What a year! I want to thank the organizers of the 2013 MEGA Conference, 2013 Kentucky CEC Conference, 2014 Illinois Council of Children with Behavior Disorders Conference, and 2014 IDEAS Conference for the opportunities to present at their annual conferences. All of the conferences were filled with parents, teachers, and administrators who took their personal time and paid their own way to find effective new strategies to educate their students more efficiently and effectively. Some of them drove through blizzards in Northern Illinois, while some fought off the temptation of going to the sugary-white sandy beaches on the Gulf of Mexico.
I also want to thank the assistive technology center directors and facilitators in Louisiana and Illinois for respecting my Rome City Schools calendar and penciling me in their calendars for demonstrations and also thank others who are using my manipulatives with their students. Everyone is so busy in education these days with paperwork, meetings with colleagues and parents, and the students. As we all know, the priority should be reversed to put the students back as the central focus of our mission to educate .
Editors of magazines and journals have allowed me the opportunity to reach students in places that I have never been or have seen on map. I appreciate their dedication to dig through stacks of article submissions and time to understand my vision, which is to help all students.
I would not be able to thank all of organizations and people if it was not for my wife Susan. I always tell her that she is the spokesmodel, but she is also my editor, web designer, co-pilot at conferences, and she keeps everything together at home when I am traveling to demonstrations and school districts. Thanks for help, advice, letting my “wheels turn” off and on during the day, and everything else in between. You are the best!
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I talked to Shelby Morgan, National Center on Deaf-Blindness Project Specialist, about my low vision and braille manipulatives. Because of the immediate need to increase all students’ achievement with rigorous academic math standards, Ms. Morgan offered to post details about my manipulatives as a resource on NCDB’s website. Over the next few months, with the assistance from Ms. Morgan and Tom Mc Fadden, Executive Director of the Canadian Deafblind Association, my VI manipulatives are going to be brought to the attention of parents, teachers, and administrators and can help deafblind students across the United States and Canada.
I would like to thank Donna Chanasyk for her invitation to present at the Mathematics Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association Conference on October 17 & 18 in Calgary. Because I have already committed to the Georgia Council of Teachers of Mathematics Conference on October 15-17, I am unable to attend. Ms. Chanasyk also offered to share my ideas and contact information with her colleagues. I have asked Ms. Chanasyk to notify me when the 2015 conference forms become available; hopefully, I can make the trip “North of the border!”
I have been corresponding with Carmen Willings, Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments, Forsyth County Schools, Georgia, after I visited her website Teaching Students with Visual Impairments. We have been able to schedule a demonstration at her school system on Wednesday, May 28th. I am looking forward to meeting Carmen and her colleagues. I also appreciate her willingness to post my VI manipulatives on her website.
I received confirmation from DeeDee Bunn that I will present at the upcoming Institute Designed for Educating All Students Conference (IDEAS) on June 2-6. The Georgia Department of Education’s Division for Special Education Services and Supports, along with the Georgia Tools for Life and Georgia CEC, are sponsoring the conference. My presentation time and date will be posted in the near future. Please check my website at a later date for more information.
I shared my math manipulatives with Dana Tarter, deafblind high school resource teacher at Model High School in Rome, Georgia. With the assistance of her interpreter, we discussed different strategies in how to teach life skills such as elapsed time, money, weight, and fractions to her students. Ms. Tarter used my braille manipulatives while I used the student versions during my demonstration. During my demonstration, Ms. Tarter asked me if I had manipulatives for other academic standards because her students have several academic gaps. After her request, we discussed my number line to 10,000,000.
I have demonstrated my manipulatives to students who are blind or deaf as well as to teachers of blind and deaf students. This was a great experience because she is a deafblind teacher, not a teacher of deafblind students. I left her classroom with an order and an opportunity to help her students. However, I also left her room with something much bigger than her order – the priceless observation of a teacher who truly wants to be in the classroom and teach her students. This was very inspirational!
I am going to include the observation of Ms. Tarter using my manipulatives during a lesson in an article for the Canadian Deafblind Association’s quarterly magazine in September.
I received an email from Tom McFadden, National Executive Director of the Canadian Deafblind Association, regarding the opportunity to publish an article in the September issue of Intervention Magazine, which is the official magazine of the Canadian Deafblind Association. I am excited about the possibility of Slide-A-Round Math Manipulatives helping students thousands of miles away from Rome, Georgia. With my information and strategies in Intervention Magazine, Canadian teachers will be informed about new instructional materials available to increase student achievement in math.
When I visit school districts and share my ideas with administrators, teachers, and parents at state and national conferences, I stress the importance of teachers having several options to meet the specific needs of their students. As we all know, “One shoe does not fit all”; this is especially true for students with significant sensory and learning deficits.
I am planning to demonstrate my manipulatives at the 2014 Institute Designed for Educating All Students (IDEAS) Conference on St. Simons Island, Georgia on June 2-6 and at the 2014 MEGA in Mobile, Alabama on July 14-18. This will be my first time at the IDEAS conference, and I will be returning to the MEGA conference for the second consecutive year. I am excited to share my ideas with educators and help them meet the individual needs of their students- with and without IEPs- for the 2014-15 school year.
I received confirmation from Dr. Marg Csapo, Editor of the International Association of Special Education Journal, that I will have an article published. My article will focus on new differentiation of instruction and fractions strategies. Because math is everywhere, regardless of the country and the ethnicity, religion, and language of its students, I am very appreciate of the opportunity to share my instructional strategies with educators and administrators in several different countries.
During the early stages of the development of my math manipulatives, my first and immediate goals were to help my students with the Common Core at Elm Street Elementary. In less than 2 1/2 years, my goals have expanded from helping students in Elm Street Elementary to parts of NW Georgia to many parts of the United States and Canada. With the upcoming article, I am expanding my goals to providing visual aids for students in many pats of the world. I will continue to pursue my goals as long as I continue to believe that there is at least one student in every classroom who would benefit from my manipulatives and teaching methods.
A great opportunity happened today! Reflections Magazine, which is the official magazine for the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children, is going to publish an article about my low vision and braille manipulatives in their 2014 summer issue. I was informed by Debbie Stein, Editor, that the article explaining the needs and benefits of my manipulatives will be posted in May. With Ms. Stein’s help sharing my ideas in Reflections Magazine with parents of children who are low vision and blind and my upcoming presentations around the United States, I am making progress toward helping ALL students.