Orion's First Year at TSD (Video)

God knows how long this has been sitting unpublished in Blogger!  Let this video fly free! This is of our precious Orion during his first year at Texas School for the Deaf, at 2 years old in what was then called the Parent-Infant Program (now called Toddler Learning Center).

It is a delight to present to you this collection of moment snippets of Orion and Amy, his teacher, during the 2012-2013 school year at TSD. This video was created in May 2013.




Video Notes:
The video opens with two women working on swinging Orion in his blanket. The woman on the left is Carolina, she is a certified orientation and mobility specialist (COMS), a key person on my son's IEP team. Amy, his teacher of students who are Deaf/HH, is on the right.

If your child is DeafBlind, blind or visually impaired, he has the right to have an orientation and mobility (O&M) evaluation and if a need is found, to then receive services. Orientation and mobility is listed as a related service under Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004). No baby is too young for O&M services. Like you saw in the video, Orion received O&M at 2 years old.  Movement development starts at birth!

At 3:07 in the video, Orion is sitting in his stroller and giggling along with the honking geese. While wearing his CI processors, he appeared to find the honking amusing! (He doesn't like his CIs anymore.)

At 3:27, in the shot where Orion is sitting at a floor table, he is surrounded by his early intervention team which included a speech-language pathologist (Tracy, in the video), occupational therapist and of course an ASL interpreter so the team and parents could communicate with each other.

Communication: We signed on Orion's body, also known as "touch cues", during the 2012-2013 school year. We wanted Orion to have control of his hands, so we avoided touching his wrists or shaping his fingers in any way. You will see him sometimes covering his hands over the adult signer who is signing on his body.  It's my thought that this helped Orion realize his hands were powerful, that he could get more information via hands by searching his environment, people, things and finally, tactile sign language- where he could tactually observe signs at a distance (a signer signing normally and not on Orion). This work is still in progress...

Source: IDEA (2004). Related Services, Section 300.34. Retrieved from https://sites.ed.gov/idea. (Direct link to related services: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/a/300.34)