COVID-19 Update
Message from CEO & Founder Jeremy Glauser
Dear Friends of Special Education,
With the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic, we are all facing an array of unprecedented challenges that will place a great strain on our education system and society at large. I’ve spent the past few days on calls with national leaders in special education, including OSEP, the CEC, NASDSE and CASE. I’ve also spent many hours with our eLuma leadership team gathering information and brainstorming simple, impactful solutions. We feel very optimistic about the future, and I’m happy to bring you some certainty in an uncertain time.
CEC/eLuma Webinar
First and foremost, we invite you to watch a webinar on-demand that is co-sponsored by CEC and eLuma. The webinar is entitled “Teaching Special Education Online During COVID-19” and is designed to help teachers who are new to online instruction get up to speed as fast as possible. I co-presented with Dr. Kelly Grillo, CEC’s 2020 Teacher of the Year who has over 20+ years of experience teaching online.
The webinar specifically focused on helping teachers:
- identify the necessary tools and strategies need to move instruction online;
- adapt traditional in-classroom lessons into meaningful online instruction;
- develop a strategy to ensure instructional goals are being met;
- create processes to manage their instruction on an ongoing basis.
The webinar was held at 4:00 pm EST on Thursday, March 19, 2020. While this webinar was put together on short notice, we are hopeful that teachers and special educators will take advantage of it as a key resource. We are confident that anyone who watches it will come away much more prepared to move forward with teaching online during the COVID-19 crisis.
eLuma’s Tips, Tricks & Best Practices for Teletherapy
Whether you are an SLP, a School Psychologist, an OT, a PT, a Mental Health Services provider, or any other type of related service provider, we want to help you get up to speed as fast as possible. It may seem a bit daunting, but we’re here to reassure you that if you follow a few basic tips & tricks in these videos, you’ll be up and running in no time. If you’re an administrator, please share with your team. And of course, we are here for you if you need us.
The videos below are short and full of valuable information regarding:
- Camera Setup
- Therapist Work Station
- Student Work Station
- Working with a Facilitator
- Students with ASD
- Students with High Needs
- Communication with Parents & Guardians
- Licensure Requirements
- Proactive Communication
- Case Management
- Collaboration with Other Disciplines
- Preparing for Therapy Sessions
- Sensory Integration
- Handling Tech Issues
- Therapy Resources for OT
- Confidentiality & Privacy
- Using Physical Manipulatives
- Administering Assessments
Key Resources
Beyond this, we encourage you to stay informed and to know that many are working frantically to ensure that you and your students will have workable options to maintain critical continuity for their learning experience. The amount of information out there is overwhelming, so we want to distill our recommended resource links down to the following (with regards to special education, COVID-19, and using Zoom, your best option to quickly ramp up online learning):
eLuma Resources
eLuma is offering the following resource links for your benefit: