E DUC A T IO N RE SOURCE
TACT, A Resource Free to Nebraska Educators by TYLER DAHLGREN, NCSA Communication Specialist If you’ve seen one brain injury, then you’ve seen one brain injury. That’s more than a saying that’s long been circulating the neuroscience world and beyond, it’s fact. Every brain injury is uniquely its own. So it would make sense for every brain injury to come with its own path to treatment. “You can’t really have just a standard way of doing things,” said Ross Van Amburg, an occupational therapist with ESU 13 and a seven-year member of the Brain Injury Regional School Support Teams (BIRSST). “You have to meet with a student, understand their needs, and then make adjustments along the way.” Fortunately, districts in Nebraska have a resource designed to guide educators through that process available at no cost. The Teacher Acute Concussion Tool (TACT) is an online educational resource that equips teachers with differentiated instruction to students with concussions in the classroom. It’s an immediate, user-friendly and, given that Nebraska has “Return to Learn” legislation in place, a necessary resource for schools to utilize. “The reason I like the TACT is because it directly interfaces with the needs of a teacher in determining what a student with a brain injury or a concussion might need at any given time,” said Van Amburg, who was previously a lead therapist in the brain injury program at the Wyoming State Training School for Developmental Disabilities. Teachers who suspect a student may be suffering from a concussion simply log the information and observations into the TACT and then receive weekly emails individualized to their student. It’s convenient and streamlined. An entire staff can be trained on the TACT in just 20 minutes. “It gives teachers a direct resource,” Van Amburg continued. “I’m a direct resource for the schools that I go to. I get calls from families, from nurses, even from students that find me and ask questions. This would be a way to access some of that information directly, skipping over me. It’s a more immediate experience for the student to access the information from the teacher than it is from some outside source that’s going to phone in.” TACT establishes timelines, providing weekly reminders that come with a set of implications. Most students recover from
concussions by week four, and the tool gives its users an idea of where they’re at in the healing process throughout that time. “The intent was that it was supposed to be an easy, real-time tool for teachers,” said Peggy Reisher, Executive Director for the Brain Injury Alliance of Nebraska. “It’s not something that they were supposed to go and learn about six months ago and then have to try and recall that information. They just have to remember that they have this tool in their toolbox. They just need to log on and it’s going to instruct them on what they need to do.”
“You can’t really have just a standard way of doing things, you have to meet with a student, understand their needs and then make adjustments along the way.” — Ross Van Amburg Brain Injury Regional School Support Team
TACT uses technology not to cut corners but to provide access to more information, said Van Amburg. It fills the gap that currently exists between an administrator’s knowledge of what to do when a child appears concussed in class. “It gives them something immediate that they don’t have to wait for a concussion management team to decide,” he said. “They can get the ball rolling themselves by using TACT. If a concussion management team needs to change something, they can. But this just makes it faster, more immediate, and more personal.
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