Aladdin asked Jasmine, "Do you trust me?"This is very fitting for our AAC users, their families, and the interdisciplinary team. Great teamwork is founded by trust.
This reference begins with our story of how we met.
Annabeth and I first met at our work. One of her first weeks at the job, we had an AAC/AT vendor come to our staff meeting to give a presentation. Immediately following the presentation, we were the first two up there to ask questions, talk to the vendor, and trial the equipment! I immediately flagged her in my brain as a colleague I wanted to collaborate with.
Luckily, we had a shared client start soon after that. This client was the best (okay, I say that about all my clients, let’s be honest) but he had a lot of sensory needs that I needed some strategies for, and language needs that Annabeth had questions about. So, we met regularly to discuss this client. Naturally, our meetings often included chit chat, where we established some of our common interests (mostly about the world of AAC and AT). Shortly after that, we had an evaluation together for a client (who was also the best) who had some complex communication needs and complex access needs. This client led to many collaborations and learning from each other about each other’s scope of practice in the world of AAC and AT, and through our brainstorming we found that we both wanted to research even more about current evidence on the topic. After a few months, the Closing the Gap conference opened their call for papers. I have always been “into” presentations and I knew Annabeth had presented before at conferences. So, strangely enough, I ran into her in the bathroom and asked if she would be interested in submitting about our interdisciplinary collaboration in AAC and AT.
"strangely enough, I ran into her in the bathroom and asked if she would be interested in submitting about our interdisciplinary collaboration in AAC and AT."
We submitted, got accepted, and fast-forward as we created our presentation, we established our friendship. We would meet after work (mostly at Panera) to work on our presentation. Many of these meetings did not accomplish anything towards our presentations but rather were spent talking about all things 90s and 2000s, and noticing how similar we are.
We’d also get super sidetracked and go on tangents, especially about future ideas for presentations we have. #dreams
GIFs are always a good idea.
Anyways, when we were creating our separate pieces of our presentation, each of us placed GIFs in it. We thought we were hilarious including these GIFs, because they were punny and relevant and served an educational purpose in the presentation. One of the first GIFs we included was Aladdin riding the magic carpet and holding out his hand to Jasmine saying, “Do you trust me?” on our introduction slide to introduce the concept of collaboration with the AAC team, including the user and caregivers.
Trust is one of the most important characteristics of a rock-star AAC team. First, the team members have to trust each other. The team members know their own strengths and weaknesses, and trust the others' professional evaluations, interventions, and opinions about the child. The team members trust each other to have a variety of expertise that they can bring to each situation, and let others take the lead when they are the expert. Second, families must trust the professional team. This is their child who is in our hands. Families trust us to give this child our all, and work to establish communication, a basic right. Families trust us to continuously listen to their goals and implement what is important to them. We felt very much like Aladdin with our first shared complex communication client, asking the family, "Do you trust us?"
We felt very much like Aladdin with our first shared complex communication client, asking the family, "Do you trust us?"
We included several more GIFs from Aladdin, like Genie saying, "applause please." We were so excited about these GIFs, and could not wait to see all of our peers smile and give us a nod to how funny we are when we presented. Spoiler alert: not all audiences appreciate your GIFs at the same level you do. Anyways, it seems like we were just destined to have a whole week dedicated to Aladdin. Happy Aladdin week and check out our instagram page for all Aladdin themed AAC therapy ideas and tips!
lylas!
mara & annabeth