The sixth annual Kansas Vision Symposium will be Oct. 27 at the Drury Plaza Hotel Broadview, 400 West Douglas Ave. in Wichita. 

This year’s theme is Growing, Changing, Empowering. The symposium is for vision professionals, such as teachers of students with visual impairments (TSVIs), instructional assistants and early intervention providers, along with general and special education professionals, administrators and agencies that work with students with a visual impairment.  

This one-day free training will focus on the research and practice in effective specialized instruction for students with a visual impairment. Breakout sessions will include: 

• Development of Motor Skills for Students Who are Blind/Visually Impaired. 
• STEM Resources for Students Who are Blind/Visually Impaired. 
• Strategies for Working with Students with Cortical/Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI). 
• Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) Routine Based Instruction.

Featured presenters are: 

• Judy Endicott is a retired public school teacher with a passion and commitment to learning about CVI after her grandson was diagnosed with it. She developed Literacy and CVI: High Phase II and Phase III, a course for Perkins School for the Blind, e-learning. She has conducted numerous webinars for various organizations and consults with parents and teachers. 
• Dr. Tanni Anthony is the director of the Access, Learning and Literacy (ALL) Team with the Exceptional Student Services Unit within the Colorado Department of Education. She also serves as the state consultant on blindness/low vision and the project co-director of the Colorado Services for Children and Youth with Combined Vision and Hearing Loss Project. Anthony is a teacher of students with visual impairments and an orientation and mobility specialist. She currently is an adjunct instructor with the University of Denver and the University of Northern Colorado. 
• Dr. Derrick Smith, a professor and associate dean in the College of Education of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He started his educational career as a secondary math teacher at the Alabama School for the Blind. He runs the STEM-VI Mathematics Research Laboratory where his team focuses on research on STEM education for students with visual impairment and blindness. He currently is editing a textbook on mathematics for students with visual impairments to be published by APH Press. 
• Stacey Chambers has been an itinerant teacher of students with visual impairments in Texas for 13 years. She is also a consultant with the American Printing House for the blind, co-author of “Sensing and Learning,” and is currently writing “The Itinerant Teacher’s Guide to an Effective and Efficient School Year” for APH Press.  

The symposium begins with registration at 8 a.m. Oct. 27 and ends the same day with a closing and door prizes at 3 p.m. 

The Kansas Instructional Resource Center for the Visually Impaired is providing the symposium in partnership with the Kansas State School for the Blind, the Kansas Technical Assistance System Network (TASN), RPPLE and the Kansas Deaf-Blind Project. 

For more information and to register, click here.