COMPUTER: Class names Angie.
GIRL: This is my sister Angie. Um, she's 5 years old.
WOMAN: When she first came to the preschool class, she could not talk at all. There was really almost no sound coming out of her mouth, even.
SISTER: She's — she's smart. She tries hard, and she tries to do her best in everything. Ha ha!
WOMAN: She was very quiet, and she kind of held back. She watched everything that was going on and quickly picked up what the other children were doing so that she knew what she was supposed to do, but really could not communicate.
COMPUTER: My favorite food is pizza. My favorite color is pink.
PATHOLOGIST: We started using some very simple voice output devices in the beginning, and, as the year progressed, we were able to move her on to a far more complex device.
COMPUTER: I love ballet dancing.
PATHOLOGIST: She remembered where things were. She knew how to go from page to page to find out what she wanted to say, and it just opened up so much for her.
COMPUTER: I like to play with Barbies. I have one sister and no brothers. I have no pets.
PATHOLOGIST: It encouraged her to start to participate more. Um, she loved having a turn to say something.
COMPUTER: Do you want to hear a joke?
TEACHER: Yes, I would love to hear a joke.
COMPUTER: Knock, knock.
TEACHER: Who's there?
COMPUTER: Wayne.
TEACHER: Wayne who?
COMPUTER: Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day.
TEACHER: Ha ha ha! I have 6 children in my class. 3 of them are in wheelchairs. We call them "Hot Wheels." They all use some kind of assistive technology to talk. We have a child who speaks Korean. We have a child who speaks Spanish. We have a child whose parents came from Africa. We have a mix of everything in there, and I think it does play a role in how you teach the class, how you deal with the parents. You have to be sure that, if you're having a conference, you have a translator so the parents can understand what you're saying.
PATHOLOGIST: Working with a family that's coming from another culture, it's very, very important to be quite sensitive to how they feel about having a child with a disability. People from the Far East have a tremendous respect for people in educational positions, and making sure they understand that we give a lot of power back to the parents and that it's very important for them to be involved. One of the beauties of the technology now is that you can actually program using human voice.
[MOTHER SPEAKING KOREAN]
PATHOLOGIST: The family does say grace before meals, so we have been able to program several of these prayers into her device.
[COMPUTER SPEAKING KOREAN]
PATHOLOGIST: We actually have been teaching Anne, Angie's sister, how to program the device so that when they come up with something that they need at home, she can actually program that straight into the device herself.
WOMAN: And in Korean, right?
PATHOLOGIST: And in Korean.
[COMPUTER SPEAKING KOREAN]
PATHOLOGIST: Oh, that's very clear.
TEACHER: Angie's device will help her access the regular curriculum. Next year, she'll be in first grade, and she'll probably go out to a first-grade classroom just like some of the students do this year, and all I do is collaborate with the other first-grade teacher to see, what does she need on her device? And then she answers the questions and is perfectly able to access the curriculum.
WOMAN: I think as this program grows and gets refined and perfected and — to stay on the cutting edge, it has to constantly be changing and improving — there will be more trainings, probably, available for regular-ed teachers who are going to be receiving these kids in their classes as they — if i can use the term — "graduate" from this intensive program.
[CHILDREN ALL TALKING AT ONCE]
PRINCIPAL: I'd like to invite anybody anytime to see these kids not just in the academic setting, but in the social setting, in the lunchroom, in the special classes — art, music, and P.E. They are really woven in.
[CHILDREN LAUGHING]
TEACHER:I'm, like, the person who facilitates the teaching, but there's so many people behind me that make it work. Without them, it wouldn't work.
PRINCIPAL: I think Maribeth's motto — the caption over her door that went up very early last summer, even before the room was ready — was "Even though I can't talk, doesn't mean I have nothing to say," and that's been proven abundantly all year long, more and more as we move along.
ANGIE: More.
ANNE: More? Ha ha! Finished.
ANGIE: Oh!