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Registration Overview

Act now! We reach capacity and sell out every year.
Registration closes Friday, October 24, 2025 — or sooner if capacity is reached.

Ticket Options

  • #TalkingAAC: Pre-Conference Workshop
    Wednesday, November 5, 2025 | 12:00–4:00 PM
    Kellogg Center, East Lansing, MI

  • #TalkingAAC: Two-Day Conference
    Thursday & Friday, November 6–7, 2025

    • Build your schedule for this two-day event

    • Cost: $275

    • Price includes breakfast, lunch, & parking

NOTE: To attend all 3 days, you must purchase both a Pre-Conference Workshop ticket and a Two-Day Conference ticket.

Registration & Session Planning

All registration and session planning will be handled via Sched:

  • Click the green Log In or Sign Up button below to access Sched.

  • Then proceed to purchase your ticket(s).

  • After you’ve purchased your ticket(s), you can plan which sessions you’d like to attend.

Meals, Parking, & Lodging Meals (Included with Two-Day Conference)

  • Continental Breakfast – Thursday & Friday

  • Lunch & Drink – Thursday & Friday

Parking (Included)

  • Overnight Guests:
    Get your parking pass at hotel check-in and display it on your dashboard.

  • Non-Overnight Guests:

    • Register your vehicle on-site via QR code (posted near registration).

    • Bring your license plate number.

    • Do not register your vehicle more than once per day.

Note: Please consider carpooling to reduce on-campus traffic.

Lodging

  • View the 2025 Lodging Options for hotel blocks and discount codes.

  • Reminder: Pre-Conference Workshops begin at 12:00 PM on Nov. 5 to allow extra travel time.

Terms & Conditions

#TalkingAAC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established for continued education.

Refunds & Ticket Transfers

  • Refunds available up to 10 days before the event (Sched & Stripe fees are non-refundable).

  • Ticket transfers (e.g., to a coworker) may be approved before October 24, 2025.

Continuing Education

  • All attendees will receive a Certificate of Attendance.

  • Note for 2025: SCECH hours will not be offered this year.

  • ASHA CEUs are not provided. SLPs will receive a Verification of Attendance form to self-report professional learning hours to ASHA.

Networking & Swag

  • Networking Event – Details coming soon!

  • Merchandise – #TalkingAAC gear available for purchase on-site.

Stay Informed

Watch for updates from #TalkingAAC and Sched with session details and reminders as the event approaches.

Questions?

www.talkingaac.org
info@talkingaac.org

517-299-5200
← Back to schedule
Pre-Conference Workshop: Adapting AAC Training to Impact Communication Partners
Wednesday November 5, 2025 12:00pm - 4:00pm EST
Supporting emergent AAC learners is a team effort. Implementing AAC across all the student’s natural environments, with their daily communication partners, puts new and challenging demands on AAC coaches and specialists. For strong AAC adoption, we need to train a diverse set of classroom staff and parents to do the day-to-day work of modeling, making AAC available, teaching language, and demonstrating new skills. The team is often learning about AAC while being asked to adopt new habits, mindsets, and teaching practices. As AAC coaches and specialists, we are called on to inspire, motivate, and sustain change in the behavior of a wide range of communication partners. This requires us to learn and apply new soft skills in leading and managing change. Sometimes we are successful and AAC is used across the student’s day, while other times, despite our best efforts, we struggle to get everyone on board. If you want to get more consistent and productive results for your students, then this pre-conference is for you! We will share insights and strategies to help you lead change in AAC practice across all members of the IEP team. We will help you evaluate which strategy will be most effective with different team members, so you can adapt your approach, meet each partner where they are at, and maximize your impact.

In this session, we will explore insights from AssistiveWare's research on how parents and teachers adopt new AAC practices. One major finding from our research is that some of the biggest barriers to successful AAC implementation are not about specific AAC skills or knowledge. For many partners, the barriers are about habit formation, the experience of change itself, and the emotions related to starting AAC. We analyzed why different members of the team often have different responses to the planning, support and motivation strategies used by AAC coaches and specialists. We applied insights from change theory, psychology, and cognitive science to identify patterns in these responses. We will share this knowledge with you, to help you recognize these patterns so you can adjust your approach to meet parents and teachers where they are and build their capacity to support AAC learners.

The best part is that the insights we will apply are applicable to anyone leading change. Participants will leave with evidence-based strategies to help build communication partner capacity to support emergent AAC users.
Presenters
avatar for Pam Harris

Pam Harris

AssistiveWare
Pam has been a part of AssistiveWare for 15 years starting on the Support team. Today, she contributes to our social media content by sharing her insights and advice. Pam also helped develop the Proloquo Coach app, the companion app to Proloquo, designed to support families starting... Read More →
avatar for Barbara van ’t Westende

Barbara van ’t Westende

AssistiveWare
Barbara is a speech language therapist with over 20 years of experience working in a special education school in the Netherlands. At AssistiveWare, she applied research on parent support to help develop the Coach app, the companion app to Proloquo designed to support families starting... Read More →
Wednesday November 5, 2025 12:00pm - 4:00pm EST
  Pre-Conference Workshop, Communication Partners

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