Core Connect AAC

I am a retired speech pathologist and worked 28 years in the public school setting, working the past 20 years in ASD classrooms with elementary special education teachers. With a population of 600 Kindergarten through grade five students and 5 autism classrooms of six children each, there was plenty to keep me busy at my elementary school building. I specialized in working with non-verbal and limited language children, preschool through grade five. I have taught ASD communication courses at the university level to special education teachers working towards their Autism Endorsement.

For the past five years of my teaching, I made extensive use of the smartboard to teach core page navigation to best gain and hold my students' attention for learning. I worked at the level a student presented, from wandering the room to being able to sit at an instructional table. I co-taught my daily AAC groups with an ASD teacher. I believed it was important to involve para-educators in our groups not only to help with prompting but also so they could learn the core in order to model through-out the school day. Practically none of the students I worked with could physically manage drag and drop smartboard activities, and it was very difficult for me to find any activities that involved simple tapping or clicking. The interactive smartboard activities I create are all simple tap and click in order to provide an accommodation for children who are not able to do drag and drop activities due to fine motor issues. Music was also an important part of my teaching. I collected song videos over the years which ended up being essential in engaging my students. My song video products actually represent hours and hours of internet searches. As my TPT store grew, I noticed a big demand grow for my interactive and adapted books. As a result, I have now created over 400 books on a wide range of topics for teachers to use.

I was recently made a life member of the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association (ASHA).

I received both my Bachelor and Master's degrees in Speech Pathology from Michigan State University. I am a licensed speech pathologist in the state of Michigan.

Retirement is great. I spend a lot of my time creating and updating activities for my store. I work at my own pace!