Helen Keller said it best: “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much” — Beginning with the 2014-15 school year, a new multi-state collaborative began out of a training first produced by the New York State Deaf-Blind Consortium (NYDBC). Thanks to NYDBC’s willingness to share their products and resources, many states came together to continue what is called the Interdisciplinary Transition Team Initiative, or ITTI. Each state identifies school teams and approaches transition planning together and intensively. These teams include any one of the related school services personnel, administrators, teachers, parents and the student. Teams view webinars on transition topics and meet often to reflect and action plan for the individual student. This school year, one specific topic to be discussed will be “Challenging vs. Distressed Behaviors” as it relates to the transition aged student with deaf-blindness.
A particular resource which each state has permission to make its own, the Interdisciplinary Transition Team Initiative, or ITTI, is the Transition Timeline with Resources. In Pennsylvania, required transition planning begins at age 14. Therefore, from ages 14 – 21 various areas of planning need to be visited and acted upon as the student ages. Following and linking to these prompted areas in a timely manner, allows for a more methodical planning process and less “catching up to do” when the student nears aging out of the educational system. Preparation for adulthood services requires incredible planning; any process that lessens the stress for students, families and systems should be encouraged. Pennsylvania is working to make this Timeline with Resources “stand alone”, separate from the ITTI, in order to provide this important “click of the link” information to all students with deaf-blindness. You may connect to Pennsylvania’s Transition Timeline with Resources by linking from this article, visit the link or connecting to the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network’s Website at www.pattan.net. Once you have reached this website, locate Deaf-Blindness under Educational Initiatives and following the prompts under Resources and Useful Links to reach the Timeline with Resources document.
It is important to note that this Transition Timeline Resource is always updating as new resources are added and as links change. If you have any resources to suggest to improve this Transition Timeline Resource for Pennsylvania, please contact Molly Black at mblack@pattan.net.