When working or living with a child/adolescent with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, meltdowns may occur that may be a result of sensory overload, cognitive overload or due to inability to self-regulate emotions. This full day seminar will provide many practical hands-on strategies to:
- Increase positive and acceptable behavior while decreasing undesirable behaviors
- Prevent meltdowns, tantrums, rages
- Provide suggestions for instructional consequences and self-management techniques to help prevent another melt-down
- Provide a system of visual supports throughout the day
- Demonstrate how to use high focus and interest areas as incentives
- View videos and demonstrations using these techniques
This information and fun-packed seminar is designed for parents, educators, therapists and all those who are interested in providing supports to children/adolescents with an ASD, ADHD, behavior disorders or other disabilities.
Why you should attend
Do you work with children or adolescents with autism who exhibit behaviors that interfere with their ability to effectively and efficiently navigate their environment? They may appear willful, obnoxious, overreactive, anxious, or unfeeling or withdraw. They may lose control of their ability to cope or regulate their behavior which can send them spiraling into a meltdown. You may feel helpless, frustrated, and powerless after each meltdown.
Drawing on 45 years of experience and research based strategies, Kathy will lead the viewer with many practical strategies to prevent the meltdown, as well as intervention strategies and how to address post-vention strategies. Many videos demonstrating the examples will be presented to help support and demonstrate the strategy.
Areas Covered in the Session
Participants will be able to:
- Identify the stages of a melt-down
- Distinguish between a meltdown and tantrum
- Differentiate between punitive consequences and instructional consequences
- Brainstorm an instructional consequence as a result of a behavior
- Identify whether statements about autism are myths or facts
- View practical strategies for Social Stories, Power Cards, t-charts, keychain rules, reminder
Cards, breathe charts, emotion cards, SOCCSS, and many other visual strategies to meet the needs of the persons who are on the Spectrum or may be experiencing similar characteristics or needs.
Who Will Benefit
- General Education and Special Education Teachers Serving Students on the spectrum grades 6-12
- Administrators (Principals, Assistant Principals, Deans)
- Diagnosticians
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Parents
- Paraeducators
- School and Clinical Psychologists
- Speech Pathologists
- Occupational Therapists
- School Nurses
Session 1 (90 Mins):
- Schedules
- Surprise Cards/ Change of Schedule Cards
- Warning Signs of an Eruption
- Tantrums vs Meltdowns
- Meltdown Cycle
Tea Break
Session 2 (90 Mins):
- Social Scripts
- Video Modeling
- Neuroanatomy of the Brain
- Implications
- Mirror Neurons
- Sensory Overstimulation
- Levels of Talking
- Power Cards
Lunch Break
Session 3 (90 Mins):
- Physical Structure
- Social Stories
- Anxiety Management Strategies
Tea Break
Session 4 (90 Mins):
- Classroom Examples
- Reminder Cards
- SOCCSS
- T-CHARTS
- Cartooning
- Instructional Consequences
Speaker Profile
Kathy Kaluza Morris has been an educator for 45 years specializing in autism and behavior disorders as well moderate to severe cognitive disabilities. As a speech therapist for students with severe disabilities, a teacher of students with behavior disorders, including autism and emotional disturbances, she was mentored and supported by many national/international experts from whom she gathered many practical experiences and suggestions which she implemented. Her favorite classroom was a self-contained classroom for students with severe physical disabilities, including cerebral palsy. There she was attracted to technology and assistive devices to help support communication and independence.
As a resource teacher and regular education teacher, she was concerned with the lack of including students with disabilities and she was an advocate for more inclusive strategies. She was also a diagnostician and a supervisor that started two of the first LIFE Skills programs in Texas.
In Texas there are 20 education service centers which support school districts in their areas. Kathy was the autism, behavior and assistive technology consultant for 42 districts, providing seminars and technical assistance across all grade levels.
She left the service center to continue her doctoral program in educational psychology and started her own business, igivuWings, providing seminars and technical assistance nationally as well as internationally for the last 20 years.
Kathy and husband, Guy, “walk the walk and talk the talk” after the birth of their twin sons 32 years ago with autism and cerebral palsy. It has given them a 360 degree perspective of life as parents of children with disabilities as well as of educators.