The Royal Treatment

I remember certain times in my teaching experiences where I thought that I hadn’t done all I could do for a student. That feeling was amplified when teaching students with disabilities, and even greater when teaching students with autism. I always had a full-time aide, who acted as my interpreter. I know that my other students liked to sit near, because they enjoyed not only listening to the echo, but appreciated the visuals my aide and I created to help with lesson understanding. Those visuals had to be created by us before the lesson, and as it turned out, on the fly during the lesson as well.
So, when I heard that one of the premier schools for students of autism in the country, The Monarch School in Cleveland, Ohio was going to make their teaching methods available through a Visual Language learning system software, I had to speak with them. I interviewed Debra Mandell, the director of the Monarch School for Children with Autism and Terry Murphy, the CEO and co-founder or Monarch Teaching Technologies. ~ Royal

The Monarch School Methods for Children with Autism make a Digital Metamorphosis
Debra Mandell, Director of The Monarch School and Terry Murphy, CEO of Monarch Teaching Technologies:
The Visual Language Learning System
Interview by Ken Royal for District Administration Magazine

DA: “Debra, can you give me some Monarch School background and possibly make the connection of how you arrived at the decision to make what you do available digitally?”

Debra Mandell, Director of the Monarch School: “The Monarch School opened in 2000, but at this point there is a lot of crossover between what’s happening at the Monarch School and the product that Terry has developed. So, they intersect with each other tremendously. At the school we have 84 students enrolled. It’s actually a combination of programs, we have an in-home, early intervention programs using a consultative model, a pre-school program for children 3-5, and a school-based program — ages 5 to 22. We also have a summer camp program, which is an intensively language-based camp experience, and extended school-year opportunities, as well as a number of family experiences for families with students of autism, which includes social groups, language groups, music days and art days. We’re really looking at life span services.”

DA: “It’s pretty much a community-well-rounded program.”

Mandell:  ”Yes, about six years ago we developed a close, collaborative partnership with a team of speech pathologists, whose project director is Dr. Howard Shane out of Boston Children’s Hospital.  In our partnership we developed a model for evaluation and intervention, as well as a model for treating students with autism. What we recognized as a team together was the absolute importance of visual supports for children with autism. For many of these children, the deficit they have is in the area of language and so many of them have difficulty processing language - verbally,  but they have become very good in terms of understanding and utilizing visuals that exist in the world for them, so if we could begin to teach them through the use of visual support, we would not only help enhance their language but also their receptive skills and their expressive skills,  but a secondary, tremendous benefit is that their behaviors improve, because they now have a way of expressing themselves throughout the day. Not just basic needs and wants, but their social skills improve - they can comment, and talk about things, and be a part of a conversation. So, what we recognized is that if we want to use visuals very consistently for the children, we think about using visuals in three major areas.  The first is organization, so not only is their day organized visually, but their class periods are organized visually, as well as the particular activity within the class is organized visually. And that’s important, because so many of these kids are understanding language and the words themselves don’t have tremendous meaning. And there’s a lot of anxiety attached to participation in typical daily activities - How long is it going to last? What’s required of me? What’s next, and what do I do when I’m done? We’ve used a lot of visuals with organization, but we also use them in adapting all the instruction. What special education teachers do best is adapt curriculum and provide visual support. Now visuals can mean - not just a picture or a line drawing, it could be the written word for some children. For visual expression we use a number of methods - topic boards and augmentative devices, helping the students to say it with words. Say it with a picture if you can’t say it with a verbal word. What we realized is that almost every school that treats kids with autism uses visuals, but what makes us different is the breath and the depth to which we use the visuals, the frequency to which we use the visuals, and how we use the visuals to help solve so many problems for these kids. While no one methodology is the answer, visuals are philosophically neutral and can be used with whatever methodology you’re using.

So what we found was that to create these visuals teachers were functioning as they did twenty years ago. They were cutting, pasting and laminating - putting in incredible amounts of time creating these individualized lessons, and then finding that they needed to be changed, which is very difficult when it’s all done manually. On one hand we were looking to harness technology to create individualized lessons and on the other hand we understood that we needed the lessons 100 percent of the time. We needed to develop a parallel visual language - to parallel the spoken language and that’s where Monarch Teaching Technologies came in to create a Web-based system that will allow teachers, parents, therapists to create these visuals individually for children and for children to have them all the time. Another goal of the Monarch School was to never keep the expertise at the school, so this is a way for us to export the knowledge and information we have at the school to be used by schools all over the country.”

DA: “Can you tell me more about the experts you have at the Monarch School?”

Mandell: “Yes, besides our Boston team, we have 10 speech pathologists, 10 special education teachers, an occupational therapist, a behavior specialist, and music and art therapists on site here.”

DA: “Terry, can you tell me a little about the technology you’re offering?”

Terry Murphy, CEO Monarch Teaching Technologies: “Well we’ve been working on this software for two years. It’s deployed at the Monarch School and we’re looking at the broader needs. We’re going to be presenting this during the summer and our test-schools are coming up on the second round of beta testing this spring. Debra can give you more background on the Monarch School, but I can tell you that the software based on its teaching model will be released this summer. It’s very unique and we believe it offers something that isn’t offered.

We also believe that our students respond very well to screen-based media. The Monarch School has been using technology and desktop computers with our kids since inception. So, from the Monarch Teaching Technology perspective, that is something we needed to take advantage of - the structure, logic and comfort students have with computers. We have developed Web-based software for teachers to create those communication tools and teaching materials - they can print it or use it from a computer.”

DA: “So, this being used at the Monarch School now?”

Murphy: “Yes, this is being used at the Monarch School at this time, but will be available to the general public by this summer (2008). It is our hope that the software can be used as a tool to help students in inclusive public school settings.”

DA: “What is the Monarch Method?”

Mandell: “With our Boston team we developed some assessments to determine what type of visuals would be important to each individual student. For instance, does it need to be the real object, real photo, three-dimensional picture, or a picture with minimal background - can it be a line drawing, or can it be the written word? So the assessment would be to see what representation has meaning to the child. We also look at procedural, real world knowledge that kids have in different settings and look at how they learned it. Did they learn it by observation or by direct instruction? If we take information that they know - maybe they understand open the microwave, and let’s start mapping language arts through experience that they have, but let’s begin mapping that language on using visuals. So, we can teach them that this particular visual represents open and represents open in many different settings. Many children with autism, one of their major weaknesses is in generalizing information and concepts. Again, using visuals that have meaning for that child is important. We also have a natural language curriculum and have developed strategies for looking at the language information in the different subject areas and for various contacts. For instance, in math they may have a difficult time because they don’t know the language of many and more and some and few. So for each academic area we looked at the level of language required to understand the concepts and we support that with visuals representations.”

DA: “How does that carry over to the digital approach with the Monarch Teaching Technology software?”

Murphy: “Think of that being archived and searching for it with a search keyword.”

Mandell: “Like I’ve said, every school recognizes the importance of visuals, but they may not recognize the absolute power and magnitude. So when the visuals are put into place and are there proactively, and they are there to become a parallel language to represent all concepts, change and information that helps the children.”

Murphy: “If we can make this electronic, without paper and Velcro, teachers in every state can use it. We want to create all these visual lessons, archive them and make them available digitally.”

Mandell: “This creates the opportunity for parents and teacher to use this on a tablet. For instance if parents are going to the store and they represent to the child that they’re going to buy milk, juice and eggs, but when they get to the store they, instead, need milk, juice, eggs and detergent - having the visual language transportable is important, because that small change in what the child believes can cause a melt-down. So, parents or teachers with a tablet can very quickly make a change to the visual schedule. So it has tremendous power educationally and behaviorally in the enhancement and communication to make teacher’s lives easier. A good analogy is that I need eyeglasses and need them all the time - I don’t need them for when there is something that you think I actually need to see. I need them to feel OK, to hear you better, and to be happy and comfortable and that’s how we need to think of visuals for so many of these children.

And of course what happens is that when find a way to help students understand and concepts, the world opens up to them. They can participate in community outings, going to the movies, going to the restaurant, going to art, because you’re able to expand their world of understanding and acceptance of new tasks because you’ve found a way to let them know about it.”

DA: “It really is like creating a new language.”

Mandell: “It is.”

Murphy: “We call it the Visual Language Learning System.”

DA: “This seems like it could be valuable for other students as well.”

Mandell: “Yes, we believe that some of what we’re doing can be used well beyond students with autism. It could be used for students with any kind of impairment, a cognitive reason or a learning disability, or students with a foreign language, so it really has a greater scope as we’re finding out.”

NOTE:

The Monarch School and Bellfaire JCB:
The Monarch School is a division of Bellfaire JCB, located in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a long standing (not-for-profit) children’s services organization. Last year (2007), Bellfaire serviced over 12,000 students in 26 different types of community programs. Monarch Teaching Technologies is a (for profit) spin-off.
www.bellefairejcb.org/autism-education-services

Recommended Reading:
Visual Language in Autism by Howard C. Shane and Sharon Wise-Kapp http://pluralpublishing.com/publications_vlia.htm

Howard C. Shane, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Communication Enhancement at Children’s Hospital Boston and an Associate Professor of Otology and Laryngology at the Harvard Medical School and Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the MGH Institute of Health Professions.

Sharon Weiss-Kapp, M.Ed CCC-SLP, is Clinical Assistant Professor, in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department, at MGH Institute of Health Professions, an academic affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts.