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Multilingual students help give voice to a younger peer through AAC

As a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) and our district’s Assistive Technology Specialist, Jenelle Erickson is known for finding creative solutions for students. The path to these solutions isn’t always straightforward—but sometimes, it leads to something pretty special. Here’s one of those stories.

Opportunity: Supporting an elementary student who is blind and non-verbal with an AAC device to help them communicate. With an added layer—the student comes from a multilingual family that speaks both Russian and English.

AAC stands for augmentative and alternative communication. These devices support learners of all ages as they express their thoughts, needs and feelings. This opens new doors to connection, independence and learning. These devices also play powerful roles in student therapy with our SLPs and other educators and specialists.

Speech language pathologist Jenelle Erickson with a student

Solution: Bringing other students into the process. To make the device accessible, the team used auditory scanning, a method where the device reads options out loud, and the user selects what they want by using a switch, movement, or sound when they hear the right choice. For this student, that meant creating recordings that included both English and Russian.

That’s where Misha and Kristi stepped in. Misha, a 10th-grader at Lake Stevens High School, spent nearly five hours working alongside Mrs. Erickson to record the auditory scan in English and Russian. Kristi, a seventh-grader at Lake Stevens Middle School, dedicated the same amount of time translating and recording the selection messages. As native Russian speakers, they used their skills to help create a communication tool tailored to this student’s daily life at school and at home.

“I didn’t mind helping at all,” said Misha. “It was nice to be able to take part in this.”

Seventh-grade student Kristi working with Joe Thompson, an SLP intern.

In the short video clip, you can see Kristi working with Joe Thompson, an SLP intern from the University of Washington. In the next clip, Mrs. Erickson models how the AAC device will be used. She collaborated closely with the student’s school team and family to identify meaningful vocabulary that reflect the student’s routines, needs and experiences. The team then built on previous AAC models to create a system that is personalized to this student.

Mrs. Erickson models how the AAC device will be used.

“Our strong educator teams helped me identify Misha and Kristi for this project,” said Mrs. Erickson. “I didn’t realize they were siblings until Kristi heard Misha’s voice while she was recording. It’s just heartwarming all around, and we look forward to using the device to support our elementary student.”

This is just one example of how we are #LSSDBetterTogether.