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Pied Piper teacher gets $2.5K State Farm grant

Courtesy Photo Pied Piper School Teacher Audrie Spicer is pictured in this photo.

ALPENA — A Pied Piper School teacher has received a grant that will allow students in her classroom to have a voice.

Audrie Spicer, who teaches the primary severely cognitively impaired class, was among 40 teachers in Michigan selected by State Farm to receive a $2,500 grant designed to help them meet the challenges of teaching during the coronavirus pandemic.

Spicer said she will use the grant to purchase 14 Go Talk handheld communication devices for her classroom.

Spicer teaches 3-year-old to 11-year-old students who cannot speak. While some of her students are able to use some sign language to communicate their wants or needs, she said there are many who cannot.

The Go Talk devices will allow Spicer to add a picture to a button on the device and record a phrase a student may want to communicate. If a student wants something to drink, for example, they would push the button showing a picture of a drink, and the device would say, “I would like a drink please.”

Courtesy Photo Pied Piper School Teacher Audrie Spicer, center, formally receives her grant from State Farm agents Sam Rumbles, left, and TJ Hoes, right, Friday at the school.

Spicer said the communication devices will give students a sense of pride and help them develop self-determination and self-advocacy skills.

“They’ll be able to have some control over their environment, instead of the adults always making decisions for them or guessing what they want,” she said. “They can now verbally have that output to tell us what they want.”

Spicer said she has selected devices that begin with two pictures and phrases and go up to 32 pictures and phrases. As students master the skills it takes to recognize the picture and how the picture relates to their needs, she said they could move on to another device with more options.

Students in other classrooms could also benefit from using the devices.

In her grant application, Spicer said the communication devices could be easily adapted and implemented in many of the other classrooms within the school. She said they could create a Go Talk library, which would allow other teachers to check out the devices for their students.

“As progress is being made and the students demonstrate their new skills, our district can see first-hand the fidelity and importance of these devices,” she said in the grant application. “In the future, we could even do fundraising to purchase more devices for more students in need.”

Pied Piper School is part of the Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Educational Service District.

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