Tactile, Sequential Communication Strategies: A Hands-On Participatory Workshop

Jennifer White, Able Opportunities Vocational Consulting, Seattle, WA  

>> Hello and thank you for coming. Today I'm going to talk about working with and playing with and interacting with deaf-blind DD folks who don't necessarily have a formalized language system and some ways to start establishing some concrete communication. I've worked with a lot of deaf-blind DD individuals in work and home settings and utilized these systems. I usually give a two full-day presentation. Today I'm just going to try to walk you through what that presentation looks like and do a couple of hands-on experiences. The workshop typically for two days is hands-on, hands-on, hands-on, hands-on because I find that most people when we're talking about deaf-blindness, and especially when there's a cognitive disability of any kind connected with the duel sensory loss -- dual sensory loss have a difficult time trying to wrap their mind around what it's like to move around in the world under those circumstances, given those characteristics.

So I believe strongly in trying things out a lot to help your brain start to assimilate what it's really like. Before I do any kind of simulation activities I let folks know, of course, if I put on a blindfold and try to do something with my hands it's nothing like the deaf-blind DD person I'm working with. That's their life experience. This is what it would be like for me right now if I lost my cognitive abilities and my ability to see and hear all at once in a car accident. It's not the experience of most people. So I always let folks know that just to be cautious about what happens often for us, when I give this workshop it often comes up someone will say during feedback will raise myself and say I would kill myself if I had to live like this. That's a normal reaction but it's an emotion to investigate more and get more information. So we start workshops by explaining that. The other thing that I always start with is if for any reason you don't want to participate in one of the activities, feel free to opt out. That's no problem. Okay. That said, let's start with the definition of communication. What is communication? Any and everybody can raise their hand, yell it out, sign it out, what is the definition of communication? You, sir, in the back?

>> Sharing of thoughts or feelings and emotions. Needs and wants.

>> Great. A sharing of thoughts, emotions, needs and wants. Great. Anything else? Any way to add to that? What he described is based in relationship. The sharing of means between you and I I'm going to tell you how I interact with the rest of the world, how things affect me and I want to know how things affect you. Most of us with vision and hearing, assimilate most of what we know about the world because we know what's around us. If I sat down and said, honey, this is how you're going to talk to them, I say something and you listen and you acknowledge that you've heard me and then you say something, nobody taught us You are a child. You grow up, you hear it, you see it around you and your brain says this is how it works. Boom, and puts it into place.

For the rest of the morning I'll call that the file cabinet of the hearing-sighted mind. My file cabinet is made up of what I saw and heard growing up and 94% of that file cabinet wasn't taught to me. My brain just put it together. 94% of what we learn is assimilated by our surroundings just by being in the middle of something. Our brain figured it out. 4% of what we know is through the group experience, how we interact with each other. And then start to refine those skills. That's only 4% of what we know. And 2% of what we know is in this kind of experience where somebody is actually -- I use the sign preaching -- lecturing, lecturing to us, trying to tell us something that they know and you're listening for that information and knowledge base from another human being.

So when we're talking about someone who has a different way of being in the world and a different way of assimilating in the world their file cabinet is going to look entirely different than my file cabinet. My experience growing up was going to school, hanging out with my friends, fighting with my brothers and sisters, six kids in my family. And then if I go to, if I start to think about some of the deaf-blind DD folks that I work with their experience is coming into the world, not having that much interaction with their family, having a lot of vibration, a lot of information, a lot of trying to sort out what is going on around them without a lot of information connected to it. Unless there's someone in their family who took it upon themselves or someone in their environment, to really bring the world to them and that doesn't happen for most folks. Sometimes it does. That's fabulous but for the most part people's file cabinets aren't developed by someone taking them tactilely through the world trying to give them the big picture of things. So their experience, what their life looks like is different. They went to special education. That looked different than my class.

So my job is to try to sort out how, if I'm going to communicate with somebody else, I want to know what their file cabinet looks like because if I'm trying to use my file cabinet to communicate with them, I'm not going to be providing them with any kind of match to make sense of what I'm talking about. Or to process what I'm talking about. I'm going to give you an example of one of the days this became very apparent to me that I wasn't, didn't understand this yet. About 12 years ago I was working at an institution doing their rep program during the summer. And they had a young deaf-blind DD guy transfer from another state and he was, we were trying to get him ready to go school And I was using everything I knew and I'm signing to him. He doesn't have that much sign. He clearly doesn't understand school or bus or anything like that. Came from a very isolated place. He had enough residual vision to see some. So I'm using symbols for the bus, pictures of the school bus. Here we are. We're getting ready for school. The school bus comes. He has his camping equipment because where he lives, the little yellow bus was when they left to go camping in the woods. So his file cabinet and my file cabinet were in different places.

So today what I want to focus on is how to get rid of the file cabinet, the habits we have as hearing-sighted and Deaf-sighted, and deaf-blind with some residual vision folks. Because we take in the world using those senses. When you have a fully deaf, fully blind DD person, the file cabinet looks very different. Even if you have some residual vision and some residual hearing if there are cognitive challenges, then the challenges remain, the file cabinet stays different. So I'm going to briefly describe some of what I normally do that we don't, in a two-day workshop that we won't have time to go through here but that very first place of trying to change from the English thinking brain to a concrete language development. I run through some exercises with people where we throw language out the window. No engine English, no ASL, no trying to word, trying to mouth it to each other. And we go through some exercises.

The first exercise I go through with folks, I'm going to ask for a lovely volunteer from the audience for this. Any lovely volunteers feeling like coming up and playing with toys? All right! Come on up. We're challenging the interpreters in here today because I move around a lot and ask for volunteers. Is this okay? All right. In this bag I have five sets of toys. Two toys in each set so that means I'm going to have the same toys on my side that she has on her side. And some of you may have done this before in a language class. Dennis Cokley used to do this. Now, I'm going to set up my toys in some fashion. I'm actually going to use three just to keep it simple. So I'm going to set up my toys and then she will have to copy it. I have to explain how to set up her toys in the same way. We can't use any language to do it. So it's completely based in miming, gestures, facial expression. Whoa! Still feel like volunteering? Okay. So I'm going to mime this out. Do you need us to move? Dorothy and Michael? Do you want me to move a little closer so you can watch us do this?

>>Dorothy: maybe you could visually explain what's happening so the interpreter will voice. I don't know about Mike.

>>John: so you'll voice interpret what we're doing. I'm shoveling, raking, moving dirt across the ground. I have my lips pursed and flapping my arms behind my butt, wiggling like a monkey. Looks like a monster with claws on its hand. Set it on top of the rake. It keeps falling off. Now we want the monster that's on top of the rake, you need to move it back, not on top of the teeth part.

>> Deanna said, would you do that again?

>> so we want the monster to be turned around on the rake facing the other direction. Okay? Got that?

>> Yes, Deanna says.

>> Very good. I was seeing what you were doing and I was doing opposite instead of the same.

>> Beautiful. Round of applause for our lovely volunteer. Thank you so much for volunteering. [ applause ] now the questions that she start to do bring up right away bring us into the conversation about concrete language. Wait a minute. I wasn’t sure if you meant the opposite or a mirror of what I was talking about. So it forces people right into conversation about how do we develop language together? How do we work out the details, the rules of language together? Now, first of all I want to let you know I'm sorry we don't have time for everybody to do this activity today but I did bring enough for folks who want to go out to dinner with me. Let me know. I brought enough for all of us to play in case anybody wants to play later. Okay.

So this starts to get us into the place where we know that understanding each other is going to be challenge now that we don't have a familiar, now that we don't have familiar ground. If I'm going to throw out everything that we know how to do together, then we're going to have to really start from scratch. This whole workshop is about starting from scratch so your own brain will understand the rules you have to use with a deaf-blind DD person. The workshop moves from this first activity, toy sculptures to a box of toys, all kinds of toys that relate to the questions. And very abstract questions to answer of each other. Ask and answer of each other and I'll give you a model of that. Another lovely volunteer from the audience? Anyone? Anyone? Come on up! Round of applause for our volunteer. Thank you so much for being willing.

>>Jennifer: In the nonlanguage sentence game everybody gets a sheet of paper that has five sentences on it. And your job is to ask your partner these questions and then elicit some kind of answer from them. The same rules apply. You cannot talk. You cannot sign. You can gesture, you can mime. You can use props. You can draw. But you cannot use any formalized language. So when you're drawing, you can't write any letters. Any agreed upon symbol. The symbol for man or woman, you can't use those. You can't use the equal sign. Nothing on the keyboard. An arrow is the only familiar symbol you're allowed to use because again we're talking about nonsymbolic language. Throw out everything you know. Now, I just want you to know that the sample that I pulled out is the easiest question of them. If you want to do them at dinner I do have enough toys for all of us to play. So I'm going to ask Linda a question and try to get an answer from her.

>> Jennifer has lined up colored markers, orange, blue, red, yellow, black and dark blue. But she chose the green. She's holding it over her head and pointing to it. Now she has the green marker and she showing us the same color as the green table cloth. Then she is smiling about it showing she likes it. Now Jennifer is going down the line of different colors. And she is indicating she doesn't -- the other ones are okay. That they're okay. She finally gets the orange marker and she makes an ugly face, throws it on the floor. Picks up a piece of paper that's orange and flows it on the floor, too. She goes back to the green, smiles, holds it tightly. Shows that's the one she likes. Jennifer is now taking all of the colors and handed them to the volunteer. And the volunteer chose the green. Jennifer smiling doing a thumb's up sign to show that she's right. Now the volunteer is lining the markers up on the table again. Now Jennifer has pointed at the volunteer with the questioning look on her face. The volunteer starts to look at her clothes and her clothes. And realized that her sweater is green. And points to her sweater and picks up the green marker. Jennifer has got a thumb's up sign, smiling, shows she's right. Then Jennifer leans over and points to all of the markers. And gives her a questioning look on her face. And the volunteer picked up the red marker. And didn't like it.

>>Jennifer: Thank you very much for our lovely volunteer. Beautiful. Now, was I asking? What's her preference of color. Another way to say that

>> -- what's your favorite color?

>>Jennifer: Good. How did I ask her.

>> Acting out what was her favorite color and showing that you didn't like which color you didn't like.

>>Jennifer: First I tell you about me. Then I ask you about you. First I give you an example or a model of the experience. Then I ask you about your experience. For me to ask Linda what has her favorite color without telling her my favorite color first could have been a disaster. I've seen it done a million times. It's disastrous. So that modeling, that very concrete language depends strongly on modeling. Okay. The next thing that I do in the workshop and soon you will be getting to something that we actually all participate in, not just roughly volunteers. Yes, Linda?

>> I wanted to say that also you had enough examples of color that if I didn't get it the first time there was a second time and another time and another time so you didn't just put a green pen there. There were all the other choices, too.

>>Jennifer: good. One of the main components of teaching, if I want to teach you what something is, I have to teach you what it is not. Yes.

>> For example, she picked the same color as you did but suppose that wasn't her favorite color. She was use following you what did. How do you clarify you're trying to get what her favorite color is?

>>Jennifer: Very good question. What did I do when she picked up the green one? Gave her a thumb's up and then pointed to the other ones going you mean you don't like the other ones? That's not okay? That happens a lot. Somebody will copy, okay I got it in the same order as you. And my job is as a communicator to make sure that we're clear. So I didn't stop when she's picked the green one. That wasn't the end of the interaction for me. The next thing was to make sure we were talking about her. Very good question. It's the most common mistake that happens there. Okay.

For this nonlanguage sentence experience, what comes out of this more than anything else is that the hearing-sighted people in the room have a very difficult time because English is subject-verb-object. We place meaning on things because of their order. And as long as you stay there you can make no sense in the concrete world at all. It's the most confusing place to be. It's so abstract. To try to think in that way. And it's the most difficult thing for most hearing-sighted folks to let go of is to really try to make that break from thinking the way we know how to think into a different file cabinet. How do I at least understand a different filing system?

Now, to complicate things more during the next exercise, and we're actually not going to have anybody do this but I brought blindfolds. They're made out of polar fleece. You can wash and it dry. You don't need a knot. They are stretchy and soft. One person wears a blindfold. You're partners for the whole workshop. One person wears it and I hold up instructions for everybody else. And the instructions are very vague. On the table I put out a whole bunch of articles materials, papers, rulers, stencils, markers, glue, yarn. Glitter. Love that one. And I hold up the sign that says help your partner make something, anything. And the hearing-sighted person gets up or the deaf-sighted person and they bring them back and they help their partner draw a fish. Or whatever they decide.

The most common thing that happens in this exercise is that people decide for the deaf-blind person what they're going to draw. They also decide which materials that deaf-blind person is going to use. So I kind of set people up. Just to, you know, take a look at our own stuff. But we also make those decisions for good reasons. This is a crowded room. There's materials up front. It would be hard to get people all the way up front. This is a new interaction for the two of you. You want to start on some common ground. Don't get it too complicated so we make the decisions for some good reasons.

But this is, I do the exercise once and then we change partners after we've talked about it some and then we do it again so that the second person has now an opportunity to try to incorporate some of the respectful things that we do for deaf-blind folks. And this leads us into deaf-blind etiquette. Which is for me, I work in both adult -- I work both with kids and adults. And most of the adults that I know hang out and work with people who are trained in deaf-blindness, but don't know anything about cognitive challenges or language development. And most of the kids that I work with work with people who know a lot about language development but don't know anything about deaf-blindness. Never the twain shall meet. It's very difficult to try to get folks together where there's a deaf-blind adult sitting on the team of a deaf-blind kid's school district, planning team. It's been done. We actually wrote a grant with it built-in.

The needs base is very different. Oftentimes the beginning language development and before getting into these concrete systems I talk a lot with people about the rules of deaf-blindness. The very basic rules. Communicative interaction because now we're talking about a deaf-blind DD adult. Most of their life experience has been this. Someone taking their hand and putting it on something. The interaction starts with somebody's on my hand and they're directing me where to go.

So the very first couple of rules that folks need to understand are, I'm going to tap you on the shoulder and you're going to learn how to do this in no time. The folks with the lowest cognitive functioning skills you tap them on their shoulder their hand goes up. It's amazing. It's the instinctive reaction to beginning communication. It's like me saying, Linda and Linda looks at me. This is calling somebody's name or calling attention to them and it is missed more often than not by deaf-blind DD individuals. You cannot understand the interaction of communication unless the interaction and communication takes place with you. So it's not in their file cabinet if people have been taking their hand and pulling them forward. Right? Is this making sense? I can’t really see you because the lights in my eyes so if you're nodding your heads-thank you.

So tapping the shoulder gently, letting somebody raise their hand up. And then two other steps to make sure folks know. One is introducing themselves every time. And this is again a very commonplace where people say he smells me, he knows who I am. And that's probably true. He probably does smell you different than other folks. But I have three sets of friends who contain one partner that is a hearing-sighted person and the other is a deaf-blind person and every time they interact, the hearing-sighted person says, hi, it's me. And uses their name sign. And the reason that they do that isn't because her husband's not going to recognize her. But because the time and attention that it takes for him to sort out who she is wastes the communication. That's not why she's there. Hi, it's a guessing game. Who am i? That's not why she's there. Hi, I'm Marla -- Martha Lee. You can begin the communication process which is what you want to talk about. This is very difficult for most teams who work with deaf-blind DD individuals to really grasp how important this is to give up he's going to feel my ring and know it's me. Name signs or another part of the communicative process. It's the beginning of labeling that is important to us. What is communication?

>> The sharing of feelings and emotions.

>>Jennifer: The sharing of emotions, needs and wants with another human being. So if I don't know who you are different from who you are or different from who you are, or that there's even a labeling of you and you and you and you it's going to be very difficult to start to have that interaction. So that labeling is being so important. Tap on the shoulder, introduce yourself every time, and the third thing which again is something that we're going to try a couple of exercises around and I'm going to stop talking soon. I promise. We're going to start doing stuff.

The other thing I find the most compelling and most challenging to change our habits about instead of taking somebody's hand from the top and showing them something to let them take the time required to watch long enough with their hand on top of you, this is how they're going to watch, the process long enough to become curious enough to take their hand on to what you're doing because they're ready to do it themselves. I'll talk about that one a little bit more because we have a couple of exercises for it. I'm getting ahead of myself because I'm so excited. Okay.

Let's do -- let's do an exercise around communication first. Remember I went through these things that we do and when I do in the big two-day workshop but you guys are all experts that work with deaf-blind folks so we're going to try it two dimensional. What I would like you to do is get with a partner. One person face the screen and one person face away from the screen. Move your chairs. --

>>Jennifer: So you're not going to face the screen.

>>Dorothy: I'll watch. I learn better that way.

>>Jennifer: Okay. Now for those of you who can see, the screen, I'm going to turn this on and there's going to be a picture here. Remember when we talked about how difficult it is for those of us who use subject-verb-object, topic comment is the key to this exercise so you know. I'm going to shine a picture up and I want you to try to describe to your partner what's on the screen.

>>-- we need an interpreter here in the back.

>>Jennifer: Let's go ahead and thank our lovely interpreter team for all the work we're putting them through right now. Thank you. Okay. Ready? Describe this picture to your partner. No signs. No words. No formalized language. Good enough. Let's turn it off. Have your partner turn around and look at the picture. Is this what you thought? Good. Beautiful. You guys are good! All right. Say it again?

>> Can you put it back up so they can see?

>>Jennifer: Okay. You can actually stay in this position.

>> It's hard because the sign for tree so that was very difficult.

>>Jennifer: What did you do instead? Couldn't sign tree so what did you do again? Oh, you became a tree. Good.

>> I showed hacking down the tree and then I was a tree that fell over.

>>Jennifer: It was actually a little boy in trouble for cutting down the tree.

>> Just showed facial expressions, showed myself chopping the tree down and the tree fell over and the other person was looking, sternly and shaking their finger at them.

>>Jennifer: Good. And if you were describing this in English, you'd started with, … There's this little boy in trouble. Right? But in ASL which is so much better for concrete thinkers, for concrete language development, topic comment and here's the story. Here's what happens. Little kid cut down the tree and then he got in trouble. It makes so much more sense that way so the workshop is full of these kinds of activities that make you start to think in a different way, that make you let go of those language concepts that you have.

The next thing to do is start work on those tactile skills where you're trying to be respectful and let somebody take the time they need to explore something instead of trying to manipulate their hands. That's why I have a couple more activities if you get together with a partner again and I need a lovely volunteer to help me pass some things out. Everyone gets two bowls for each pair. One more lovely volunteer. Great. Will you pass out two bowls, one bag for each partnership. Thank you. Again, I'm going to put the instructions on the screen. And I've got some hard copies of the instructions as well. The person -- you're going to be teaching your partner a job. One person is going to be the teacher. One person is going to be the employee -- one person is the employee learning the job. Decide who that's going to be right now. And then the person who's going to be the employee learning the job, go ahead and close your eyes for this exercise. This is going to be a tactile exercise. Most of the time I pass out blindfolds and people take them home. Okay. Everybody ready? Ask me if you want concrete or hard copies of the instructions. Here are the instructions.

>>Jennifer: Let's hold up here. Go ahead and talk with your partner for a second. Read the assignment. Go ahead and put those beads back in the bag. Pass them up front. Volunteers, would you help collect the bags with their beads inside and the two bowls? Great. Thank you. Let's talk as a group about this. Okay. I know you guys are being very challenged. Run around, run around. You need the exercise. You get it during work. Okay. How did it go? You had a headache? Arrgghh!

>> The woman in red is saying -- the first part. Would you do it again, please? I remember from graduate school several years ago they said that one hearing kid in educational settings is equal to seven deaf kids in terms of the process of learning and communication. But man, when we start looking at a deaf-blind -- when we start looking at a deaf-blind DD kid it's much more than that.

>> Equals seven. I said it the opposite.

>>Jennifer: Right. Well, and it's not that deafness is so hard or deaf-blindness is so hard. We're just not equipped for it. We just don't set up our classrooms that way. It's not hard to interact with a deaf-blind person if you're in a room that's set up for a deaf-blind person. If you have a classroom and you go to -- you're learning about milk. And you take a trip to the dairy farm and you understand where milk comes from. Right? There's all that assimilation. You see it, you get it. You're done. 'You're -- if you're talking about a deaf-blind kid, the time it takes to feel that cow and how the milk goes through the machine because as a sighted person I'll see all that machinery set up. I'll see where the milk comes from and out in a heartbeat but as a blind individual, and a deaf-blind individual, I'm going to need to touch every single part of that to understand what happens.

I placed a deaf-blind woman in a job at a hospital. No cognitive challenges. Deaf-blind woman. Ushers, fully blind and she works in a sterile processing department at Swedish Hospital and I'm allowed to talk about her because she was in the newspaper and she says I can talk about her any time I want. We went into that hospital and volunteered for five months so that she knew the whole place. She runs the back room now. They hired her to run the back room. She stocks everything. She's the only one who does postpartum kids. She's the only one who does newborn, postpartum, you have a baby, you go home you get a bag with diapers and everything stacked in it so it's an assembly kind of job to a newborn kits where they take the fingerprint, the little ink pad and you seal the bag and on the other side you put in more stuff and you seal the bag. To putting together circuits like the things the masks that you use while you're laying on the bed, all zoned out. To restocking bedside drawers that the surgeons use in surgery. So drawers come downstairs full of needles and restraints and bandages and all kinds of stuff fully blind, deaf-blind woman. Restocks these drawers making sure they have everything in these. Clean them out. Stock them again.

When we first went in there there was no way they would believe she would be able to do that. Now she's one of the best employees they've ever had. She's been hired for a year. She's gotten a raise. They adore her. She's one of the models they use for production. Production rates because she's so focused and she’s the social queen as well so she is very much part of the department now. But the point of that story, the reason I'm telling you this story is that we went in there because we know the learning curve for a deaf-blind person is longer in a visual world. Because when I walked into that hospital room even though she had ushers and vision most of her life, when I walked into that hospital room and saw those circuits and those bedside drawers I related it to "E.R. -- E.R.," I have seen them used. Janie doesn't know what they're to. So not only are we doing the layout of the room but what everything is used for.

She now makes a specific drain for one doctor who hates to use purchased things from companies. He makes a specific drain for an some abdominal operation where it's a rubber tube that needs little teeny nicks to -- a nick on each side of the tube in four different places and then split down the middle, split drain tubes. Everybody hated making them. Janie is the best at it. The doctor now asks if Janie can make them because she's so focused. Once she has it tactilely she's so focused and so good but it took her so much longer to learn how to do it. So for rehab one of the things that I look for a lot are places where you can volunteer nonprofit organizations where you can actually volunteer so you can get in there and really learn the job because nobody's going to pay you for five months of training and DVR, they can't afford to do that in the state of Washington. But in any case the point being that for a deaf-blind DD individual it's not just how long it takes but that every minute of the day needs to be bringing the world here so I've got access to what that is.

I work with a deaf-blind DD on a machine on a machine shop and one day we ask the boss to help clean out machine. The huge machine, take out all the stones so we could really check it out, find out what the whole machine was like. Put them all back in, have him be part of the person putting it back in. Not only that but the middle parts to find out where they came from, to find out where they're going to and what they're connected to so he has the story. Now a lot of people who work in machine shops don't necessarily know what each metal part goes to you but if you have the idea it's going to make an airplane, no matter what the shape is, it's much more motivating than if somebody is patting you on the back and they stop patting you o the back when you're not. Okay. How are we on time? It's ten o'clock now? Do you want to do one more tactile experience? Okay.

>> Can I make one comment just quickly?

>>Jennifer: Yes.

>> I was impressed with how important the tactile part was when I was learning. My teacher here sat --

>> Hang on just a second.

>> Would you go back to the metal machine shop again?

>>Jennifer: do you want me to sign? Is this for everybody who can see me? Are you going to copy sign?

>> if someone can voice it I would prefer it. Sandra will. Thank you. Okay. Good. Thanks for asking for clarification. Okay.

>> There was a question.

>>Jennifer: Linda. Thank you.

>> I wanted to say at first I didn't like, as soon as our knees touched I felt like I could do this.

>>Jennifer: Beautiful. The guy I just talked about on the machine, when I met him his counselor said this guy is so cue dependent. If somebody has been grabbing his hand all his life that's the way you get to be. You wait for somebody to grab your hand. The other thing is deaf-blindness is very isolating and he's never had information about who's coming, who's going, who's in the room so I worked, we trained right next to that machine six months, again, long story but this guy got really good at it. They were going to offer him a job. The company went under, bummer! In any case, he working right next to him as long as I was there, even if my shoe was touching his shoe for the first two months, there was still me next to him and then it was about training his co-workers about he's going to come check on you make sure you're still there working, too. If you are going to leave the room if you tell him good-bye he'll know when you're not there. His co-workers started doing that with him. His co-workers got comfortable with him reaching over and saying you're going the same thing as me, great. Back to work. Because it is very isolating.

Anybody else in this beading experience I know commonly what happens with this beading experience somebody gets beads and they think I'm going to make a necklace. I'm asking you to do something else. Messes with your mind. On purpose. On purpose because expectations are very difficult when you don't know what somebody, when you don't have a language base similar to somebody else and you're just working off a model, it takes long to sort out the expectations. When you don't know what the expectation is it's really scary. You're afraid of making a mistake and it's very easy to become passive if you don't over time it's very easy to become passive. So one of the things allowing someone enough time to explore something, allowing the model to continue long enough for them to sort out what the expectation is. If you spent that whole time beading yourself one went in, one went out with your hand on top of theirs, grated it would have been fine. Until they understand what the expectation is, I don't hand them the job because as soon as I do I set them up. And it's very difficult to make a lot of -- we all know that. We go to work to impress people not to learn something. Most of the time. Right? You always like to learn but you want to feel comfortable and confident. And it's the same for deaf-blind DD folks. The way to do that is to make sure you're doing hand under hand and they have enough time to sort that out.

I'm going to give you another opportunity to do another job. Okay? I'm going to pass out another job in partnership. Let me offer you the choice, actually. We can do that and the reason that I focused on the exercises we did is because trying to change this, this mind-set's thinking about language the way we think about it, throwing it out and starting again is very challenging. These are things that you can do with anybody that you work with. You can do these things with teams easily. It's more difficult to make these kinds of big systems that I've brought models of. You can call me about that any time. I sell these. We make them at home. All that kind of stuff. So I gave you more exercises you could actually take home and utilize like this bead one and the next exercise we have.

But I did bring a lot of models of tactile communication systems that are made with tangible objects. For example, if it's time to eat, then I've got a symbol that's actually made of part of a real spoon. And this is the sign for eat. Or the object for eating. For folks who don't have formalized language systems tangible systems can sometimes act as the bridge to get to signing. Some people have a lot of splinter skills like they know the sign for toilet and eat and they'll use those two all the time to mean anything. This is another way to help them organize the language system that you're trying to use with them. You have to step back and get more concrete about it.

Or for example here's the knob, the exact same knob that's on the drawer that has all the art materials in it. So their tactile experience is related to their tactile experience of the world is what the symbol is made of. So I wanted to offer you a choice because we have got such little time. Would you like to try another exercise? Or would you like to talk more about these tangible objects and systems? Both! Okay! Challenge the interpreters words. How many people would like to do another exercise? How many people would like to do the talk more about the tangible symbols. Okay. More people doing the exercise but please contact me. I'll be here until the end of the workshop. I have rolodex cards here and brochures. After the workshop you're welcome to come up and take a look at these and all of the exercises I brought enough for all of us to go out to dinner to play games so let me know if you want to do that. I need a couple of lovely volunteers to pass things out again. And you are going to do the same thing. Partners, one person is going to be closing their eyes. Where did my volunteers go?

>>Jennifer: One bag, two bowls. Thanks for your help. You need a partner. Okay. Who needs a partner. -- partner? Anyone? Okay. Ready? Is your partner set up and your ready to go?

>> I'm waiting for my partner. She left.

>>Jennifer: Again, Dorothy I have a print copy. Okay. Ready? We're going to run out of time. This is what you're going to teach your partner.

>>Jennifer: We have to stop, unfortunately. Go ahead. Talk with your partner. Sorry. We have to stop because we're out of time. But talk with your partner. Was it clear? Were you starting to get the expectations? Was it easier this time now understanding a little more about how, giving it more time? Go ahead and put those bolts back in the bag and pass them up on up. I want to take a couple of minutes to talk before we go. Thank you. How did you do? All right. How was that? Let's come back as a group for a couple of seconds before we go. Thank you. We just need to talk for a second before we go. Thank you. How did you do that time? Was it a little bit easier? Yeah? Any comments about the challenges? Yes.

>> One of the problems was whether you were left-handed or right-handed. And if I'm right-handed and then my partner is left-handed it was a little bit more confusing in terms of the whole idea of mirroring or do it exactly the same.

>> My partner had so much background knowledge that as soon as he felt the parts, it wasn't --

>>Jennifer: Beautiful. His file cabinet has this job in it already. Beautiful. Anybody else? Thank you so much for coming this morning. Thanks so much for being willing to do all of this. I know we tried to get through a lot of information in a very short period of time. Please fill out the green paper before you go and please feel free to contact me during the conference. I have the toys in my room. We can play any time. Thank you. [applause]