Idaho Project for Children and Youth with Deaf-Blindness: Recent Episodes
Robin Greenfield
Philip Schweigert, M.Ed. began working with children with sensory and multiple disabilities in 1977 in Portland, Oregon. After serving as both a classroom teacher and later, program chair, he spent 22 years as project coordinator on numerous research and demonstration efforts to investigate assessment and intervention strategies in communication and cognitive skill development in individuals with severe disabilities. Philip has authored and co-authored articles for refereed journals as well as curriculum materials through the Design to Learn project of Oregon Health & Sciences University. He subsequently served as a consultant, lead teacher, deaf-blind project consultant, and affiliate university instructor. He is recently retired from the University of New Mexico where he worked as a consultant for the state’s deaf-blind project. Philip continues to provide consultations and trainings nationally in the area of communication strategies for learners with significant disabilities .
Dr. Tanni Anthony is the Director of the Access, Learning, and Literacy (ALL) Team within the Exceptional Student Services Unit of the Colorado Department of Education. She also serves as the State Consultant on Blindness/Visual Impairment and the Project Co- Director of the Colorado Services for Children and Youth with Combined Vision and Hearing Loss.
Tanni received her Ph.D. from the University of Denver in Child and Family Studies. She is a teacher of students with visual impairments and an orientation and mobility specialist. She has worked with very young children with sensory disabilities and their families in Minnesota, Alaska, and Colorado.
Tanni presents frequently and writes extensively on the topics specific to pediatric blindness/visual impairment and deaf-blindness. Key topics of interest include early development, emergent literacy, play, sensory assessment, and developmental orientation and mobility.
Transcript Link
Maurice Belote is a graduate of the federally-funded teacher training program in deafblindness at San Francisco State University and has worked exclusively in the field of deafblindness for 39 years.
Maurice has served as Project Coordinator for California Deafblind Services since 1992. Maurice provides technical assistance and training throughout California and can tell you where to find the best tacos most anywhere along California’s rural highways. His passions are ensuring that students leave school with functional, well-documented communication systems, and that students are fully prepared to have the same kinds of wonderful lives that any of us would wish for ourselves.
Prior to joining the state TA and training project, he served for ten years as a teacher of deafblind young adults at the California School for the Blind, where he developed a competitive employment training program and rehabilitated a vacant apartment complex to open an independent living training program for transition-age students.
Maurice is a frequent presenter at state, national, and international conferences and has written extensively on educational issues specific to children and youth who are deafblind. He represents students with deafblindness on numerous state and national groups and organizations, including as the specialist in deafblindness for the California Transcribers and Educators of the Blind and Visually Impaired. He also serves as Co-Chair of the National Coalition on Deafblindness, which advocates for federal recognition of interveners and teachers of the deafblind in IDEA.
Maurice’s favorite quote is from renowned implementation scientist Dean Fixsen: “Students cannot benefit from interventions they do not experience.”
Download Transcript here:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/v309tqrst4mausbptqm1e/David-Brown-Podcast-Transcript.docx?dl=0&rlkey=59ndkhlrqsx17mqj6zikrb1h6
David Brown has been teaching for 48 years, and as a deafblind educational specialist he has been working with children with multi sensory impairments since 1983. In the United Kingdom he was the Head of Family & Children Services for Sense, the National Deafblind Association. He moved to California in 2000 to work with the state deafblind project, based in San Francisco, and he continues to live there and work as a freelance consultant since his retirement 5 years ago. He has given presentations about various aspects of deafblindness in 14 different countries, and in 31 states in the US. He is in demand as a conference speaker, in 2019 presenting at conferences in Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, the UK, Germany, and Norway. His articles about deaf/blindness have been translated into at least 14 different languages. David has a credential in the Education of Students with Multi Sensory Impairments from the University of Birmingham in England, and an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Central Michigan University for his research work with children with deaf-blindness. In 2005 David was given the Star-in-CHARGE award by the CHARGE Syndrome Foundation, and in 2013 he was awarded the Deafblind International ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ for “innovative and visionary work with people with deaf/blindness”.
Robin G. Greenfield, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of the Center on Disabilities and Human Development at the University of Idaho. She is also the Director of the Idaho Project for Children and Youth with Deaf-Blindness.
Dr. Greenfield has conducted national and international presentations on education strategies for children who are deaf-blind. She has written a series of booklets and video fact sheets on topics related to deaf-blindness and produced a video series on the inclusion of a child who is deaf-blind in a general education class. Her research interests include looking at the impact of stress on children with complex disabilities and how to maintain attention in children who are deaf-blind.