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| Teleconference Transcript Transcript of NCSET teleconference call held on October 28, 2004 Dare to Dream for AdultsPresenters: Kristine Webb Download the PowerPoint presentation referenced in this teleconference call (in PDF format: 29 slides, 10.98 MB). (Also available as an accessible Word document.) Download Dare to Dream for Adults in PDF format. (25.8 MB) MS. MACK: Good afternoon and welcome to the “Dare to Dream for Adults” teleconference call, sponsored by the National Center on Secondary Education and Transition. I’m Mary Mack, an Associate Director of the Center, and I’m going to be moderating the call today. I’d like to extend a special welcome to our Exiting TA Community of Practice members. Today we’re pleased to have Kristine Webb as our presenter. Dr. Webb is an associate professor at the University of North Florida, Department of Special Education. She recently received the Transition Champion award from the Florida Division of Career Development and Transition, Students’ Choice Outstanding UNF Professor, and the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award for the year 2001-02. Kristine also served as the co-principal investigator of the Northeast Florida Personnel Development Partnership, a nine-county organization established to meet the recruitment, retention, and special education personnel needs of the school districts in that area of Florida. Before joining the University of North Florida faculty she served as the director of the Florida Network Information and Services for adolescents and adults with special needs housed at the University of Florida. And now before we start the call, I’m going to just go over the format. You can also go to NCSET’s website, www.ncset.org and click on Teleconferences to be able to follow Dr. Webb’s PowerPoint presentation and that also has a link to the publication she’s going to be talking about. The format of today’s teleconference will be a 45-minute presentation followed by a question-and-answer period. And we’re going to ask that you hold your questions ‘til after the presentation. DR. WEBB: I’m thrilled to be able to visit with you today about the work we have done on Dare to Dream for Adults. I will be using a PowerPoint presentation that’s on the NCSET Web site as well as referring to the PDF electronic copy you can get from the Florida DOE website. If you look at the PowerPoint, I’d like to offer you special greetings from the State of Florida. If you’ll turn to slide 2 you will see a specific greeting from all of us in Florida and those of you who don’t have the PowerPoint in front of you, it’s a huge hurricane covering the whole state of Florida and a “We are here” sign. It’s a postcard that’s circulating around the state right now and I couldn’t resist putting it in because certainly the hurricanes have impacted Florida this year and all of our work, but I think this both kind of reminds us all of the important things we do in life and keeps us going in that direction as well. So if you’ll then change with me to slide 3. This is Dare to Dream for Adults and I have put on this slide the Web address. This is available from the Florida Department of Education in PDF format. But you can also contact our clearinghouse information center, through the Bureau of Exceptional Education, their phone number is 850-245-0477. They have a multitude of wonderful publications and the Department of Education has set up a clearinghouse that is just so helpful to parents, students, teachers, related service personnel, anybody in the state of Florida and across our nation with all the different resources they can access from the Florida Department of Education. Most of them are online so you can just download them and copy them. The next slide is slide 4, Dare to Dream for Adults. I was fortunate to have some wonderful people to collaborate with on this production. This product was published by the Florida Department of Education. Back during the 90’s, the first Dare to Dream was initiated by two of my colleagues, Dr. Jeanie Repeddo at the University of Florida and Dr. Sarah Pencaski, who was then at the Florida Department of Education. They initiated the first Dare to Dream because they were both concerned that kids would go to their transition IEP meetings and when asked about their postschool outcome statement there was very little response. So Jeanie and Sarah developed the first Dare to Dream to help kids develop that postschool outcome statement and be able to take it to their IEP meetings and have a voice in where they were going and have the Transition IEP reflect that. After I came on board at the transition center we did a revision of Dare to Dream in 1999 to expand on it a little bit and this little workbook was really used a lot by middle and high school kids and their teachers throughout Florida. I think in light of that usage our transition leaders at the Department of Education saw the value of developing a book for adults. A lot of adults were saying, “I wish I would’ve had this when I was a kid.” I began this project by myself and then became acquainted with a young man by the name of Joshua Peller, a graduate student in my classes at the University of North Florida, who soon joined me as a co-author. I will be reading you some of his wonderful writing as I chat about it during the afternoon. His contributions, insight, advice, and sense of purpose with this book was wonderful. Then later we met Michael Phillips and if you see on the PDF copy or if you have a hard copy you’ll see some amazing artwork that Michael Phillips has done for every section and the cover of the book. Mike is an advocate for all people with disabilities. The state of Florida has done a lot of advocacy and used this art as one of the forms of his advocacy. Both Joshua and Michael are adults with disabilities who have lived through many of the things we talk about in the book. I think it was an amazing process to have them serve as the experts that guided this process along. On slide 5 you’ll see a round symbol with self-determined choices identifying the round symbol and then some puzzle pieces of the many fractions and segments of life that we all deal with. When we started this book we knew we wanted it to be a person-centered book, we just had a few sections included in it, and tailored it like the Dare to Dream for younger kids. The more Josh and I talked, and the more we talked to adults with disabilities, we just kept adding sections and it just grew and grew and grew. I think the thing that kept us both going was that the adult remain the center of the project. Slide 6 is a listing of the sections that we decided we wanted in Dare to Dream for Adults. I will briefly explain those sections to you and then how to use them. This is how the book is laid out right now:
The adult who works with this book can complete all of the sections or choose the sections that seem the most pertinent to his or her needs, interests, or desires. It has a lot of flexibility in its use. On slide 7 are some overall things that I wanted to talk about with you. Dare to Dream for Adults is based on information that we have seen from outcome studies such as the National Longitudinal Transition Study, other kinds of outcome studies, talking with lots and lots of adults who have disabilities, and input from service providers, teachers, and parents. It’s one of our missions with this book to make it a strength-based book to encourage adults to make choices based on their preferences and self-identified abilities and needs. I think the next point is that it is a catalyst to connect with agencies, services, information, and people. It’s not meant to be a totally comprehensive one-stop-shop book. It’s a catalyst to get folks to think about where they can go to find further information, to bring out what they have, and help them find what they can do to the best of their ability. It’s not meant to be comprehensive by any means. We are in the process right now of designing some pilot programs to work with the 18-22 age group in two pilot sites here in Florida and we are developing some evaluation tools to see if what we are doing is making a difference in their lives. If you will turn to slide 8, talking about the user guide. I think it’s really important, if you are an adult using Dare to Dream, to know that you are the decision-maker and it’s a workbook that you can write all over, take notes on, this is your notebook for documenting, thinking, taking notes, and remembering important information and that you can select just the sections you need. The important point is that you can choose contacts to help you when you decide you need help. And that’s a key point that I want adults who use this book to know. On slide 9 you will see a little contact box, where it says “name of contact.” As you use the book you will see lots of these; adults select the contact from the network list they’ve built in section two, which is called “Creating Your Network.” This is a key point throughout the book that we call the people who the adult asks for help “contacts” consistently. These contacts are pulled from the network list in section two. [Slide 10] Sections 3-12 each have a goal section. People can decide whether or not they want to create goals as they work through the curriculum. In section three you will do a lot of work, both you as a contact person or if you are the adult using the book. You will learn and do some practice sessions in section three about how a person by the name of Joyce wrote some goals. It gives you as a contact or as an adult who is using the book a chance to practice doing some of those goals using somebody else’s example. There are goal sections at the end of sections 3-12, consistently through the book. Slide 11 shows some of the things that you might be asked to do. You might be asked to write for other adults or to read, find resources, or maybe explain a concept. As a contact that the adult has selected you may need to do some preliminary work. This might be especially important with adults who do not read or write or speak; you may have to do some preliminary work with pictures or other learning tools and make some accommodations or modifications to what’s actually in the book. I think the key point here is to realize that you are a facilitator, you are not a decisionmaker. The person selected you as a contact to assist and facilitate, not to make decisions for him or her. I think it is also important to listen carefully for clues when the adult tells you about preferences, abilities, and needs. Ask more questions if you are not sure, respond by saying things like:
We are facilitating instead of making decisions, and we know that. But I think we all need to be reminded of that as we work. [Slide 12] Each section of Dare to Dream has beautiful artwork by Mike Phillips and I have included some of it in the PowerPoint. For those of you who don’t have the electronic or hard copies of Dare to Dream for Adults, they’re beautiful pictures and Mike’s contribution has been rich. Each section also starts with a letter from Josh that he calls “Josh’s Journey.” He addresses some of his unique experiences in each of the sections. You will soon find as you read some of his letters that he has this amazing, quirky, and fun sense of humor that many times kept us from getting the work done that we should have been. We have also included lots of short-phrased checklists that more people had forced choices or they could add their own choices to. Then opportunities to write about preferences and needs of those are chosen. Some resources and information. At the end of every section is the goals worksheet. So the format for each section is fairly standard which we found worked better. If you all look with me on slide 13, you will see the cover sheet for section one, the introduction, the beautiful artwork that Mike has done here. A copy of this or I think the original piece actually hangs in the Tampa airport. It’s in a beautiful royal blue and a stunning piece of work that Mike has done. I continue to slides 14-15 to read a little bit from Josh’s journey. Hi, Joshua here. So you have picked up our book and I bet I know what you are thinking. Is this going to help or going to be just another dead end? Is this going to provide me with practical ways to help myself? Let me see if I can answer these questions. Throughout the book I will be sharing my story and hoping my thoughts will help you on your journey. How do I know how to help you? I am an adult with disabilities. I was born with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. What this really means is that I have to work harder to make friends. I also must fight the urge to constantly worry about things, especially ones I cannot control. In school, organizing my papers and materials is a very difficult task for me. I can do a lot of things really well. It just takes more effort and heart. I know how painful it can be when the system fails to provide you with the assistance you need. Before I discovered who to call my life was a lot harder to manage. I knew there must be people that could help me, but I didn’t know where to find them or how to look. I did my Masters degree in Special Education/Disability Services. Several of my high school teachers discouraged me from going to college, but college was the best choice for me. The only person that knows what you can accomplish is you. When you find the ways you learn best and the talents and skills are successful you are halfway there. When you find out how to make people take notice of your skills and how they can support you, you are on your way. In my experience the greatest rewards come when you find out how you can help other people improve their lives. This book cuts through the nonsense and helps you find out what’s the parts that are easier to manage. We hope this book will teach you that life for people with disabilities can be as satisfying as you want, you just need to work smarter. This book will help you achieve your dreams and handle everyday problems, so keep reading, okay? Slide 16, “Creating Your Network,” (page 10 of the hard copy book, page 34 of PDF copy) looks at all the people in the book that you might affiliate with – family, friends, neighbors, teachers, coworkers, boss, community people, agency personnel, and others. [Slide 17] This is just a little sample on the PowerPoint of how to put this together. It’s the start of the friends section, where you brainstorm all of the friends who are in your life, their phone numbers, you can add e-mail if that’s important, what information does this person know, what does this person really know a lot about. And then some other people that this person may know when you talk to them or that you know they know. It’s the start of your network list that expands and becomes the foundation of the contact list. People can refer back to this and know who to ask when they need a contact to assist them. I like the fact that it’s generated by the people and then people have a list to contact. For those people who don’t read, you could do pictures. You could have pictures of contacts and have the adult point to people they choose to help them. There are lot of variations that you can help put this contact list together that are working successfully for people. Slide 18 (page 17 hard copy, page 41 PDF) talks about how to connect with different kinds of technology. We connect with computers, letters, telephones, and newspapers. I am going to focus on computers. There is a computer skills checklist on page 18 of the hard copy or page 42 of the PDF. Computer skills are things like turning on a computer, operating the computer, using the mouse, using assistive technology to make the computer more useful to you, word processing, e-mail, internet, you get the idea. And then the columns that people can select are: I do this well, I know some parts of this skill, I don’t know anything about this skill, or I don’t need this skill. There is an opportunity to name a contact to help them either select the column to choose, or read to them, or whatever the adult chooses. [Slide 19] Next is looking at computer connecting goals and rating their importance. To get some practice in this we use the case study of a woman by the name of Joyce (page 19 hard copy; page 43 PDF) who went through the computer checklist and assessed where she was with her own computer skills and then she (on page 21) looked at some computer connecting goals and decided which ones would be most important to her. She wanted to learn to use the mouse better, she wanted to learn about word processing programs, she wanted to learn to print materials, send e-mail messages, and find and use the internet. Then she went to the “Connecting Action Plan” (on page 21) and decided how—she took those goals and broke them down into steps. There is a column for contacts that she will use to assist her, there is a timeline and a done column for checking it off. That gives people some practice with using the process. Practice for the contacts in how to facilitate on the computer checklist, the connecting goals, and the action plan. Slides 20-21, “Choosing Employment and a Career,” talk about what are jobs and what are careers, and how it’s okay to be in either of those places in your life. Sometimes we need jobs, sometimes we are looking for a more long-range career, and sometimes we are looking to volunteer. And so on slide 22 in choosing employment and career goals and getting ready to think about that, there is a series of exercises to help folks identify what they are interested in and what their preferences are. We found they can pick and choose the ones they think might offer the most information. There is also a part of the employment section that talks about writing letters for employment, résumés, and interviewing. Josh developed a wonderful checklist for interviewing, writing résumés, writing employment goals, and writing an action plan. There are many exercises from which people can pick and choose and ultimately get some help in choosing some of these. On slide 23 we are talking about section five, which is choosing postsecondary education (page 76 hard copy, page 100 PDF). This is just a segment of some of the worksheets we’ve used to help folks determine what campus or postsecondary education facilities and environments and services, admission requirements, all the other features, costs and fees that may be important. This is a worksheet that they work through on each postsecondary educational institution they look at. And they look at information that they learned and then decide if this is a good or a bad match because… and write that in the last column. There are also a number of other kinds of things in this section: where they determine if they want to go to postsecondary education, and what kind of postsecondary education is a good match for them based on interviewing people, finding information on careers, and defining all the different types of postsecondary education. Slide 24 (page 98 hard copy; page 122 PDF) makes a checklist of the layers of your relationships. We listed relationships like family relationships, friend relationships, work relationships, business relationships, romantic relationships, and had people name people in their own life that might fall into those different categories and think about how we address people at those different layers. A second activity, one of the sample activities (page 100 hard copy; page 124 PDF) is a relationship-building checklist. Components in this list include: people seem to like spending time with me, I usually know what to say to people, I can usually use the right words to different layers of people, I have many friends, I have a few good friends, and what folks check off is: Most like me, Somewhat like me, or Not like me. And then looking at the checklist and looking at areas that they may want to think about more, they may want to use as a strength and be aware of the strength too. And of course the goal writing at the end of that section as well. Slide 25 is called “Giving to Your Community,” and I will read to you Josh’s journey for this section. I always wanted to learn tennis as a child. I wasn’t very good with my hand-eye coordination and was very strong for my age. My parents were not sure I would succeed, but they encouraged me anyway. The first year I won no single matches. My parents were shocked when I asked to go back the next year. Guess what? I finished in the middle of my age group. You will do well at what you like if you keep working at it. As long as something is not dangerous, if you want to try it, then take a chance. I like to be part of the action. I also like to watch others try new things. How much a part of the action you choose to be is a personal choice. Think of the activities you would love to do and the skills those activities require. Now take your list of skills and think what you might want to try that uses those skills. Finally, if you want to try something that doesn’t match your skills, try anyway. You might be surprised how good you are. You may have to work harder at it, but it may be still well worth the effort. A second excerpt from Josh’s Journey is where he is talking about giving to your community. When I was younger I shuffled cards in the funniest-looking way. I always hoped that some day I would learn to shuffle cards like everyone else. I practiced and practiced but I did not get it. One day I found out that my cousins thought that the way I shuffled the cards was really cool and they wanted me to show them how I did it. They thought that it looked cool when the cards barely missed ending up on the floor and some how all ended up in my hands. You never know what others will enjoy that you can do. I love to help others—I get a chance to spend more time with those people, they get help, and I feel really good inside. Remember, asking for help and helping others is good. This is how we all learn to get better at what we do. This section also includes several checklists for people to identify skills they have and places they can share them in their own communities, talents, qualities, and places to share them along with giving them some examples. For instance, if they are a great cook, they could volunteer in a Boys or Girls Club to help kids learn to cook or they could volunteer in a program that feeds people who are homeless. They could join a gourmet club and share ideas and recipes with others who love to cook. Then we emphasize thinking about how is what they did a community service, how did it help them, and how did it help their communities? We also spend a lot of time talking about voting, listing some of the things that they need for voter registration along with some of the information they need from voter registration Web sites and looking at those and a checklist for them to check off whether they knew this information or whether they needed to find it out in order to vote. We also provide information about how to get to voting places and how to help other people get to voting places, and end with the goal of voting and helping some other folks get to voting places. Slides 26-27 are the celebration slides, where we look at the fact that someone has thought about his or her strengths, thought about needs, thought about what he or she wants in life, made choices and goals, and took action by writing steps on an action plan and taking charge of some of those kinds of things. That’s the celebrating and folks have a chance to reflect upon those and identify some areas where they want to learn more, where they want to grow more. It’s a nice time to reflect on what they have learned about themselves in each of the sections and identify their successes and areas that they want to grow even further in. Slide 28 talks about Dare to Dream for Adults and where we have them as they think about finished sentences as they relate to Dare to Dream and what we’ve talked about today. So we can do that, or we can just open it up to general questions, but it’s been absolutely my pleasure to talk to you about this today. My contact information is on slide 29 (kwebb@unf.edu, 904-620-1807). MS. MACK: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Kris. Let’s open it up for questions. MR. NELSON: My name is Ed Nelson from Parents, Inc. in Alaska, and I have a question about the first part of the presentation where you talked about having the clients involved in making all decisions, and I was wondering how you work with the client or the adult when they make bad decisions, or are unable or unwilling to come up with contacts or making decisions. How do you deal with that? DR. WEBB: Well, let me talk about this in general terms first. I think the most important thing is, and sometimes what we do is, when we have folks talk about what their choices are, is to identify what happens if you make this choice. As a high school teacher, that seemed to be one of the more effective things I did, even with kids who were more low-functioning, is to have them identify what, if they do this, will happen in this kind of situation? About folks who are unwilling to give contacts, perhaps give them some menus or an array of people and have them point to those they want to include as their contacts, because sometimes initiating that is difficult for some people. But if you give them an array of pictures or an array of choices and have them choose the ones they want as a catalyst or a start, that seems to work well. MR. NELSON: I was speaking about some of the more severely disabled people that we work with that have a lot of disabilities besides the physical, if they have mental disabilities where they’re intimidated or they’re depressed, they feel like they don’t have anybody they can turn to and don’t want to participate and don't know people they could use for contacts. DR. WEBB: I would start with the most familiar and give them a menu of choices, maybe a menu of pictures, cards, of people with whom they are familiar and have them choose and say of these people, what people do you want or whose pictures do you want to put in your Dare to Dream network folder, or give them a menu of choices, even if it’s small and then gradually broaden it until they start feeling more comfortable making choices. That’s one idea that seems to work quite well. MR. NELSON:The other question I had was, how long does it take to go through the whole process? DR. WEBB: I can’t even answer that because it is tailored to how long individuals take in certain sections or their area of interest or their area of need. I don’t think we have any measurement because it’s been out for only a couple of months and until we get some more data and are able to answer that better, I don’t think I can give you an answer because it’s so individualized. MR. NELSON: Thank you very much. MS. JOHNSON: I’m looking at the PDF file right now and I am wondering how would the counselor, teacher, or advisor coordinate or help coordinate the client or the transitioning student to bring in all the varying agencies and coordinate those things that may not have been created yet or are not available based on legislative issues—things like living on your own, money following the person, trying to be as independent and self-reliant as possible—and bringing all those members in and navigating those systems using this text as a guide. Has that been used in that fashion? DR. WEBB: Well, it’s just starting. Like I said, this has just been in print for a few months and so we are just looking to see what we need to do to refine it, what we need to do to improve it, input we get from adults, adolescents, their teachers, agency folks, exactly to see what we need to do to refine it. I think our premise was that this would be directed by the adult or the adolescent and they would solicit the help of these agencies and it would help them problem-solve some of the issues that are just naturally there in peoples’ lives. We are still in the process of looking at how the process will look, if that makes sense. MS. JOHNSON: Yes, it does make sense. My question then would be the reliance of the young adult or the adult person who is involved in this on the counselor or the teacher to bring it to the adult’s attention. How do you make the connection to the direct user? DR. WEBB: You mean the adult? How do you make all that happen? MS. JOHNSON: Or how does the user become aware of the tool that you have created for them, getting the information out to the various support groups that can bring this into their lives so that they can use it as a mapping tool, using the old formulas that have already been created, getting this into use by them, so that it’s functional. DR. WEBB: I have seen some high schools and some 18-22 year old programs use this as one of their materials in actually teaching lessons to older adolescents or young adults. They just use the parts of the book as their actual lessons. They embed them in the lessons that they are teaching so it becomes a part of that young person’s curriculum, if you will. As far as people who are working with a support coordinator, I could see that support coordinator use some of these activities and parts of it to help coordinate the many services that some adults may need. MS. CAHILL: I’m Peggy Cahill from United Cerebral Palsy of Metro Boston. I work in a family support program and I’m wondering if you can tell me a little bit about if this tool is used with parents because I work with parents a lot who have children with disabilities ranging in age from infancy to adulthood. How it’s success has been with parents? DR. WEBB: We are just starting to work with parents. I run a program called Family as Faculty at the University of North Florida and I’ve worked with several of those parents and have shown them a similar presentation for a National Parent Organizations teleconference in several months. We have found it to be real helpful with parents and adults or young adults or older adults even or adolescents. I think we wrote it with parents using it in mind. It’s not a school product by any means. It’s easily used in a school, but I think it’s just as easily used by parents and their sons or daughters too. MS. CAHILL: Can I ask a second question? Can you elaborate a little on Michael Phillips. I don’t have the PDF in front of me, so I’m just hearing this. Can you elaborate a little on how he uses his art as a tool for advocacy? DR. WEBB: Yes, he is an artist and a bright young man with significant physical disabilities. He is an outspoken advocate for people with disabilities, particularly in the use of assistive technology and I think he has shown his art as just beautiful examples of how people can function with effective assistive technology. All of his artwork is computer generated. And he is just an amazing, bright, bright young man. MS. CAHILL: Does he put the art out into any community forums? DR. WEBB: I don’t know, that’s a good question for me to find out—I really don’t know it at this point. MS. CAHILL: We have been using a little bit of the photo-voice process with some student interns who are community college students with disabilities, using the photography and writing to identify community strengths as well as to look at the lack of resources in their transition planning. So I was curious about his art in that context. DR. WEBB: Well, you have my e-mail address on the PowerPoint, and feel free to e-mail me and I can connect you with him. MS. CAHILL: Great. Thank you very much. MS. RUDDELE: This is Karen from West Virginia. My question relates to the transition activities or even the previous Dare to Dream activities that we may have used in the earlier years in school. How could the school help best facilitate the transfer to this Dare to Dream for Adults? Or did you think about that in the planning process? DR. WEBB: No, we really didn’t. We thought of them as separate entities initially. But as we worked more and more with Dare to Dream for Adults, what we did was take this around to a lot of little focus groups before we actually published it, of high school teachers, teachers who did 18-22 year olds and get their input, and what they were telling us is they want to use the adults format for their kids in high school. And what I think we are going to start seeing, this is kind of a loose prediction on my part right now, is that the original Dare to Dream is going to be used maybe in middle school more extensively. MS. RUDDELE: Right, I think that is very appropriate at the middle school level. DR. WEBB: I think the adult version is much more comprehensive and appropriate for high school kids. Dare to Dream is the smaller version that serves as that catalyst to jump-start them into these bigger areas and decisions. MS. RUDDELE: I’m glad to hear you say that. MS. MACK: I really want to thank you, Kris, for giving us a wonderful presentation on Dare to Dream for Adults and its uses and applications. And for those of you that are on the call, if you are interested in learning more about transition issues and helping youth graduate and achieve successful postschool outcomes, we invite you to join our Exiting Community of Practice, which you can get to by accessing www.tacommunities.org. The next NCSET Exiting Community teleconference is scheduled for November 16 at 1:00 p.m. CDT. Dr. Lynn Newman of SRI will present the findings of the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 related to access to the general education curriculum. Thank you for participating and thank you, Kris. Have a wonderful afternoon.
END OF TELECONFERENCE
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