Describe your plan of action and how each of your four chosen competencies will influence its design and implementation.

Denise Rutledge and I collaborated on this project, while our evidence may be the same, we each developed our own portfolio. As a teacher of students with visual impairments (VI), Denise brings her insight of incorporating deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students into her VI classes. My knowledge is based on personal teaching experiences of blending students with visual impairments into my DHH classes.

Diversity, Equity, and Cultural Competence: Cultivate Socially Just Learning Environments

• Due to the 2 very diverse groups at MSDB, it is important to recognize the different issues that arise that prevent cultivation of socially just learning environments. While it is easy to identify the issues among these 2 groups, DHH and VI, it will be difficult to work on self-reflection and self-education, to work towards 1 common goal- collaborate with both cultures to make the education system at MSDB united and

• It is important to have an understanding of the Deaf culture. There is a difference between Deaf and deaf. Big "D" Deaf means a person is born into the Deaf community and associates with the Deaf culture. Little "d" deaf is an identification, or medical term, to describe a person's hearing loss.

• Some people have very strong opinions that students with a hearing loss should not be combined with students with a vision loss- ever.

• Many staff on campus deny that the blind have their own culture. This is an emerging group process stage for many and one that must develop into transforming.

Overarching Competencies: Group Process & Adult Learning

• How can we bring unity to all colleagues, let go of past practices that do not put the needs of the kids first, and manage the group dynamics in order to create new groups to overcome these challenges?

• There is a current understanding related to the difference between the deaf and the visually impaired, but how can we develop learning opportunities which will, in fact, bring the skill sets of each teacher together, to develop professional learning opportunities for each other-to empower and enable colleagues to collaborate for the sake of the students.

Instructional Leadership: Facilitating Collaborative Relationships

• Improvement of existing programs (DHH and VI)

• Understanding how the staff currently works between departments to meet the needs of our sensory impaired students.

• Reflect on the leadership skills and expertise and how to build a stronger collaborative environments.

• Both departments working together, regardless of cultures, to develop a shared vision- providing accessibility to all students in 1 class, regardless of their sensory impairments.

How will your leadership leverage the strengths and address the needs of diverse stakeholders to support the plan of action, develop capacity, broaden decision-making, and learn collaboratively?

*** It is important to note that the focus of our capstone project began to change shortly after Module 2.

I am learning the strengths and skill sets of our veteran teachers and new teachers. I need to know what are the needs of those of us currently teaching a mixed class of DHH and VI students and does this affect the new teachers coming in who don’t even have 1 sensory specific specialty. It is important to know what kind of training is needed for everyone (new/old) to make our students the #1 priority and still be the experts in our field. I will also need to learn how to manage the wide variety of personalities and strong opinions (on both sides of the issue) to manage conflict to meet the overall goal at hand.

How will you use collaboration, questioning, data, and reflection during the implementation of your action plan?S Strategies for including diverse stakeholders and perspectives will include:

We will put together a small committee or focus group to identify the needs of our new teachers, especially for those who do not have sensory specific training, or who have not yet completed a special education degree at the time of hire. Find a way to break the needs down by year- what is a 3 or 4 year program? Based on the responses, would a new hire handbook be necessary? Who is the point of contact (mentor teacher) for each new teacher hired?

How will you address obstacles that you may encounter in implementing your plan?

For those teaching both the deaf and the blind students in the same classes, ask what challenges they face? What training do you need to be more successful? Is there a professional development opportunity you would like to attend in the near future?

How will you know if your action plan is successful? What evidence would support your claim?

After assessing the overall goal of this capstone project, it was determined we would need to narrow it down to one need, what training do our teachers need in order to work with a different sensory need population? In order to collect this data we developed the "Inclusion Needs Survey". (Evidence B)