[Editor's note: This is a condensed version, prepared by one
of the authors, of
Broderick, A.A., and C. Kasa-Hendrickson (2001). "SAY
JUST ONE WORD AT FIRST": The Emergence of Reliable Speech in a Student
Labeled With Autism. JASH, 26(1), 13-24.]
However, over the past year, Jamie Burke has emerged as a reliable speaker,(1)someone for whom speech has become an increasingly useful form of expression. Indeed, when we began this research we could not have anticipated how quickly and almost explosively Jamie's speech would emerge. Virtually every time we saw Jamie over the course of the research, he used his expanding speech in novel ways.
The focus of this inquiry is on the experience of one adolescent student, Jamie Burke, as he developed increasingly reliable speech between the ages of 12 and 13. The emergence of spoken language at this age is particularly significant in that Jamie is a student with a label of autism who had very little useful speech prior to this point. Additionally, Jamie is a student whose primary means of expression has historically consisted of typed language produced through facilitated communication, and thus his speech has emerged in the context of a complex and ongoing incorporation of both typing and talking in his expressive communication.
Jamie Burke is among a handful of FC users who have learned to type independently; however, his independent typing is not the central focus of this inquiry. Rather, this article will describe Jamie's recent and concomitant development of useful speech, and will explore the nature of the relationship between his typing and his speaking in expressive communication as experienced and interpreted by Jamie himself.
We have constructed and presented our findings in two sections. The first is a descriptive narrative of "The Emergence of Reliable Speech" for Jamie, largely based upon data gathered through interviews with Jamie's mother, in which she describes her own observations of this process, and the data gathered through the participant observations of the researchers. The second section draws upon the content of interview data from both Jamie and Sheree, and identifies and analyzes several "Categories of Supports," elements that Jamie and Sheree report experiencing and interpreting as supportive of Jamie's emerging speech development.
In 1990, at the age of three and a half, Jamie was labeled autistic. His language was described by the consulting psychologist as "delayed and/or deviant" including the presence of "echolalia" with "very little spontaneous language" apart from his "spontaneous labeling of objects." Jamie's mother, Sheree Burke, describes his early language development in this way:"Tremendous echolalia": Unreliable speech
He met basic words on time, like "mama, dada, book, ball." Single words. When he got to be two, that's when we found a little concern, 'cause he wasn't stringing more than 2-3 words together to make sentences..That was at two, and three, and even at four..[He also showed] tremendous echolalia. Everything we said was echoed back.Sheree also reports Jamie reading books at the age of two. He routinely took books to bed with him, and would select his own books off the library shelf by scanning the spines of the books and selecting books on his current topics of passionate interest. Jamie entered an inclusive preschool program with supports when he was four years old.
When he was five years old, Jamie was introduced to facilitated communication and quickly began typing to communicate his thoughts. For example, in 1991, shortly after he began typing with FC, Jamie wrote, " I LOOK TO YOU. ME IS LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF THIS. LOOK AT ME MY NOEISESE [noises] ARE STUPID BUT MY NINSID [inside] IS SMART." (NOTE: For the purposes of this paper, words that were typed by Jamie are indicated in ALL CAPITALS, words that were spoken aloud are indicated in italics, and words that were read aloud after being composed through typing are indicated in ITALICIZED ALL CAPITALS. )
Sheree reports that after Jamie started typing:
We would see a little bit more expansion in sentence structure, through his speaking.[for example] "Jamie go store," but that seemed to drop off tremendously when he really got into the typing. Even the 1, 2, and 3 words just sort of disappeared. The typing was the main mode of communication..Kindergarten he hardly spoke at all the whole year. I remember his first grade teacher saying he spoke one sentence all year long, when a pile of blocks fell over and he said, "Wow, what a mess." She said, "I nearly fell off my chair, that was the one sentence he uttered all year long."According to this report, once Jamie had a system of communication in place through which he could express complex thoughts, his use of his limited speech seemed to diminish as his use of typing as a favored mode of communication expanded. He continued to echo others' words or favorite phrases or movie titles, but he used typed language as his primary means of reliable expression. Jamie states, "I COULD NOT DO BOTH. MY BRAIN FELT CONFUSED BY SPEAKING SO TYPING WAS CORRECT FOR ME." Indeed, during this time, Jamie occasionally directed his teachers and family to pay attention to his typing, rather than his speech saying, "LISTEN TO MY TYPING. MY VOICE IS UNFORTUNATLY UNRELIABLE." He occasionally did produce speech during this time, but it was not a reliable form of communication for him. When asked about wanting to speak, Jamie says, "SADLY I WAS NOT FEELING THAT MY VOICE WAS NORMAL SO EVEN THOUGH WORDS WERE VERY EASY TYPING WAS CLEARER." Thus, typed language became a useful means of expression for Jamie, in ways that spoken language had not been.
Jamie now types using a conversational device called a LightwriterT that can be programmed to say each letter aloud as it is typed, read each word aloud when the space bar is pressed, and to read whole sentences or paragraphs aloud when the "speak" bar is pressed. When the speak bar is pressed, the sentence scrolls by on the bright green visual display as the device reads it aloud. Jamie initially began incorporating speech that seemed related to his typing by intermittently repeating individual words aloud after the LightwriterT, and shortly thereafter he began repeating phrases and eventually whole sentences aloud as they scrolled by. Within a matter of weeks, Jamie was able to read his own sentences aloud from the visual display as they scrolled by, without the added support of repeating after the Lightwriter'sT voice output. Sheree describes Jamie's reading aloud as beginning "once he got the LightwriterT and the use of the computer..and all of a sudden [he] started reading back, and repeating after the machine had said it, that just opened the floodgates.""Open[ing] the floodgates"--Reading out loud
When Jamie was just beginning to be able to read aloud what he had written, he required extensive supports from his facilitator in order to be able to do so successfully. During the early focus group interviews, Sheree provided a number of different supports to Jamie while he was reading. She held his wrist and guided his finger along the text that he was reading, she placed her hand on Jamie's shoulder and periodically pointed to a word when he seemed to get "stuck," and she would sit close at his side and direct her own visual attention to the text as he was reading, providing encouraging verbal feedback such as, "um-hmm," "keep going," or "ok.."
In addition to these supports, Sheree also provided auditory models by occasionally saying words aloud in order for Jamie to repeat them. For example, when Jamie was asked to describe what it felt like for him to begin to use his speech he silently typed: "IT FELT LIKE FREEDOM FROM AUTISM. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TRAPPED AND THE DOOR WAS OPENED AND YOU RAN OUTSIDE ANS SHOUTED YEA! THAT IS HOW IT FELT FOR ME." When Jamie had finished typing, Sheree asked, "Do you want to read what you said?" She then pointed to the first word of the message on the Lightwriter'sT visual display. Jamie began to read, "IT," but then paused and looked up at his mother. Sheree directed her eyes back to the screen and said, "felt." Jamie then repeated, "FELT," read, "LIKE," paused, and looked up from the screen again. Sheree continued to direct her attention toward the screen and again placed her finger under the word on the visual display that Jamie seemed to be stuck on, saying, "freedom." Jamie repeated, "FREEDOM," continued to read, "FROM AUTISM. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN," and then paused again. Sheree quickly said, "trapped." Jamie repeated, "TRAPPED," continued reading, "AND THE DOOR WAS," then paused again. When Jamie paused, Sheree said, "opened." Jamie repeated, "OPENED," and continued to read, "AND YOU," then paused. Sheree read, "ran." Jamie repeated, "RAN" and continued to read, "OUTSIDE AND SHOUTED YEA! THAT IS n/a/, n/a/," [these last two words sounded like a repetition of the word "not" with the final consonant sound, /t/, omitted.] Sheree modeled "sounding out" the word by saying, "h/a/, how." Jamie repeated, "HOW" and read on, "IT FELT FOR ME." In this example, Sheree provided Jamie with auditory models by reading the words aloud when he hesitated, a strategy that appeared to support him to read the word aloud. Jamie comments on this type of support when he writes, "SOMETIMES IT IS HARD TO REMEMBER THE RIGHT SOUND AND MAKE IT CORRECT IN MY VOICE SO I AM LOOKING TO OTHERS FOR ASSISTANCE."
As Jamie grew more comfortable reading aloud words that he had written himself following an auditory model (provided either by his facilitator or by his LightwriterT), he then began reading aloud printed texts that he had not written, but that he was very familiar with, such as the text on the boxes of his favorite videos. While reading these familiar texts aloud, Jamie would occasionally misread a word by saying a similar familiar word having the same first few letters as the word he was reading from the box. For example, on one occasion when reading the word "preside" Jamie said "present," and when reading the word "begin" Jamie said "beside." In the former case, Sheree provide the verbal model of the correct word, "preside," which Jamie repeated and continued reading; in the latter case, she simply prompted him by saying "be-/g/--," and Jamie corrected himself, saying, "begin," and continued reading. Errors of this type appear to be related to difficulties with word finding and "automatic completions" (for a thorough discussion of these difficulties, see Crossley, 1997).
Several weeks after Jamie began reading familiar texts such as video boxes aloud, Sheree reported that he had begun to read texts that he had never seen before (e.g., pages out of a novel, street signs etc.), although she observed that his fluency with these novel texts was considerably less than the fluency he had achieved in reading aloud his familiar texts and texts that he had composed himself. For example, during one of the focus group interviews one of the researchers presented Jamie with a piece of paper with a written question on it. Jamie had seen the question once before in an e-mail correspondence. The question read, "You once said that FC means freedom. Now that you are both talking and typing, do they mean the same thing to you or are they different somehow?" Jamie read the text aloud as follows: (Sheree's comments and supports are indicated by [S:]): "You once sight [S: 'said'] said that FC more [S: 'means'] means from [S: 'free--'] freedom [S: 'Um-hmn.']. Now that you are [S: 'both talking'] and talking [S: 'ty--'] typing [S: 'Um-hmn'] do they mean the some [S: 'same'] the same thing to you or one [S: 'are'] or are they [S: 'different somehow'] somehow." After reading the question aloud, Jamie silently typed his response, "NO, NO THE SPEAKING IS PARAMOUNT. TO SAY WORDS IS TO LIVE LIFE AS OTHERS," and when he had finished typing, he read aloud, "PARAMOUNT. THE SPEAKING IS PARAMOUNT. TO SAY WORDS IS TO LIVE LIFE AS OTHERS." Thus, Jamie continued to experience difficulties with automatic completion errors in reading the unfamiliar text of the question (e.g., reading "freedom" as "from" and "typing" as "talking"), and required a good deal of verbal encouragement and auditory modeling of words from Sheree. In contrast, the sentences that he had typed himself were read clearly and fluently with no verbal supports from Sheree. At this point in Jamie's reading aloud, his fluency when reading self-composed or otherwise familiar texts was clearly greater than it was when reading novel or unfamiliar texts.
As Jamie was learning to read his typed communication aloud more fluently, he also began to use more speech to communicate when he wasn't typing. For example, during one of the focus group interviews, we had been engaged in a discussion about fears:"Two-way conversation"--Using reliable speech:
Jamie said verbally, "Is Jessie afraid?"In this example, Jamie not only verbally asked a conversational question, but was also able to contribute to the discussion about fears by sharing that he, too, was scared of storms, and he shared a story in which he was so frightened during a storm that he got physically sick in the sink. Although Sheree carefully scaffolded parts of the story for Jamie, by asking questions like, "which storm?" and "where were we rushing?" to elicit more information from him, Jamie verbally initiated the story and offered most of the central elements of the story on his own.
Sheree responded, "Jessie is afraid--she said she was afraid of storms."
Jamie said, "Sick."
Sheree said, "Yeah, like what happened to you."
Jamie said, "Jamie got throw up from--Tina's."
Sheree said, "From--? Which storm?"
Jamie said, "Tina's house. Labor Day storm."
Sheree nodded and said, "The Labor Day storm. Yeah, we went to go to Aunt Tina's and poor Jamie--"
Jamie said, "Went to have a cookout."
Sheree nodded and said, "And what were we doing? Where were we rushing? We kept saying, 'hurry!'"
Jamie said, "To the sink!"
Sheree laughed and said, "Yeah, to the sink!"
Recently, Sheree reported that Jamie had bumped into his old school principal in the hallway at school. When he spoke to Jamie, the principal was pleasantly surprised to find that Jamie could respond verbally, and the two chatted in the hall for a few minutes. Sheree said of this encounter:
He actually had a two-way conversation. You know, minimal, but give and take. Functional.and that's what I see. He's able to have a give and take conversation, with a little bit of echo. With, you know, verbal prompting. We've still got to do some verbal cueing.The verbal cueing that Sheree refers to consists largely of her asking Jamie questions to encourage him to respond further. In many situations, Sheree is able to facilitate Jamie's verbal expression by asking him questions based upon her own familiar knowledge of Jamie's experience, as in the above example. In this instance if Jamie had said, "sick," to an audience entirely unfamiliar with his experience that day, it may quite possibly have been more difficult for him to verbally share as much information as he did with Sheree's verbal support.
It is still quite challenging to hold a reciprocal verbal conversation with Jamie without some degree of shared knowledge of the topic, as in the prior example, or without the opportunity for him to supplement his speech with typing. However, Jamie is becoming better and better able to verbally offer information that is unknown to his conversational partner, especially when that information is in the context of fairly routine and familiar events. For example, upon coming home from school one day, Jamie joined his father in the living room. His father, Mike, asked Jamie where a particular homework assignment was. Jamie replied, "in my backpack." Mike then asked Jamie where he had left his backpack, as he did not have it with him. "It's in the kitchen," Jamie replied, and when asked to, retrieved it from the kitchen table where he had left it. A year ago, responding reliably to routine questions such as these would have been difficult for Jamie to do without the opportunity to type his response. Jamie states that his speech is more reliable for him "WHEN THE NEED IS FAMILIAR."
For the first months of the summer, Jamie had been silently typing his communication first and then reading it aloud afterward in what appeared essentially to be two separate processes of expression. However, as the summer progressed, Jamie began to incorporate his speech into the typing process itself, sometimes saying letters and whole words aloud before he typed them, and sometimes talking himself through word-finding, self-correction, or message clarification processes. For example, on one occasion Jamie said, "What's that? Two 'i's," in the midst of typing a word, verbally prompting himself to backspace and remove the extra 'i' he had just typed. On another occasion, Jamie slowly composed "SO NICE TO HAVE," typing each word, then reading each word aloud. Then he quickly said aloud, "friends gathered here together," and continued typing the latter half of the sentence much more fluidly and quickly. In these examples, Jamie's use of speech appears to support the accuracy, fluidity, and speed of his typing as he integrates the two in his expressive communication."I WANT TO USE MY OWN VOICE"--Integrating speaking and typing
As Jamie gained more experience with his reading and speaking aloud, in most situations he no longer needed his facilitator to model the words to allow him to continue with his reading. Jamie presently reads unfamiliar texts aloud with little support from his facilitator. Sheree's assistance now consists largely of standing or sitting near Jamie as he reads, occasionally placing her finger at the beginning point of the text that he is going to read, and providing reassuring verbal feedback (i.e., "keep going," "um-hmm") as Jamie reads. By the end of the summer focus group, Jamie was able to read his own typing aloud fairly fluently and consistently, and he typed a request that the voice output on his Lightwriter be turned off, because, as he stated, "I WANT TO USE MY OWN VOICE."
However, while Jamie's ability to read aloud and to speak has been continually expanding over the past year, we wish to reiterate that this has not been a simple linear process for him. Although Jamie has experienced increasing independence in reading aloud and in speaking (as well as in typing without physical supports), he continues to experience occasions when it is more difficult for him to read aloud fluently, to speak purposefully, and to type without physical supports. When Jamie is feeling tired, ill, or anxious, or when he finds himself in an unfamiliar or challenging environment or situation, he continues to require additional supports from his facilitator (e.g., the provision of auditory models of words that Jamie can repeat when necessary, or the provision of a light touch to the back of his neck or shoulder to support his typing) in order to be able to fluently compose and read his thoughts. We understand these fluid and variable needs for support not as a progression and regression of Jamie's skills, but rather as an indication of the variable and often unpredictable ways that Jamie experiences autism (including variable difficulties with anxiety, processing of sensory information, sensory overload, etc.). As Thelen (1995) reminds us:
[M]ovements are always a product of not only the central nervous system but also of the biomechanical and energetic properties of the body, the environmental support, and the specific (and sometimes changing) demands of the particular task..Every movement is unique; every solution is fluid and flexible. (p. 81)Though his speech has become increasingly reliable and useful to Jamie, it remains a limited form of expression for him under many circumstances. Jamie is continually constructing an integrated system of communication for himself wherein his speech and typing support one another. The vulnerability of relying on either of these forms of communication alone is clearly evident to Jamie, as he discusses the keenly felt limitations of each:
I AM THINKING THAT SPEECH IS ASSININE THAT THEY LAUGH AT MY VOICE BUT TYPING MAKES ME A SMARTER STUDENT.. TYPING IS DEARLY DIFFICULT FOR OTHERS NOW FEELING LIKE I AM BETTER AT PLACING ANSWERS BUT NOT FOR FUNNY TALKS IN HALLWAYS..THEY DO NOT SEE ME AS A MOSTLY ENVIABLE FRIEND THAT BOYS WANT.Thus, Jamie acknowledges the benefits of his typed expression, saying it "MAKES [HIM] A SMARTER STUDENT" and allows him to be "BETTER AT PLACING ANSWERS," yet he also recognizes the limitations of typed expression as typing doesn't allow him to participate in "FUNNY TALKS IN HALLWAYS." Even though speech could potentially offer him greater access to participation in this aspect of school life, he grapples with sometimes "THINKING THAT SPEECH IS ASSININE" as "THEY LAUGH AT MY VOICE," and with his concern that he is not perceived as an "ENVIABLE FRIEND THAT BOYS WANT." Thus, Jamie continues to struggle with integrating these two modes of expressive communication in his life in complex ways that will best enable him to participate socially. And, despite the ambivalence and the many difficulties that he faces in this process, he continues to want to use his own voice.
In analyzing our descriptive observations of Jamie's emerging speech,
as well as the reflective comments of Jamie and Sheree on their own experience
and interpretation of that process, three themes emerged from the data
describing elements that Jamie and Sheree experienced or interpreted as
supportive of his emerging speech. We have organized these themes into
the following categories of support: 1) the importance of taking risks;
2) the importance of seeing and hearing words together; and 3) the importance
of an inclusive academic education, including rich early literacy experiences.
Sheree describes Jamie's first beginning to use his speech more in this way:"SAY JUST ONE WORD AT FIRST"-- Taking risks
When he started speaking, he would whisper, and.he'd say, "I'm embarrassed of my voice," because it sounded different. It still sounds immature comparatively, so he's really taking a risk. So I think it's confidence in himself. I just feel he's more comfortable risk taking, too.. And then turning the voice off.the reading of the letters, and then the risk taking of repeating the word, and then asking to have it turned off was incredible..I think it has to be a huge drive within, to speak.This is his drive.Sheree locates much of the impetus to begin speaking within Jamie himself, referring to his "drive" to speak, his "confidence in himself," and his increased comfort level with "risk taking." Jamie also acknowledged the roles of developing confidence in oneself and taking risks in learning to speak, when he encouraged a nonspeaking friend labeled with autism to try to speak by advising him, "SAY JUST ONE WORD AT FIRST," and "FEARS MAY HOLD YOU BACK BUT YOU NEED TO CHALLENGE YOURSELF." Similarly, Richard Attfield (1998), a man labeled with autism in Great Britain who learned to communicate through facilitation and later learned to speak, writes:
I came to a decision that I was going to try to talk more because I realized that I needed to be able to communicate verbally to live my life to the fullest extent..I decided to try to talk a few sentences each day..So from that day to this, that is the decision I came to, and I have tried to stick with it despite the anxiety I feel every time I try to join in the conversation both verbally and nonverbally. (p. 1-2)Attfield's belief that he "needed to be able to communicate verbally to live [his] life to the fullest extent" is reminiscent of Jamie's assessment that "THE SPEAKING IS PARAMOUNT. TO SAY WORDS IS TO LIVE LIFE AS OTHERS."
Other elements that Jamie experienced as supportive of his willingness to take risks and to speak more include the strong support of his family and school, and the many long hours of practice that have helped him to improve his speaking skills. Jamie says of his family:
THEY ARE KIND AND DEVOTED. MOM IS MY DEVOTED FRIEND AND FACILITATOR. SHE IS HOLDING MY DREAMS SAFE FOR ME IN THAT I FEEL I NEED HER GRACE TO HELP ME THROUGH THE WAR OF AUTISM. POP IS THE GREATEST. HE HELPS ME STAY LIKE I NEED TO BE IN ORDER TO REACH MY QUEST OF SO GOOD GOALS THAT I AM NOW MEETING.One of the ways that Jamie's family supports him is by providing a safe and supportive place for him to take risks, practice, and build his confidence in his abilities. For example, in the family's kitchen, there is a poster hanging on the wall of the hundred most commonly used words in the English language. Sheree describes how Jamie used this poster to practice speaking in a safe context:
He would come all summer and stand in front of it and read those words out loud, you know, "in," "about," "out," just all the basic stuff, and he'd come back 3 or 4 times a day, and there were some that he couldn't get, and they were the wh- words. He would get very confused and he kept coming back to them until he got those down. It's a rehearsal type thing. Maybe he just had to hear and hear and hear and practice, practice, practice until he felt confident.Attfield (1998) also reports that reading aloud was a helpful stepping stone to communicating verbally:
I decided to go half way between the two [typing and speaking] again--the lesser of two evils I told myself--and so I took two steps backwards and began by repeating back to myself each word as I typed it to gain some confidence. (p. 2)Thus, encompassed within the broader category of "taking risks" as being supportive of Jamie's speech development, we also see illustrated the significance of having a strong drive or desire to speak, having or developing the confidence in oneself to take a risk and make the attempt to speak, and having supportive opportunities for the practice of reading words aloud.
When asked what supports have helped Jamie to be able to read aloud and to speak more purposefully, the second category of support that emerged from both Jamie's and Sheree's accounts points to the primacy of seeing and hearing words together. Jamie describes it in this way:"SEEING AND HEARING TOGETHER"--Connecting sounds and meaning
MY LIGHTWRITERT IS A WONDERFUL TOOL TO HELP MY BRAIN FIGURE OUT THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WORDS SOUNDING AND MEANING.. ITS SEEING AND HEARING TOGETHER.Similarly, Sheree says:
Once he got the LightwriterT and the use of the computer.and it seemed to be the large screen, where he could see the letters, you know, [that] really started kicking things in....The computer seemed to really hook him into looking. With the LightwriterT.when he saw it and heard it, and all of a sudden started reading back, and repeating after the machine had said it, and that just opened the floodgates.and the fact that it would scroll back, it wasn't just gone, really seemed to cement things in his mind. When I asked him one time, he said the words and the letters make sense, they're coming together..It's the sounds, that's what Jamie's telling me, he's connecting words with sounds.For Jamie, and for Richard Attfield, obtaining a communication device with auditory output and a clear visual display appears to have played a significant role in supporting their emergent speech. There have been reports in the literature of students who have difficulty speaking whose speech production has been supported through the use of assistive technology devices with voice output (Romski, M., Sevcik, R., & Adamson, L., 1999). Additionally, others who communicate through facilitated typing have expressed similar sentiments about the importance of having a communication device that provides voice output. Meyers (1998) reports on the significance of "giving voice" to people who communicate through assistive technology. In Meyers's account, Ryan, a nonspeaking young man, wrote, "Technology gives me speech. It's very important because I have to talk" (p. 2).
Lastly, the data illustrate that both Jamie and Sheree experienced or interpreted Jamie's ongoing access to an inclusive academic education and to rich literacy experiences from an early age as being supportive of his development of increasingly reliable speech. Jamie began his schooling career in an inclusive preschool and has been a member of the general education classroom ever since. Jamie currently is an eighth grade student attending eight academic classes a day. Although Jamie types without physical support he still requires conversational prompting (i.e., "Do you have any comments on that topic, Jamie?") and logistical guidance (i.e., moving between classes, gathering books), and receives these supports from a one-on-one facilitator while at school. An entire team of committed educators (i.e., a special education teacher, a speech pathologist, an occupational therapist, eight general education teachers, and a facilitator) works together to support Jamie throughout the day. For example, the special education teacher may team-teach with the science teacher, planning lessons and working with small groups of students during science class. In addition, the special education teacher is a resource to all of the teachers when considering how Jamie will participate in specific lessons, assessments and class projects. Thus, Jamie is well-supported in having full access to and participation in an eighth-grade academic curriculum."LIKE WATER TO THE DESERT"--Inclusive academic education and rich literacy experiences
When asked about the role that his academic and literacy experiences have played in his ability to communicate, both through typing and through his emergent speech, Jamie responded:
EXPOSURE TO THE PRINTED WORD IS LIKE WATER TO THE DESERT. ONLY BOOKS COULD LEAD THE WAY TO GAIN UNDERSTANDING HOW TO SAY SOUNDS.In describing elements that she interprets as supportive of Jamie's emerging speech, Sheree states:
Just being in an inclusive classroom. I still think being in a classroom where everybody is reading, speaking, and I think the use of overheads, seeing print and not have everything read to the class, but the use of a big visual display.. I'm thinking too, probably his drive to be like the other students, that's such a huge motivator for him..He's had speech therapy since he was three. He thought it was futile, he said, "I take speech five days a week, yet I cannot speak." I don't think just speech and language would have done it. If a child is nonverbal, I don't think you're going to get it without the support of typing, personally. I don't think you're going to get the speech. I think the printed word supports the spoken word, because I think they need to see what it looks like, and like Jamie says, the letters and the sounds are now making sense, and if you don't see the letters.? [She shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head.]Sheree does not complete her final sentence, "and if you don't see the letters.?", but her implication seems clear. In a follow-up interview, Sheree confirms that she has often wondered--if Jamie had not had opportunities to see letters and age-appropriate texts, might he have learned to speak?
Recently Jamie reflected on his thoughts on his emerging speech in a
poem:
| I USED TO BE
by Jamie Burke I used to be a silent boy
|