Greeting Rituals

Bernadette Van Den Tillaart

Tina Hertzog

Greeting Rituals

• A greeting ritual is a special type of reciprocal interaction.
• Like other reciprocal interactions, greeting rituals always include at least 3 turn exchanges.
• A greeting ritual might:
• involve a special game or activity
• bring attention to an object, such as something you wear
• occur at a certain place

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Greeting Rituals (cont.)

• During a greeting ritual you and the student will acknowledge each other.
• You might do this using gestures.
• You might use your names.
• Names can be spoken, signed, or “multisensory” (consisting of a combination of objects, gestures, and sounds).

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A Multi-Sensory Name for the Intervener

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Your multi-sensory name might include:

• A favorite movement or gesture.
• Your name or a part of your name that has a distinct sound.
• A personal object such as a ring or a scarf that the student can touch.

Your multi-sensory name becomes meaningful during your turn exchanges with the student.

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Check with the student’s parents to make sure you do not use a multi-sensory name that someone else in the student’s life is already using.

A Multi-Sensory Name for the Student

The student’s multi-sensory name might include:

• A favorite gesture (e.g., when someone taps on his chest).
• A toy or other object that he especially likes.
• A distinct sound that he makes.
• A sound he likes to listen to or feel (perhaps he likes the sound or vibration of his own name).

The student’s multi-sensory name becomes meaningful when you affirm it during interactions.

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Always collaborate with the parents to co-create their child’s multi-sensory name.

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Greeting Ritual: Video Example

Here is an example of a greeting ritual where an intervener, Beth, uses her voice, hands, and a personal object as a multi-sensory names for herself and her student, Max.

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Max has bilateral colobomas and sensorineural hearing

loss with a left cochlear implant.

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Transcript

Familiar Greeting Rituals

• Over time, as you use greeting rituals on a regular basis, they become familiar to the student.
• As a result, the greeting turn exchanges happen more quickly and the ritual becomes shorter.

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Greeting Card

• The intervener's role in building trusting relationships goes beyond his or her own positive interactions with a student.
• It also includes facilitating successful interactions between the student and other people.
• One way you can do this is to provide an approaching person with a "Positive Interaction Tip Card” that explains the best way to interact with the person who is deaf-blind. If appropriate, it is even better if the student herself hands the card to the person.
• An example of this type of card is provided in the “Additional Resources” folder at the end of this module.

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OHOA Deaf-Blind Intervener Learning Modules

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A national resource designed to increase awareness, knowledge, and skills related to the process of intervention for students who are deaf-blind. Developed by National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness.

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For more information, contact NCDB at

info@nationaldb.org.

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The contents of this presentation were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education #H326T130013. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the The Research Institute, nor the US Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Project Officer, Jo Ann McCann.

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