What does meaningful communication access actually look like in a busy classroom, and what happens when having AAC available isn’t enough? From Access to Agency helps school teams look beyond device availability, prompted responses, and physical inclusion to consider the conditions that make authentic communication, participation, connection, and agency possible. Using a practical “SEE → DO → DESIGN” framework, participants will learn to recognize the many ways students already communicate, examine barriers to access across people and activities, and strengthen communication-partner practices through authentic modeling, wait time, and thoughtful support. The course then widens the lens to peer relationships and classroom design, exploring how grouping, roles, activities, and everyday learning opportunities can give students meaningful reasons to communicate, contribute, make decisions, disagree, connect with others, and influence what happens next.

SETC | From Access to Agency On-Demand Course Throughout the course, participants will apply these ideas to realistic classroom scenarios and to a student they currently support. Rather than focusing on how to get a student to “communicate more,” they’ll learn to look at what can change around the communicator to create richer possibilities for participation and agency. Grounded in AAC and inclusive-education research and designed for immediate classroom application, the course ends with participants choosing one student, one activity, and one meaningful change they can make tomorrow.