Bridge To Expression
Bridging communication gaps. Supporting expression. Accessing learning channels.
Every person has a unique way of experiencing and understanding the world. For non-speaking individuals, finding a reliable way to express thoughts, choices, ideas, and understanding can be particularly challenging.
Bridge to Expression was created from our journey with non-speaking autism and our desire to help make those pathways easier to explore. We work with non-speaking and minimally speaking individuals and their families to explore communication and learning approaches that take into account the individual's sensory, motor, and communication needs.
Our intention is simple: to help create opportunities for people to express what they can, learn in ways that work for them, and develop greater independence over time.
We don't assume that there is one pathway that works for everyone. We listen, observe, adapt, and learn alongside each individual.
Our Approach: RPM
An individualized, academic-based approach to communication and learning
Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) is an individualized teaching approach pioneered by Soma Mukhopadhyay. RPM seeks to help students engage with academic learning and explore ways of responding through their available sensory and motor channels.
RPM may incorporate academic instruction, purposeful questions, and different communication and learning tools. There is no expectation that every student will follow the same sequence.
Some students may use one method; others may use several. A student may find one approach helpful at one point and another approach more useful at another time. The provider's role is to continually observe and adapt instruction to the individual.
Our goal is not to promise a particular outcome, but to create opportunities for communication, learning, and participation and to support each individual in finding approaches that may work for them.
Learn More About RPM
Learn more about Soma Mukhopadhyay and the Rapid Prompting Method through:
An individualized, academic-based approach to communication and learning
THE STORY BEHIND THE NAME
Why Bridge to Expression?
Bridge to Expression grew out of my family's own experience of encountering a gap between what a person may experience, understand, or want to communicate and what they are able to express conventionally.
Sometimes the bridge is a communication tool. Sometimes it is a different way of presenting information. Sometimes it is slowing down, changing the question, or simply creating another opportunity to respond.
There is no single pathway.
My work is about exploring those pathways one person, one learner, one expression at a time.
