School Visit on Day 2!

Today we had a bright and early start and as Emily says, “we hit the floor running”!
We put up the poster which looks soooo amazing!! Then we planned on the 2 consultations with Johnny’s and Sammy’s parents/aids. We then went and visited a school for children with disabilities. School H is doing amazing things for the children with the resources they have. They are in a low SES area but still do so much, which is something I find very inspiring.

We then went to School S where some of the children who come to Kaizora also go. School S is a mainstream education school in a higher SES area. There we had a wonderful and productive consultation with Johnny’s teacher, teacher-to-be, mum, and the head teacher. We managed coming up with some great ideas and goals, and also provided various strategies they can implement in the school setting to promote social skills among others. We talked about what Johnny should be doing in his next school year and how we can use the holidays to get him at par with everything.

Back at Kaizora we then meet with Sammy’s aid and mum and talked over behaviour modification in the classroom. This also went great and mum sent a text saying “Hi, thank so much. The aid says it was really helpful. She has been on a 1 week training in 2005 & no one has ever come to school to talk to the assistants like you have today”! We will be providing data sheets to help identify the ABC in Sammy’s behaviours in school, and hopefully having such a system in place will shed light on plenty more.
The consultation after that with Johnny’s mum went fabulous as well and we identified lots of goals and went over his progress so far. She was very happy with all the information, and some of the things we plan on doing while Emily is here is weaning him off his GFCF diet!

Overall, the day has been absolutely amazing, and I’m so excited for the next 2 weeks as well… everyday is a new learning experience! 
-Pooja

Connections

After reviewing printed versions of slides of previous workshops held at SOREM and comparing the information presented to the knowledge level of the staff with whom we were interacting, we decided to take a very practical approach to the workshop, heavy on examples.

The survey results are in and we’re excited to report that everyone loved it! One of the main concerns for people that we were able to address is the concern that we all have when presented with a formidable challenge: where do I even start? Behavior modification can be a challenging task that tests every fiber of your being. Modifying your own behavior is difficult enough, modifying someone else’s--obviously a much larger task. In order to help people learn where to start we broke everything down.  We presented examples in video, in situ, through case studies. Topics were checked for understanding before moving on and then reviewed again in a different way with a new case study, a new example, etc.

This visit to Chandigarh marks our third this year; this workshop was our first. Having attended and conducted workshops in the past, we knew that we needed to prime the teachers to help us present the material in order to get everyone on board for what can be a  very challenging task of behavior modification; this past week was spent doing just that. In daily three hour in-classroom training sessions and 1.5 hour teacher education workshops, we’ve been able to present and review a tremendous amount of skills for the teachers’ toolboxes!

The Saturday workshop was an amazing success and the workshops have been as well. That being said – we know the proof is in the pudding and to us the ‘pudding’ is the follow-up and data. As a professional organization devoted to this work full-time, we’re fortunate to have the resources to stay in touch with our colleagues here in India and be able to answer any questions as they arise during our weekly meetings. Things change fast when teaching students and in order to stay a step or two ahead of the student, you must be able to change quickly as well.

We’re very curious about how International work happened without the internet, or even phones-- we couldn’t do this work without Skype! We had a trial Skype call to make sure that everyone is able to sign on and talk without difficulty. Casey was on the call from the U.S.!  This was immediately following our call with our colleague in Kenya. That call included Casey in San Diego, Molly in  India and Pooja in Kenya – connecting across three continents and three different time zones was an incredible experience!