30. 21st Rigorous Expanded Core

Speaker: Robbin Clark, MA

Session Handout:
Handout

Session Description:
The goal of the Expanded Core should be to help produce interdependent individuals who are self-reliant and contributors to today’s world. In order to accomplish this, our students must have deep and meaningful connections to the world around them as well as real essential core skills of 21st-century learning such as critical thinking. We need to upgrade our instruction to an authentic approach that supports applying and transferring skills. There is too much of the Expanded Core that is taught in fragmented scenarios where students are disabled to transfer skills and knowledge from one environment to the next.

Credits: Act 48, ACVREP, Psych
Audience: Special Education Teachers, Teachers who work with students who are blind or visually impaired, Teachers who work with students who are Deaf-Blind, General Education Teachers, Parents, Guardians, Family Members

Speaker Bio:
Robbin Clark is an Expanded Core enthusiast! She currently serves as the Assistant Director/Principal at the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind over the Expanded Core Curriculum and the Bridges Programs. She is the camp director for Camp Abilities Utah, a one-week developmental sport camp for children with visual impairments. Prior to her current work, she worked seven years as the vision rehabilitation therapist in the Children’s Services division at BESB in Connecticut. Other past professional roles include: teacher for deafblind children, an early intervention therapist for children with vision impairments and director for various programs of students with vision impairments. Robbin offers professional expertise, tips, and resources to parents and educators on her blog The Independent Little Bee, adifferentkindofvision.blogspot.com, and on her 9MoreThanCore social media accounts (IG, Facebook). She collaborates with a number of schools for the blind to effectively train staff in Expanded Core instruction and is often invited to be a keynote speaker in workshops and symposiums.  Personally, Robbin has been active in the vision impairment community since her youth: living and working with her mother who has total vision loss provided the foundation for her life’s passion. Her credentials include a vision rehabilitation therapist graduate degree from the University of Arkansas, Little Rock and a graduate endorsement in curriculum & instruction from Walden University.

Email: robbin.keating@gmail.com
Facebook: @9MoreThanCore
Website: https://sites.google.com/usdb.org/usb-expanded-core-curriculum/home?authuser=0