Low-Incidence Disabilities

1. Low-Incidence Disabilities • Blind/Low Vision • Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing • Deaf-Blind • Significant Developmental Delay • Significant Physical and Multiple Disabilities • Autistic Spectrum

2. Low-Incidence Defined • Individuals with Low Incidence disabilities are a group that make up less than 1 percent of the total statewide enrollment for kindergarten through grade 12. • Individuals with Low Incidence disabilities require highly specialized services, equipment and materials.

3. Characteristics of Individuals with a Low-Incidence Disability • Students with disabilities often become "handicapped"—unnecessarily or unfairly restricted—not by their disabilities in and of themselves, but by the environment in which they live, learn, and relate. Consequently, extent of need cannot adequately be assessed without consideration of broader contexts in which an individual lives. This context includes family, community, and the local public school which would be a student's default placement location. Thus, a team's determination of the least restrictive and most appropriate environment for a student must take all these factors into consideration when judging the capacity or preparedness of home, community, and local school to support and nurture a student in areas of assessed need and in assuring a student access to the general curriculum.

4. Continued… It is imperative that any set of disability-specific needs not serve to stereotype a student, to lower expectations for a student, or to contribute to negative self-fulfilling prophecies for a student. So-called unique or disability-specific needs should be taken only as possible areas of risk for IEP teams to investigate, not inevitable features automatically conjoined to a specific disability in question.

5. Needs • Identified needs of students with low-incidence disabilities are frequently complex and multiple. Addressing severe and complex needs of students is challenging for family, school, and broader community. Since the ultimate goal of education is community inclusion and high quality of life, an appropriate education must contain opportunities for each individual to achieve independence, enjoy community participation, and increase productive and rewarding work to the maximum extent possible.

6. Continued… • Most children identified by IDEA categories as having low-incidence disabilities possess sensory, motor, or neurological deficits, and, consequently, they are typically identified and managed early in their lives through a medical model. Families of infants and toddlers with established risks receive early intervention services, most generally under the support of state departments of public health. Such services prepare a family and their local community to understand and cope with the impact of a child's disability on their lives. Such services also prepare a family to actively participate in the planning and decision-making processes that accompany transitional events throughout the child's life.

7. What Teachers Are Saying.. -“Let them go beyond what you think are their normal limits. So many times a lot of people are scared that they're going to hurt themselves, or they won't do it correctly, or they might look funny. Let them hold the expectation of what they can do and put your prejudices behind. You'll be surprised.” -“I guess if I could get every teacher to make the students be as independent physically and emotionally as possible, then I think we would see a tremendous difference . . . . They would leave knowing that they could succeed, and knowing that they had to succeed because people wouldn't pamper them.” -“You don't walk in knowing everything and knowing that you are right. To collaborate, you really do need to say to yourself that you don't know everything and that we all have contributions to provide.” -“We need to know how to work effectively with families and parents. I think that if we can't do that, then we probably aren't going to be as successful.” -“Never assume you have all the answers. Especially if you've been teaching for a while, teachers get this attitude, ‘I've seen it all, I've done it all, I've heard it all.’ It's never true! This is important to keep in mind always, you need to keep learning.” -“A lot of times they come from backgrounds where people tell them they can't do something. And then, once they can, you can just watch the self-esteem grow. And once it starts, it just keeps growing and growing and suddenly they can do lots of things they couldn't before.”

8. Using a Talking Switch Plate to Read a Repetitive Story Line

10. Reading with an electronic reader.

11. Using Braille in the Classroom

12. Leading for change is not for sissies. http://www.spike.com/video/2800082

13. Here are a couple of videos that I enjoyed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soFz7LbKc5E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXvdi0e0yrU