Article

Why all CVI kids deserve accessible calendar systems

Part 1 in our 4-part series on CVI-friendly calendar systems. An introduction to tailored calendar systems that are accessible and meaningful.

a young girl and her teacher look at a tactile calendar system together

Imagine that you’re in a foreign country. You are unfamiliar with the routines and expectations for the day. You have a calendar, but you can’t make sense of it. It is not formatted in a way you recognize and it’s in a language you haven’t studied. On top of that, no one has prepared you for this trip. In fact, you don’t even know how you got here.

How would you anticipate where to go and what to do? Even if you managed to decipher the calendar, would you have the energy left to participate in the day’s events?

In school, students use calendar systems to help them get through the day efficiently, whether posted on the whiteboard or in their print or digital planners. They take advantage of the visual anticipatory cues that let them know when their current activity will end, or a transition is near. They might take note of the time on the clock high up on the wall, the change in the teacher’s position, other students coming in from the hall, and then they might look at their schedule and see that class is almost finished.

Calendars enable students to anticipate and understand their schedules, so they feel prepared for the day and ready to learn.

For students with CVI, it is more difficult to visually access a calendar and the incidental information that provides clues about what is coming next. Students with CVI might feel like they are in that theoretical foreign country – without a way to understand what’s happening now and in the future or how to make the most of their day. At a minimum, this leaves them exhausted from expending energy to make sense of it all. Worse, it impacts their ability to learn.

Calendar systems for students with CVI

When tailored to an individual’s visual and communication needs, calendar systems are “a way for students to know what’s happening now, next, and in the morning or whole school day,” says Ilse Willems, Acting Director of the CVI Center at Perkins and a TVI and Deafblind specialist. Ilse explains that “because students with CVI have difficulties with incidental learning, we want to provide the information they are missing” in an intentional, accessible, and meaningful way.

Calendar systems can:

The right to dignity and autonomy

Megan Connaughton, teacher in the Perkins Preschool Deafblind Program, emphasizes that calendar systems are “great for anticipation” and a sense of personal autonomy, particularly for students who receive assistance moving from place to place.

“A lot of times people will just move a student somewhere and [that student doesn’t] know where they’re going or why they’re going there.” A calendar system can dispel confusion and strengthen independence.

For example, a calendar may consist of meaningful objects associated with each daily activity, which the teacher uses to start a conversation. 

“I don’t just say ‘Time for PT!’ and away we go,” Megan explains. Instead, teacher and student examine the object that represents physical therapy, a ball for example, and discuss what will occur: “We’re going to PT, you’re going to take your shoes off, and you’re going to get in the ball pit.”

It’s really a right of every child to have access to the information about what is going to happen with them and to them throughout their day.

Sharon Stelzer, lead teacher in the Perkins Deafblind Program.

“It’s our job as the teachers to figure out how to get that information across, whether it’s visually for students who have CVI, whether it’s cognitively to make sure that they can understand the language and to help them grow and expand upon that,” says Sharon.

Sara Espanet, teacher in the Perkins Deafblind Program, agrees. “They deserve to have that same information that we get. I come into work, and I see my schedule, and I know what I’m going to be doing for the day. I check my Google calendar to see if I have any meetings, and it puts me at ease to know that today I have a Zoom meeting, and then I get out at 3:30. And it’s the same for our students. They want to know what’s going on.”

An important teaching tool

A calendar system “is also one of the best tools for teaching,” Sharon adds. “If I had to pick one tool to teach any of my students, I would say a calendar because I can teach language arts, I can teach reading. I can teach math; I can teach anything through that tool.”

Calendar systems lay a foundation for academic work throughout the school day. They teach and reinforce concepts like:

“It’s also a way to help manage anxiety,” Sara shares. “For me, a calendar system is a very important tool that is integral to the student’s day and having success in their day.”

“A calendar is vital for every single person, no matter if you have a disability. People with all abilities need a calendar system, otherwise it would be chaos,” Sharon remarks.

Next articles in this series:

Additional resources

Jessica Marquardt is a CVI mom to Grace, the creator of Kaleidoscope: The CVI Podcast, and works in marketing and communications for a major software company. Jessica is a fierce CVI advocate, a life-long learner of CVI and the brain, and undeniably knows that storytelling has the power to change the world for individuals with CVI.  

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