The Next Three Days Dual Audio 720p

[Bowie Maur]

ROBERTSIEGEL, HOST: Sierra Leone has decreed that starting tomorrow, residents of the entire country will be told to stay in their homes for three days. Teams of health workers and community volunteers will go door to door to educate people and identify those infected with the Ebola virus. The nongovernmental organization Doctors Without Borders has raised concerns. They say this plan might cause mistrust of health workers. But the head of Sierra Leone's Ebola Emergency Operation Center, Stephen Gaojia, dismissed those concerns. He described the next three days to me as a psycho-educational exercise.STEPHEN GAOJIA: This process is not a lockdown, neither is it a shutdown - neither is it a root-out exercise.SIEGEL: But - you say it's not a lockdown or a shutdown, but aren't people, in fact, told to stay indoors, with police and soldiers enforcing that instruction?GAOJIA: Of course, the police and the military will be in readiness in the event of any lawlessness. But this is by no means an exercise by the police or the military or the (inaudible) sector to root out people. That is by no means an exercise.SIEGEL: Yeah.GAOJIA: Yes, go ahead.SIEGEL: Yes. So even if I'm visited first thing in the morning on Friday, I should still stay in through Sunday, is what you're saying.GAOJIA: Well, of course because the simple reason is that the families have to stay together to do some reflection, engage in prayer and generate a kind of family discussion about Ebola.SIEGEL: So that's what Sierra Leone's government says it hopes will happen in the next three days - prayer, reflection and discussion. I asked Stephen Gaojia, what will happen if health care workers discover suspected Ebola victims in the homes they visit? And he said patients will be encouraged to call an ambulance to go to a treatment center. NPR reporter Anders Kelto is on the line now from the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown, to talk about treatment options. And Stephen Gaojia talked about holding centers the government has created all over the country. He said patients can begin receiving therapy there while awaiting transfer to a treatment center. What do you know about these holding centers?ANDERS KELTO, BYLINE: Well, I'm hearing something a little different here on the ground. These holding centers are very bare-bones. They're basically beds where people can go and sort of lie there and be sick, just like they would at home. They don't have IDs. They don't have saline solution to keep people hydrated. They don't have medicine to treat diarrhea or to stop vomiting. So essentially, it's no different than just lying at home in your own bed.SIEGEL: Anders, tell us how people are preparing for these next three days in Sierra Leone, when they're supposed to stay at home.KELTO: Yeah, well, we actually just got back to our hotel after sitting in gridlock traffic for over an hour. Everyone is rushing to the markets and the stores to stock up on foods, to get ready for these three days when they're not going to be allowed to leave their houses. But in the sort of bustling heart of the city - we went down to a market, an open-air market. That was absolutely jam-packed, people everywhere. And I spoke with a woman named Miriam Kalom (ph) who told me she was really upset that this lockdown was leading to pretty severe price inflation.MIRIAM KALOM: Everything is so expensiveKELTO: It's, like, a lot more expensive than usual.KALOM: Yes, everything expensive today, then double, double, double the price.KELTO: And she was also concerned that with all these people in the market, where they're sweating and packed closely together, that Ebola might actually be spread around there. And she was scared to go in and buy the food that she needed for the next few days. So to her, it felt like this whole lockdown strategy might even be making the situation worse.SIEGEL: Her fears are obviously real. Are they, in fact, justified? Can one contract Ebola that way?KELTO: It's very unlikely that she would contract Ebola that way. But I think the lesson here is that this lockdown is creating even more confusion. People are told not to go into crowded areas, not to have physical contact with other people. And yet, here in this crowded market, that's exactly what was happening.SIEGEL: Anders, thank you.KELTO: Thanks, Robert.

Las serie de webinarios Dilogo sobre las discapacidades ofrece consejos y herramientas para trabajar con nios con discapacidades. Esta serie est diseada para el personal y los coordinadores de discapacidad y otros interesados en la comunidad de la primera infancia. Observe cmo los expertos invitados comparten recursos para apoyar a los nios con discapacidad y sus familias. Vea los webinarios y explore los recursos relacionados a continuacin.

Tamarack O'Donnell: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for being with us today and taking time out of your very busy schedules to learn about ongoing assessment and how it benefits children with special needs and teachers. We have a whole team of people here with you today onboard making sure we provide you the best support that we can. I'm Tamarack O'Donnell; I go by Tam.

Kristin: So even though this content is primarily geared towards disabilities coordinators to support your work with teachers and children with disabilities, it's a reminder that all are welcome who are interested in this topic today. So welcome. Even if you're not a disabilities coordinator, we're happy you're here.

Dawn Williams: Amanda Bryans, who joins us on these webinars, and she's from the Office of Head Start. She's one of the federal project officers there, and we're always very happy to have her with us. She can answer any questions that might be more policy related. And if she doesn't get to it here, then she can get to it afterwards, but she's just really supportive of these and is very glad that we're doing them here for disabilities coordinators.

Kristin: Yes, it is our pleasure to introduce Dr. Mary McLean. She is professor at University of Florida in early childhood studies. She chairs the DEC Recommended Practices Commission. She works as a consultant for NCQTL; we are thrilled about that. And she is an expert on ongoing assessment in the field of early childhood, and we are so fortunate that we have you joining us today. Hi, Mary.

Mary: Sure. Ongoing assessment is a system of assessment that involves continual observation and documentation in typical environments, in routines and activities that children typically engage in, and

Mary: Well, the best part is that in Head Start, that assessment of children with special needs can be done in the typical environment with peers that don't have special needs. And so what is special about it is that of course children who have an IEP come with that IEP. The IEP has goals that have been identified for each child, unique to each child, and those goals guide intervention. So the teaching that we do for children with disabilities are based on the goals, but there are usually smaller steps than we are using with children that don't have disabilities, more repetition, and we'll be following them closer.

Tamarack: Great. So you mentioned thinking about a goal in smaller steps for a child with disabilities. How would a disabilities coordinator help a teacher make sense of a really broad annual goal that's written on a child's IEP?

Mary: Right. I think that's a great question. Because they're written for 12 months from the time that they're written, they tend to be large so that you don't have lots and lots of goals, but what you have is rather large chunks of behavior. And it's helpful to break them down into steps. So you can see on the slide that we've got an annual goal that we're going to be working for, but what we need to do is break it down into smaller steps, which we call learning targets. So as you can see, there's the first learning target that we would decide. And that first learning target is very important, because it needs to be just a little bit more advanced than where the child is right now. So we'll work on a learning target that's close to where the child is now, but more advanced. When they reach that first learning target, then we'll move to the next learning target. And then when they reach that target, we'll move to the next one. When they reach that one, we'll move to the next one, and then we will have accomplished the annual goal. So it's a means of, again, breaking down a goal into smaller steps that are more manageable, easier to teach.

Tamarack: And, Mary, are there different ways that you can break a goal down? I'm thinking, you're talking about breaking a skill down into different steps. What are the different ways that you could break a goal down?

Mary: Right. One thing is we can -- we can have smaller amounts. I think we had a slide that showed that. We can provide help. And we can do it step by step. If a child has a task that can be broken into steps -- for instance, brushing teeth can be broken down into picking up the toothbrush, picking up the toothpaste, and so forth. So there are a variety of ways that we can actually break down a goal. What's most important is that we have a logical approach and that that approach fits the needs of the child that we're working with. So we want to spend some time thinking about this and being careful to have a goal broken down in a way that, again, makes the most sense in relation to the child that we're teaching.

Mary: Sure. On the screen, what you see is "Carly will name..." and then in the target is "the numerals 1 to 5." So we're interested in teaching her to name all five of those numerals, but we're going to start with just the numeral 1, because right now she doesn't name any of the numerals -- the numbers -- consistently. So we're going to start just with 1. That would be until she does that well. Then we'll add

And then we'll add 4, so she'll be working on 1, 2, 3, and 4. And then finally we'll add 5, and we will have accomplished teaching her all of the numerals, but probably in a way that would make it easier for her to learn, because instead of giving her all five to begin with, we've broken it down and turned it into smaller steps for her.

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