular questions may not be the questions that you think they should be asking. But they are their questions. That is what they want to know at this point. There are ways that you can help them lead them to get to some other things if you think that you don't want them to be missed. But, it's important for them to ask their own questions.

Patricia Nelson:
Exactly. If as-I was looking at Steve before and saying, don't make any changes. If Steve is writing down the questions and Louise asks the question and Steve says, I think it would be better if we use this word here. What have you done?

Patricia Nelson:
You have changed it and you have invalidated her response. Here we have this person whom we have been trying to get to ask questions. She asks a question and you immediately change it. She is not going to ask another question for a good while.

I've also tried to model something which you may or may not have noticed, but which I think it is important. When you give me a response, I merely said Thank you. Why?

Patricia Nelson:
It's non-judgmental. I ask a question. Ann gives me an answer. Great Ann, that's terrific Ann. Then I come over here. Debbie gives me an answer. I say, um-hmm. What have I done? I have greatly validated what Ann just said and I have totally invalidated what Debbie has said. The students are not going to be very forthcoming with questions. The goal is to get them to ask the questions.

I have seen - not too far from here, as a matter of fact - a group of TANF clients who learned this process, not from me, not from any other professional trainer in New Hampshire or Cambridge, but from an adult educator who trained with us who went and informally with an Even Start teacher in Worchester. She went and taught it to all her clients. Within six months they had totally changed the way the welfare office in that town responded to those clients. Because she, like so many people, took this educational strategy, which is deceptively simple, but opens up some complex thinking. She added a new twist. She bought all clients a notebook. In the notebook they wrote all the questions that they formulated to go for their welfare interviews no matter what the purpose was. When the worker gave them information, they had them initial it and date it-that they gave them that information and the date that they gave it. Within a very short period of time, those clients were not being given incorrect information. They were not being accused of not turning in paperwork. Welfare workers were saying, I know you must have turned that paperwork in. Let me get it. Let me check it. I'll find it. Don't worry about it. It's no big deal. Supervisors were coming down to find out what was going on. It has become so widespread that whenever any Even Start clients go into any agency in town, the first question they are asked is, where is your notebook? That is not from the top down. That is from the bottom up.

There have been innumerable examples of parents who have learned how to work the educational system by fighting for the rights of their children to special education things by using this process. I'm not talking about GED students. I'm not talking about diploma students. I'm talking about ESL students. I'm talking about basic literacy students, although the others have certainly done it too. The nice thing about this is you don't have to be literate. In this situation depending on what you are doing, if somebody has-you are doing a group and you know that you have people that can't write, you can ask for volunteers. Someone may volunteer. So what if their spelling is not great. They help one another. If you feel that it's more appropriate in that group for you to be the recorder, you be the recorder. The hardest thing is to keep your mouth shut. You don't want to be giving out the questions. The more you give them out, the more they don't.

What we are looking for here is teaching adults to advocate for themselves, to navigate complex systems, to participate in the decision-making processes that affect them, and to hold decision-makers accountable. These are fairly high-flown things. These are fairly sophisticated things. People can learn to do this, people that you wouldn't think could learn how to do this have learned how to do this. It is truly amazing and wonderful to behold.

Offscreen participant:
I've been thinking also what a wonderful interactive writing opportunity that absolute beginning readers and writers to use their voice, but use the tool in an act of writing for them as a teaching tool.

Patricia Nelson:
Yes, absolutely. One of the things that we're working on now, the next phase, which is fun. I'm writing a guidebook right now, which is taking all of the concept and applying it across the curriculum. I've developed ways of using it to teach people how to solve word problems to teach people how to write essays, to focus on their reading exercises. The more I look into it, the more I see the potential for it working with LD-adults with learning disabilities. I see the potential. There are some really exciting things coming down the pike. Jackie.

Jackie:
I know this is powerful. I'm glad to see people-students who have learning disabilities doing it-adults particularly. I don't know if you've ever seen any of Michael Small's work. He does this with people who have hundreds of disabilities. People never think of someone who is mentally retarded having the ability to step out and advocate for themselves. It's unbelievable. They have conferences around the country. They have self-advocacy groups from all over the country. Some of them are even linking with other people internationally through computers.

Patricia Nelson:
Linda was one of the original people trained in New Hampshire. She has always brought it into her work with TANF clients to the point now where even the people in the upper echelons of the TANF system in New Hampshire are talking about it and looking at the potential for training their workers on how to use it. It does really change the way you work with people. You do something that we teachers sometimes have a hard time doing. That is turning over the process to the students, giving them the lead, letting them establish their own learning objectives and come up with their own learning plans-formulate their own questions, name their own concerns. It's amazing what they do when they can do that.

Steve Brunero:
I think a lot of folks we work with in TANF have low self-esteem and are not very assertive. I think this is a great practice for them to formalize a process for asking the right questions. However, when individuals do get into a situation where it is special ed team, there are lawyers and advocates all around in an audience, it is difficult for them to advocate for themselves. Would you suggest that they bring the questions within themselves pre-written?

Steve Brunero:
And maybe also have an advocate with them to support them in that environment?

Patricia Nelson:
I think that-I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. I do think that if the person is going to find their voice, that the advocate needs to be very clear on what their role is. It's like the grand jury. The can have their lawyer. They can go out and ask their lawyer a question, but the lawyer can't be in the court room, I don't think. You need to minimize-make sure you know what your role is. Your role is not to take over. It's to provide this person their voice. Absolutely, write them down. Let the student decide how they want to ask those questions. You could even work with the system to not make that group so big. If you have 10 people-that is inhumane to do to someone. I think it can be broken down into smaller increments where it becomes more easily done.

One of the first basic ABE students that I worked with-I did a workshop, just basically what I did with you today. Afterwards, one of the students, who has been at second step for a very long time, put her hand up. She said, don't you think it's better to have an advocate go with you when you do that? I said, well let's try. I took her by the arm. I put my arm around her shoulder. I went over and said, Hi, Madame social worker. I'm Pat. This is Geneva. Geneva needs to have food stamps and she needs to have help [unintelligible], isn't that right Geneva? Don't you think we should also look at increasing her welfare benefits and I'd want that Medicaid. She needs-right Geneva? Am I getting everything? We went on about this for a couple minutes. Then I turned to her and said, Geneva, what do you think? She took one look at me and said, I think I had better speak for myself.

The next time I saw her, I said how are you doing? She said, I have to tell you what I did. She has a child with special needs. She went to the doctor with her child. She said, I had to go see my doctor. He is not very responsive. I wrote down all my questions. I went in and asked him all my questions about my child. I asked how the doctor reacted to that. She said, he wasn't very happy, but he sure knows now that I'm not a wimp. She's been doing it ever since. This is a basic ABE student. It's not the be-all and end-all. It doesn't work for everybody. Some people respond to it and some people don't. I think it's the greatest thing since white bread.

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Transcript - Learning Disabilities Program Outcomes Based on Bridges to Practice - New Hampshire's Presentation