ABA and Schools

ABA is often seen as home-based in terms of its service location. While this may at times extend to the premise of 'community,' the procedures and protocols can appear very similar from place to place. However, just like behavior, the environment can have a substantial influence on how ABA can be practiced and implemented. One particular environment that presents clear constraints to practice is a classroom environment on a school campus. That is to say, there are clear guidelines, rules and expectations that point to one set of acceptable behaviors, with little to no margin of error allowed. Mike and Dan consider Mike's recent experiences going back onto a comprehensive school campus to work with students exhibiting challenging behaviors. While as ABA professionals, our content expertise are ready to create and implement behavior plans to address undesired behavior and promote replacement behaviors, schools can often dictate what said behavior plans should include, creating obstacles and unique problems toward effective collaboration and successful outcomes.

This salty episode is sure to work up a thirst. Prepare yourself with a nice, tall, cool one and enjoy this important discussion on ABA in schools.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find the best recipe to brew the smoothest, coldest, and best tasting ABA around. I'm Dan Lowry with Mike Rubio, and join us on our journey as we look back into the ingredients to form the best concoction of ABA on tap. In this podcast, we will talk about the history of the ABA brew, how much to consume to achieve the optimum buzz while not getting too drunk, and the recommended pairings to bring to the table. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_02: 0:51

All right, all right. Welcome back to another installment of ABA on Tap. I am your co-host, Mike Rubio, along with Daniel Lowry, doing a little remote work today, Mr. Dan, with good reason. How you doing?

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

Good to see you virtually today, sir.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11

So we went back to Zoom. We're playing it safe. You guys out there must think we're We're sickly fellows. We're not. Just dealing with the usual virus here and there. But we have had a lot of medical things come and go. And for that reason, we're playing it very safe today. Just full disclosure, I've had a nice wave of COVID run through my family. So the last thing I wanted to do is have you walk into any sort of contagion. So we played it completely safe. We eliminated all risk, which means if we're not in the same room... or you're not in the same house where anybody that's been recently infected, then you should be okay. Thank goodness for Zoom.

SPEAKER_00: 1:52

Absolutely, and now I have my virtual mask on so we can be extra precautious. A

SPEAKER_02: 1:58

lot of people would say that those are as effective as the real ones. Anyway, we won't get into

SPEAKER_00: 2:03

that. I think it'll be a good segue into today's topic, honestly, because there's a lot of relevance to COVID masks in schools and stuff like that. And while that won't be our topic, we will be talking about schools.

SPEAKER_02: 2:17

ABA in schools, ABA and schools. I'm not sure what the official title will end up being, but it's going to be one of those variations. So I think that our last two episodes entitled ABA in Crisis, talking a lot about from a personal career perspective, a transition we've recently faced. And along with that transition came a return into a, I guess, an environment in which we're often called upon to do work, which is a school setting. It had been a little while since I had done work related to IEPs or school settings or on a school setting, although going back down memory lane, Many, many years ago, you and I, Mr. Dan, our first case was actually, I guess, a school case. We had the luxury, maybe, is that the right word to use? We had the luxury of our own setting to work with this student, not a comprehensive school setting, as they call it when you go onto a national campus. But I guess at that point, we were doing what's called NPA collection of services, meaning that In this particular case, it was a student that had a certain level of need that could not be housed on a comprehensive school campus and was therefore housed inside our non-public agency, as you will, as they call it. And it was a two to one ratio, if you recall. So it's very

SPEAKER_00: 3:53

poignant. Oh, I recall. I remember it very vividly. And I tell this story a lot in my new hire groups that I did a very extensive two-week training, and this is my first experience in the ABA field. I had no idea what ABA was, really limited idea of what autism was. And we went through all this training that was really exciting, and I was really excited to get into the field and do all these strategies. And the very first day out of training, they were like, hey, your client's going to start tomorrow. Go upstairs, which was where our classroom was. And I put classroom in quotes. It was one room with a double-sided mirror. And they're like, Michael, kind of give you a brief of this client. And I go there, and I remember you and I forget who else was in there at the time, but you all were putting wood onto the wall, like nailing wood onto the wall. You were putting plexiglass over the window. You were taking the light bulbs out and putting a plexiglass thing under the lights. And I can literally put myself in my shoes, and this was 17 years ago. Yeah, something like that. What in the world did I sign up for? They didn't talk about this in new hire training. They were talking about playing with three-year-olds. They didn't talk about making a room plexiglass and double-paned and wooded walls. Remember? Like it was yesterday, Mike.

SPEAKER_02: 5:17

17 years ago, indeed. Yeah, yeah. So, and important to, all the details you're giving here, just to sort of clarify, I remember it just because it's such a good lesson on functions of behavior. I remember I'd gone over the collateral and you came in and were kind of like, hey, it looks like we're going to be working together. And I'm like, yep, you know, I think we had met, you know, at least once. Good to see you again. And you immediately, you're like, why are you guys doing this? And I said, well, because this student's going to come in and he's gonna try to assault one of us or he's gonna try to throw a chair through the window or break something such that we send him home because that was the protocol that had been instated for him at his non-public school that he was coming from.

SPEAKER_00: 6:04

Yeah, they clearly knew how punishment worked, right? They knew that if he didn't wanna do his work and he assaulted somebody at school, they would punish him by suspending him and that was very effective.

SPEAKER_02: 6:15

Well, and that's something that unfortunately, and we'll talk more about this later, I think a lot of schools run into, even with the old traditional sending you to the principal's office, right? The idea that we, as a staff, as the adults in the situation, aren't taking the time to understand functions of behavior clearly enough to understand the escape function of sending somebody home, suspending them. And then this runs into policy, right? Meaning, I don't know how much flexibility school administrators have sometimes once they set those policies, right? Or once there's a school district, for example, that is working on zero tolerance policies for aggressive behavior, and this might pertain to the general student body and may or may not then be offered some level of extra protection under an IEP. Again, all things that we have to consider when we come in. to schools to implement ABA. So let's fast forward maybe 17 years or so to about a month ago, maybe a little more than that now, where I had a chance to return to a comprehensive campus to do some work. And a lot of interesting topics that I think hopefully will come up from my more recent experience that will relate to some historical experiences. We also have other friends and colleagues, close friends and colleagues that work within the schools or work with policy and law, if you will, that pertains to special education services. So maybe some of that information will also become relevant. But yeah, most recently, I was called upon in my current employment to, I guess, this is interesting to think about. For one, it was certainly to provide staffing for a couple of students on a comprehensive campus. Two different students, different ages, different levels of need, which is also interesting. You might think of a high rate of aggression as being the reason why somebody gets called in. Usually that's the case, some sort of high frequency, high duration, high impact behavior that they're not able to, Designate to a more restrictive setting right away, but I think a lot of schools try to go through a process of trying to address the behavior Excuse me such that you can keep the student in the less restrictive environment So in my more recent experience again two students of different levels Different levels of impactedness, I guess would be the right phrase to use Different levels of service in terms of their age and then in terms of the challenges very very similar and meaning that often in ABA we have the luxury of working in sort of a one-to-one ratio, which is also afforded to us in the schools, but now the environment has many other students, many other teachers and adults, a larger code of conduct or a system-wide contingency, if you will, that applies to the students. So there's very interesting constraints that come into play in terms of what you're expected to do and how it is you're able to do it, and then the systems that are available to you that sort of need to fit a certain style. They need to hit a certain aesthetic, if you will, otherwise you might run into challenges working collaboratively with the rest of the staff there. So just to give one quick example, and then I wanna let you loose for a few minutes, because I'm sure you've got a lot of things to say about this, but in working with one particular student, I would say, with more impacted needs, the notion that the student is not able to necessarily sit and attend for prolonged periods of time, figuring out how to motivate that sitting behavior, that attention, that sustained attention, and then how to moderate the level of physical prompting that we're implementing in that situation to try and achieve that desired behavior of the student sitting for a sustained period of time. So, you know, I impact a lot there, but you start, you begin to understand some of the constraints that at least I experienced most recently. And then, you know, from a political side of things, trying to understand the motive of the entire IEP team, the teacher. You know, in some situations, there's a teacher that's very invested in making sure that the student stays in this less restrictive environment. And in some situations, you might have teachers that you represent a stopgap, and that's to say that they don't necessarily want you to be successful, with all due respect. They're hoping that you fail because they truly feel that the student needs to go to a more restrictive environment. So I threw a lot at you there, Mr. Dan. Help us unpack it like you usually do, and we'll move from there.

SPEAKER_00: 11:13

So before I help unpack, I want to kind of bring the audience and then put a question kind of back on you. based on this. So to my understanding, again, I wasn't in these discussions between you and our operations manager, clinical director, the person who handles kind of the clinical things with our newer company. But I heard about him both from you and him that to my understanding, the reason that they wanted you on this school case was because of your diverse kind of skill set and knowledge and and expertise in the field, because you have probably more than anyone at the field, you've been in the field for 25 plus years. Even though you've been out of the school cases for probably 12, 13 years, maybe longer than that, for the most part, the reason that they kind of looked at you is because of your solidified skill, your solidified knowledge of ABA and the fact that you probably possess if not more, as much as anyone at the company. So they were like, this is going to be a challenging case. We're going to take our star player on this one. Despite the star player being rusty and being out of the game for a long time, we're going to put him in the game and see what he can do. Am I understanding that correctly?

SPEAKER_02: 12:37

I mean, maybe. I don't know that that was necessarily stated to me, but I would say that given the opportunity, maybe that those variables were relevant and saying, I'm available, I have the time, I have the experience. Yeah, let's give that a shot. And I would say that maybe without too much conjecture, just given the collateral on these particular situations, meaning what the paperwork was sort of saying, you know, painting the picture it was painting. Um, yeah, maybe my experience, uh, had, had something to do with it. Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 13:14

Yeah. I think you're being a little bit humble there. Um, but I'm going to stick with what I said because I think it kind of paints the picture that I'm trying to paint here. So you, you, um, you faced a lot of challenges and, um, a lot of times where you were like, yeah, I'm not sure what to do in this situation. Um, I feel like I'm running into some walls in this situation. And again, I wasn't in it, so please correct me or change wording that I may be using inappropriately. But I want to highlight how it's very interesting that taking somebody who has some of the most diverse and length of experience and somebody that we all look to, Back, you know, when you and I, we were at our previous company, we all looked to for like, hey, we're having a difficult time with this client. You would have an answer and we would be able to successfully kind of navigate it through your guidance. There were a lot of times that even you were like, what in the world is going on? What did I get myself into? I'm not sure of the, you know, the success of the outcome. Maybe again, correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm trying to put... you know, words and, uh, um, some thoughts that I thought you had based on our discussions. And just to say that, man, like you got the most, the most experience and you're like, Oh Lord, like this is challenging.

SPEAKER_02: 14:39

Absolutely. I would, I can resonate. I mean, I, I can agree with that a hundred percent in terms of, um, knocking some of the rust off to be fair. Um, But I can dissect that, and then again, you know, please pepper in here, because I think that a lot of your perspective is gonna be helpful here in sort of trying to really highlight the challenges that exist, right? So when you're in the situation, number one, you're walking into a teacher's, you're walking onto a school campus. There's already a certain protocol there in terms of even your check-in at the office, what your, you know, are you gonna wear a badge or not, navigating the campus, finding the appropriate classroom. So you've got like this macro, you know, general set of services that are being recommended, and then you have to walk onto this school campus. Meaning, so I saw the IEP, I saw the behavior plan that existed for the students, and then I gotta walk onto the school campus and think about the way that paperwork looks on the school campus, and then I have to walk into that classroom and understand Where is the student even sitting in this classroom? Understand why they might be sitting in that situation. As you walk into the special ed classroom, for anybody that's been in these environments, you're gonna have a good amount of adults, not just students in that setting. And the reason I highlight that is that these are all variables, meaning these are all people, whether students or other adults, that are somehow gonna present an extra set of hands or a body in the way, with all due respect, at some point in time, these are gonna be variables you're gonna have to contend with. So this notion that you might be assigned one-to-one to this student, or better yet, your staff that you're there with to introduce to the situation, so all the variables I just mentioned, now you also have an RBT of varied experience, may have been chosen based on their sex or gender, meaning that If you've got a very, and I hate to put this out there, and I'm sure people are going to, somebody out there will have some level of reaction, but in most cases, if we have an aggressive male student of a certain stature, we're likely not going to send a smaller female staff. Again, I hate to say that because I know that some people might say, well, wait a minute, what do you mean? It's just a matter of simple physics in terms of having enough weight and height and things like that. So, you know, again, these are all things you're sizing up in terms of who your staff member is, what the variables are, what the overt behaviors are. Is there a lot of quote unquote aggression, which is something that maybe we can talk about because whenever it's assaultive, we're going to call it aggression. And that's kind of a misnomer because immediately the function is sort of implied by saying aggression, right? in many ways. So again, that's something else we can get into in terms of how you even deal with that or how you even reframe it to tell somebody, yeah, no, this kiddo is hypothetically, they're digging their nails into your hand because that's attention seeking. So and you're giving them attention, so it's functioning that way, and then what are you going to do about it, knowing that you've got all sorts of behavior management training and functions to think about, but in that moment, you just have somebody digging their nails into your hand, and it hurts, and it's annoying, and maybe all the while you're supposed to be trying to get this student to sit down on their desk to attend for a few minutes, and because they're not doing that, now there's other staff that maybe are trying to be helpful, but this is an attention-seeking behavior, so we're adding more attention to the situation, at which point now the lead teacher gets disrupted from what she's doing because she sees that there's two people addressing one behavior, and now she comes over, and we now have three adults attending to one attention-seeking behavior, even though our best intent is to remove attention from that situation. Now here I am again, same circumstance, taking a new staff member, I have to model for them how to work. And as I model, they need to be within a certain proximity to see what I'm doing. And again, we're adding attention to that same situation, which we're trying to remove attention from. Are

SPEAKER_00: 18:59

you there to model for them how to work or are you there to solve and fix the problem?

SPEAKER_02: 19:06

It's both at the same time, right? So I need to find out. That's a great question because it literally is, I mean, it's an apprenticeship in that sense, right? So I don't know what the answer is. And I know that whatever answer I figure out might look differently, and hopefully it does look a little bit differently from what somebody else might do, even though I'm offering a starting point, or the teacher maybe offered me a starting point. Hey, this is what we usually do. In which case, then I have to ask the question, should I do what you do? Or am I here because what you've been doing isn't working? And this is with all due respect. I don't know the answer to that question. It could be both. It could be we've just been surviving for six weeks until you guys got here. So yes, we've survived and this is working, but we don't have enough hands and now you're an extra set of staff. So again, I've got on a huge tangent here, but you're trying to figure all of this stuff out as you're there with, again, an RBT of varied experience. You're trying to size up the campus. You're trying to now look at the particular classroom and its location relative to the rest of the campus and relative to things like parking lots in the event that the student you're working with might like to run away from or escape from certain situations by physically removing themselves. You're seeing how many staff are available. Are there bathrooms inside the classroom? And if there are, How many of these students have toileting needs where other adults need to help? How does that fit into your staffing situation? And whether or not you've agreed to do that in this services contract or not. And if you have agreed, did you happen to tell your staff that they were going to be expected to do that? And if you didn't, then now how do you resolve all this knowing that we've got an extra set of variables? We've got the behavior that we started with, that's why we're there. We've got other needs that now involve privacy and additional training and ramp up time. And again, this is all just the first day. This is the first 15 minutes I'm talking about, right? This isn't even like the first half of the day. This is just the first 15 minutes where you get there. And you have to remember that the reason you're there, the reason you're there is because the school district has designated the situation as needing a certain new temporary level or parameter of restriction, if you will. And that might mean that you're extra support staff to figure out the behavior. It could mean that you're there to fill in the staffing that they can't otherwise, the vacancy they can't otherwise fill. Also, usually because there's some level of excessive behavior or unmanageable behavior based on their staffing and their circumstance. So, Again, I threw a lot there. This is like the first 30 minutes of the first day of being there with a student. And you asked the most important question, which is, am I there to model or am I there to fix? Well, I have to find what works, model it. And then there's going to be additional front loading time over the next couple of weeks to see if you can find a way to understand the situation enough to help your staff work with it. If you have five days a week for a student, which is usually what schools do, it means you might have up to two, three, four different staff, depending on how you split the day, because you certainly, in these situations, don't necessarily want one staff every day, meaning that there could be some burnout. Or if you do have that staff every day, that would make it easier for the training part, but again, you're really risking them depending on the degree of difficulty here. So now you've got to figure out how to help your students Monday, Wednesday, Friday staff, for example, if that's the way you're scheduling, and then how to help the other staff that's on, get them both ramped up, and if you're lucky, they both survive the experience, and then you're just off and running. But people's expectations change, people leave this line of work, sometimes you have to deem a certain staffing situation not a good fit, which means that you just started this case and now you're facing that same set of questions I just put forth with another staff member as you try to figure out what's gonna be a good fit. So these are very challenging situations, to say the least. And to quote a good colleague of ours, he made the joke, they don't call it Ghostbusters for nothing. And I think what he meant by that is, We're not getting called in for easy situations. I don't think that school districts say, hey, we have to call an MPA or an ABA agency because we have a really easy student. They're calling us because they're short staffed, at the very least, and they're short staffed probably in a situation that is so challenging that they're unable to move their pieces around the board and actually address the situation. And maybe they're actually needing help with determining the least restrictive environment in an IEP, which means we have to come in and answer very important questions. Meaning, yes, the student can stay with this level of help, which we can then train your staff to implement as we exit ourselves, which is what our ultimate mission is. And then politically, it could also be the situation that you know, again, I'm trying to be very cautious and careful here, but the idea that politically we're also just a stopgap. They don't want us to succeed. They're hoping that we come in and we can't change the behavior enough such that the student can then be sent to a more restrictive setting or a setting that's going to have more adequate resources to address the behaviors that can't be managed on that so-called comprehensive campus. So it is, it is, I mean, as a... Yes, I can tout my many years of experience, and then I have to walk into that situation, and I have to be very grateful for my many years of experience because I don't think it's otherwise easy to survive those challenges unless you're well-versed and you're well-prepared.

SPEAKER_00: 25:09

So you mentioned something at the end about kind of who wants us there, and I want to take a step back because I think that's the first step thing that we should kind of evaluate and wants kind of a... In ABA, we don't use it a lot because it's mentalistic, but I think it's relevant in this context. When we do our traditional services, our in-home services, or either in-home or in-clinic services, the parent wants us to be there. The parent wants us to be in the home. The parent's dropping their kid off at the clinic. They want us to be there. Again, now, whether they fully understand what ABA is, whether they want to participate in services, there's a lot of, you know, whatever. But they're opening their door up to us and they're dropping their kid off at the office. So they want their kid to be there. Schools can, you know, pose an interesting challenge into that. A lot of the reason that we're there is because the situation's in some sort of due process filing. So maybe the The school doesn't really want us there. They're just doing it because it's in some sort of litigation. And maybe the parent doesn't even want the kid to be at the school. But because it's an IEP stay put process, that kid has to be there until a better situation is found. I'll focus more on the school in this situation, whether they want us to be there or not. But like you mentioned, sometimes... again, whether it's wanting or not wanting, maybe I should use a different word, the incentives might be a little bit different. I think that's a word you used earlier, that the incentive for the school teacher might just be like, hey, can you get this kid either out of my class or... The incentive at the end of the day for a lot of these is going to be, can we get this kid to do work? And if this kid isn't following into the way that the other 15 kids in this class are doing work, then we got to figure out a different situation. And now this kid is in... in this classroom. It has to stay in this classroom until a better, more suitable situation is figured out. And the question is, is teacher going to follow our instructions? Are they motivated? And do we honestly know the best situation? That's kind of one of the things that started this chasm that I feel like is slowly being rebuilt, but the chasm of ABA in school. In fact, ABA, and you've mentioned this, and I know some of the Other staff that works in schools has mentioned this. I don't know whether it's this specific school or a different school. But in fact, some of the school staff flat out said, I don't want you doing ABA and I don't want you talking about ABA in schools. Because of just, you know, whether it's a psychologist or a teacher or somebody who's had this, you know, tainted image of ABA or a bad experience of ABA. you know, this chasm has developed. And certainly we are, we have some accountability or responsibility because what we can do with a client one-on-one in a clinic or what we can do with a client one-on-one at home, we certainly have much more control over the environment than we do in a school. And also we have a lot of control over the motivators and the reinforcers. And typical education is built on negative reinforcement, right? That You don't act out in school because you don't want to get bad grades or you don't want me to call you out in front of your friends and look silly. But a lot of the kids you work with might not be that socially, you know, that might not be as motivating to them. So how are we going to get them to do work? Are we going to have to have artificial instead of natural reinforcers? Do they have those artificial instead of natural reinforcers? There's a lot of confounds. So, you know, I covered a lot of ground there. The first one being the motivation piece. Is the person that we're directly, are our interests aligned? I guess would be a better way to say it. Is the person that we're directly working with, are our interests aligned? And also, if they are aligned, do we have the necessary supports to get them to be done? And if the answer is no, the question is, can we get them? And if the answer to that is no, then is ABA even the best resource to be using in this situation? So kind of threw a bunch of stuff back at you there, but what are your thoughts onto that, Mike?

SPEAKER_02: 29:38

All very important questions. So I would say that given my most recent experiences, and I know that this has changed over time, so I would say without getting too much into the legalese, I know that there's been a variation or a change in what the law says Applied behavior analysis needs to be used for in schools, and then what it doesn't say now, meaning that, again, without getting too much into the legalese, there was a time where, based on a certain topography or impact of behavior, say aggression or something dangerous to self-environment or others, we were specifically named, at least here in California code, specifically named as the people that needed to do the behavior intervention plan, for example. And I know that that's no longer the case. That's something that changed over time and that is no longer the case. So to your point about who wants to use applied behavior analysis or now disciplinary techniques, if you will, that are not necessarily related to applied behavior analysis but more educationally or traditionally based, whatever that might mean, I think that's the first step obstacle that you might hit. So though you're being contracted to come in and address a problem, I would say that often you're coming in being asked to address a problem in the way they want you to address the problem. So there's already a solution set. There's already some sort of...

SPEAKER_00: 31:16

Which hasn't worked, which is why we're there, but now they want us to do it, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_02: 31:23

No, no, and you're absolutely right. That's exactly right. That's the problem here is And it's already something that's already on paper. So if it's part of the IEP, you have to follow it, right? And then it becomes a matter of following it and maybe finding your groove within different sorts of approaches to implementation. And that, I think, is very difficult. That's very challenging because, again, there's a certain aesthetic. There's a certain way to do things on a school campus. And then every classroom, every teacher is going to have their own ways of doing things. So finding your way to creatively address the problem, whatever it may be, and within the constraints of an existing behavior plan, within the parameters of a certain classroom and school, then teacher is the real trick here. And it's not easy. And again, then you have to determine, you know, I think most teachers, I'm going to go on the record and saying, you know, you give the benefit of the doubt. Most of these teachers are dedicated to their job. I'm gonna say all of them are dedicated to their job in some way, shape or form. Now whether personally or not they've attached a decision as to whether their student is appropriate for their classroom or not, you know, you've got a classroom that's running really well, but one student that seems to be falling out, and then we come in and we help that student, and sometimes we isolate that student a little further. So now that teacher might be happy about that, or that teacher might be saying, well, wait a minute, you're supposed to integrate them into my classroom. And then we're saying, well, yeah, but integrate them into your classroom, is causing the very trouble that you want us to avoid right now as we try to stabilize the situation. So, you know, long story a little shorter, it takes a lot of active communication. It takes a lot of creativity, a lot of putting my own ideas aside, putting my 27 years of experience and whatever tendencies I bring to the table, and going, okay, so you want me to... address this problem by doing this thing, to your point, Dan, this thing that you've already been doing that didn't work, which is why I'm here. So now the question I have to ask myself is, how can I make this work in a way that seems suitable to you per the written plan that also fits my understanding of applied behavior analysis and that tells me it's got a chance of working? Or at least modifying, changing the behavior enough to change the reinforcement dynamic enough to change the behavior enough after that. So it's very incremental and it's very, it's day by day and it can be certainly very frustrating. And again, I think that the beauty of that is sort of the crisis within the community that you have a staff, a set of staff there that if everybody's working on the same page and you've got a strong lead teacher and everybody feels like a team, then there's a lot to be learned from that dynamic. And then in the same situation, it only takes one bad apple to really make the whole barrel seem very uncomfortable. And there's a lot of possibilities for that crisis outside of the community feeling in those situations because you've got so many people trying to work together and so many constraints in terms of how it looks and what you can do. And, you know... Visual structure and design, something that I can be a little bit critical of, and it's traditional implementation in ABA. Well, that's going to be the go-to in a school. And they're going to expect you to use it no matter what, and it's very relevant based on schedules and now time. So there's a lot of parameters to adhere to that... very quickly end up becoming constraints to your work. And if you're not careful, then these become overwhelming challenges that can make the task seem quite impossible.

SPEAKER_00: 35:26

So with that being stated and with the potential, I don't want to say misaligned interest, but the difference is there. Because in home sessions, our focus is just always with that kid. That's our kid. interest um we don't have to work with multiple kids um at the same time whereas the teacher does the teacher has multiple clients that they have to be aware of and they have to run a classroom so it can't just be let's drop everything for johnny um because we still got suzy and everybody else in the classroom as well whereas aba we can drop everything for johnny and if we want to ignore johnny we can just you know turn our back or whatever you know blanket extinction, if we want to even go back into more prehistoric terms, we can ignore Johnny, and Johnny can scream until his little heart desires. But in a school case, that might not be fair or even ethical to the other kids. Because, yeah, it would be in Johnny's best interest for us to not provide attention for this attention-seeking behavior. But if he's now going to ramp it up to a level that's going to infringe on the other students' rights... Now we run into an issue. Now we run into an issue that are we prioritizing Johnny and what's in his best interest? Or are we prioritizing the classroom and now are we going to isolate Johnny at expense of what is in his best interest, but what's in the class's best interest? There's actually a client that we work with that was doing some not aggressive behaviors, but some attention seeking behaviors. And he actually spends a lot of his time actually in another classroom because the teacher couldn't deal with it. And it was just attention-seeking behaviors. It wasn't aggressive behaviors. So I think that's one of the challenges. And maybe you can speak to that, Mike, of what is your suggestion of how we combat a situation like that where what's in the kid's best interest or our response to the kid's best interest might not be in the rest of the individual's best interest in that situation?

SPEAKER_02: 37:26

Well, I mean, you unpack, unfortunately, probably a situation that's all too common in terms of the dynamics because now I think a lot of it, and I spoke to that in my previous example, a lot of it will start with something that simple. I hate to use that word, but it's what it is. The notion that you do have one particular student that tips the balance, that tips things off balance, if you will. And yeah, so the idea that that student is going to now interrupt the rest of the students or, again, back to school policy, right? A lot of situations where if a student starts getting aggressive and throwing things around the classroom, a lot of schools have the policy that now the classroom has to be cleared out for the safety of the rest of the class as opposed to now the old school method of isolating that one student because In all fairness, I think school personnel are trying to keep hands off of students, which I can completely understand why, having come from tradition 20-plus years ago, where there was a lot of hands-on with students. And during that time, we had to question ourselves and say, hey, maybe we're doing that a little bit too much. Maybe Johnny didn't need to get restrained because he knocked his desk over, you know? I say that facetiously knowing that I probably went through very similar situations and saying that to administration, which is what I think needs to happen here. You have an IEP team and whenever you've got something off balance that might weigh too much in the interest of Johnny at the expense of the classroom or vice versa based on individual dynamics, I think that's where the IEP team has to come in. Meaning that as sort of a, I guess, conduits in that situation, trying to find the way to help the challenges, understanding the reinforcement dynamic between that student and the lead teacher or the rest of the staff, understanding if there's attention-seeking behavior, how come Johnny seems to go pick on that one staff member? And how do we move those people around without making them feel ineffective? Or how do we empower them to say, hey, this is what's happening in my analysis. Can you please try this when he does that to you? What's not working? What does working mean? I won't know what's working. We won't know what's working until you try it several times and change your habits in response to these behaviors of interest that Johnny's emitting that we're not happy with for whatever reason. So I think that, and I've said a lot there, but I think that the short answer to your question is, and this is where the politics come in, and maybe this is where my experience, to speak humbly, this is where my experience maybe does help me quite a bit, is in being able to communicate with people and bring those things to the table and confront them in a comfortable way to say, hey, I think teacher, I think you're doing this and this and this is your classroom, but that does this to my staff or this then now makes me do this and the student do that. This is the analysis. What can we change that? What can I ask you to do differently? Oh, you won't do anything differently? Okay, then it's on me now. The onus is on me to change my behavior. And I think that's the really good lesson excuse me, our takeaway here in general is we always look at the client, we always look at the kid on the IEP, we look at the kid with the disability or the qualifying condition or the diagnosis, whatever we want to call it, and we think about the behavior that needs to change in them. And then by saying that, we forget that actually for any behavior to change in them, it's likely gonna start with us doing something differently. So the very short answer to your question is that, is you have to look at all the people involved and say, hey, are you willing to do something differently for this student? And if you're not, then let me go on to the next person and see who is. And that might even involve another student, not that you're gonna ask the student to do anything differently, but you might have to observe the nuance in the environment and say, Okay, when this student does that or they go here, my student does this, can I use that to pivot in any way the situation so that I can make Johnny admit anything that might be of reinforcement to the teacher such that now she lends attention in a way that she hasn't before, and now there's one kernel. We're gonna build on that one seed and see where it sprouts. But again, that's challenging. There's a lot of nuance there, and you have to be paying attention as you're dealing with assaultive behavior, as you're trying to support your RBT or your staff that's there with the actual student. Again, a lot of questions to be answered, and at the end of the day, what it really means is a great deal of need here. So I like to say, as of late, We have nothing to lose in these situations and everything to gain, meaning that this student might already be designated or working toward a more restrictive setting. If we're able to change that course, we've already gained something. We've already added something to the equation. So it's good to sort of say we've got nothing to lose here. and everything to gain, and it's gonna be really, really super hard work where at the end of the day, it's gonna be more about managing other adults in the environment toward creating contingencies that allow Johnny to express behavior that can be reinforced in the future, and then so on and so forth. So it's tough, man. I mean, I like the way you pitched it earlier, because it certainly did have me, it had me back on my heels a little bit in terms of going like, whoa, wait a minute, this is, I haven't done this in a while, and I had to remember all these things that I'm talking about in terms of the motivating operations. Why might we be useful in schools? Well, it's because there's a lot riding on these situations, legally and otherwise, more ethically. This is a kid's life. If they're not supposed to be in a more restrictive environment, for some reason you couldn't help keep them in the less restrictive environment, That's a lot of weight. You know what I'm saying? That's heavy, man. But again, if you go in there with that weight, it's going to crush you. If you go in there understanding that you just give it your all, you can really contribute to a difficult situation. There's a lot of magic to be had there. And I say that because it's time to tell you all about something very important that keeps me going, especially during tough, challenging, new work situations or, for example, over the past two weeks when I'm feeling a little bit sick or my family is running through a course of illness and something that's been very helpful as of late is a little green elixir known as Magic Mind. And I like to take that with my morning coffee and I feel really, really good about what I'm taking in. Like I said, my teenagers, all of us, have been through a course of illness here. I guess, tis the season to get sick. So it's been very important to have these little green shots in the refrigerator to give us a little extra boost if we're feeling a little bit fatigued, a little bit of that brain fog. Certainly Magic Mind has been very, very helpful over the past couple weeks. And like I do, three days before we do any sort of ABA on tap recording, I make sure that I've got Magic Mind on tap. Now why is that, Mr. Dan? Because I'm talking about very, very good ingredients, wholesome basic ingredients, like adaptogens. What are adaptogens? Herbs, roots, and other plant substances like mushrooms, which I know are very popular and trendy right now. And these help our bodies manage stress, restore our balance after a stressful situation. In this case, we're talking about ashwagandha, just one of the natural ingredients that makes Magic Mind so good for you. We're also talking about nootropics, non-prescription substances that can enhance brain performance or focus. L-theanine, specifically, is a naturally occurring non-protein amino acid that promotes relaxation by reducing stress and anxiety levels. It can boost your energy during the workday and at the same time Promote that calm and get you nice quality sleep at night. We're talking about chock full of vitamin D3. That does a whole bunch of things. Strengthens bones, your immune system. Certainly helps improve my brain function. It will yours too. Boosts your mood. Helps lower your blood pressure. fights inflammation all around. It can strengthen your oral health, support a healthy nervous system, improve with cognitive function, as I mentioned, and in doing so, serve as a preventative measure for dementia, certainly investing toward the future. And all of this comes with some nice natural sweetness in terms of agave. So where some energy drinks on the market include up to nine cubes of sugar in each serving, Magic Mind uses three-fourths of one cube of sugar, And this is not refined sugar, but derived from agave. This means delightful sweetness with less than 10% of the sugar found in most energy drinks. So if you want to boost your brain performance, your memory, your mental acuity, your alertness, please try Magic Mind today. Do yourself a favor and use the following link in our episode description, www.magicmind.co.com. ABA on tap in all caps. That's www.magicmind.co slash ABA on tap and use the discount code ABA on tap to receive 20% off your purchase. Try a magic mind today and rediscover your mental power and endurance. Moving right along, sir. Where were we?

SPEAKER_00: 47:16

Yes. So we were we were at the point where we were saying maybe the solution to get this school situation under control is a magic mind. Get that magic mind in the staff lounge, wherever it needs to be. And if we can disseminate that, people will always be on their A game. So they'll be most receptive.

SPEAKER_02: 47:35

I'm telling you, man, that's a really good idea. No, and you're right. It's about giving people, the staff that are very hardworking in those school settings, a little bit of a boost, right? A little bit of hope. And I think that's where we can come in, Dan. That's where we can come in as ABA professionals, not just with the Magic Mind and the refrigerator, which the administrators would have to provide, or maybe we can in the near future, but... It's that boost. It's that what we call hope, right? Very mentalistic, not very quantifiable. But what is hope? The idea that if you're a teacher who is exhausted and you're done with this one student, we are the ones that might come in to stir up a little bit of that reinforceable behavior, that idea that, oh, look at Johnny. Johnny did a worksheet today. You know, that might be just that little spark that that teacher can hold on to to say, I can do this. Because again, I know that special education teachers, so do you, you know that in their heart, there's just these big, just in their chest, these big bleeding hearts. And they just want to get it right. And they're beat down and they're tired and they're dealing with the most challenging of situations that any of these circumstances, any of these environments can present. Sometimes we can come and disempower, right? If we're not careful, we come in and change things too much or don't fit into the dynamic well enough such that, again, we isolate the situation. If we're doing our job correctly, we're actually a conduit. We're going to come in and make connections among staff, among students, in order to help integrate that one student we've been assigned to. And that's a really tall order. So knowing that we deal with a whole... array of challenges in terms of the experience of our staff, going back historically to our first case together. I mean, thinking about that, you were fresh off a two week training and here's your first case, right? And what you learned from that situation, primarily because we were afforded the ability to sit and discuss, to sit and plan, which is again, a modern day constraint that we have to be careful with in our profession. make sure that our staff has enough time to plan, enough time to put things together, all those things that are needed to run a case effectively. So, yeah, again, really, really tough dynamic to challenge, and a lot of it is about reminding the adults that it's us that have to change our behavior in some way, shape, or form in order to evoke the desired behavior in the student.

SPEAKER_00: 50:07

So, what you're saying is that we're in a situation, and My girlfriend, or I guess domestic partner now, her dissertation was on the staff training of paraprofessionals in an educational setting. So that's what her dissertation is on and how we can do that effectively because of unions and things like that. It's very challenging to get people to have to work during non-contracted hours. And there's very limited professional development that's allocated to these individuals. So it's really hard, and they have to kind of do it on their own time, which is really frowned upon on the union. It's really hard to get these people to understand the strategy ahead of time. So what we are is essentially some random person who shows up someday who doesn't necessarily have any educational experience or whatever. They don't know who we are, and we start trying to tell them to do stuff. Why should they trust us? So we have to get it to work first. So we could try to do our ways, but not only do we have to get it to work first, like you said, we have to get it to work first in a way that fits the confines and probably is as aligned as possible to the way that they're already doing things, which isn't working. So if we come in and we're like, okay, well, let's try these things. Are we going to be able to really accurately do Show them how to do it. Do we have enough time to accurately do that? Are they spending their time tending to other kids? Because we're not really able to do it off the clock or outside of when clients are there. So that's a challenge. And then the second part of that challenge is going to be, let's say we model these strategies. Well, are we going to be able to model them and have enough control over the environment? Because like you mentioned, in ABA, we look at behavior as a product of the environment. excuse me, a behavior as a product of the environment. Where in schools, I think a lot of times based on assessments and mental health, they look at more behavior as a product of the individual. So our initial ABCs, the way that we look at the product of behavior is going to be coming from a different point. We're going to say, if an individual is not being successful in an environment, let's change the environment. Or they're going to say, if an individual is not being successful in the environment, let's support this individual while keeping the environment the same. So are we going to be able to model these strategies to a point which they're going to be effective without being sabotaged before they have a chance to be effective? That's what I see from my end because we're not able to sit down and train on a lot of the stuff behind it. That's kind of what I'm seeing on my end. What are your thoughts on that,

SPEAKER_02: 52:47

Mike? My favorite answer, right? Yes. Everything you said, man, is absolutely true. And that is the initial problem. I think the premise I presented earlier was the time to plan, the time to discuss. And then the best point you make overall here is that the environment, I would say that the environment, physically speaking, in terms of schedule, in terms of materials, is probably the hardest thing or the last thing you're going to try to change in a school environment. But the people in the environment... are the ones that, again, how you model and then how you tap into that staff in terms of a quick check-in and then checking in with the teacher to make sure that what you've suggested is going to you know, fit the whole classroom or the whole system. And yeah, so to your point, that is the dynamic that needs to be carefully managed. That takes a lot of time because you're not going to change anything. I mean, you're not going to change a whole lot of things in terms of school schedule or even IEP parameters. Maybe over time, if something works, you might. But in order to prove that what you're doing even has a chance of working, again, my short answer is you're working on that staff and that teacher relationship. to try and help you change their behavior in response or in reaction to the behaviors of interest that we're trying to reduce, or better yet, the ones we're trying to increase, and then go from that perspective. Because, yeah, there are so many constraints in terms of school policy, in terms of bell schedule, all of those things that you're just not going to be able to manage very easily, if at all.

SPEAKER_00: 54:30

Yeah, and also like the fact of, you mentioned within the confines and also like physical prompting as well, the immediacy of how quickly we can respond to these situations is also very challenging. There's a school district here in the San Diego County that allows no physical prompting. So basically what we're expected to do is say, get this child to stop escaping while not physically prompting, which I'm not saying is, completely out of the out of reasonability that certainly fits within the context of ABA that we should be able to have other options but then that we can't ignore we can't not provide attention we can't do a lot of things which are going to give us some alternative measures outside of the physical prompting so we have to keep this kid in this chair and not be disruptive while not using physical prompting So it kind of like, you know, our hands are a little bit tied in that situation. Are we going to use other strategies besides physical prompting that are going to take a little bit longer that I would absolutely promote? And we would promote in our our company because, you know, you've got the continuum of independence and compliance. Independence typically means it's going to take a while. Compliance typically means it's going to be get done quickly, but not be independent. So they want this individual typically to be more on the compliant side of things, but don't really want to use the strategies that are going to get them to be compliant. So it's really, I wish I could paint a picture or show a visual here because I think it would make more sense to support my article, but that individual needs to be compliant and they need to be compliant quickly and not at the distraction of the other kids, but the strategies that we can use to get them to be compliant and are the exact strategies that aren't being effective.

SPEAKER_02: 56:28

And will the autonomy, just the autonomy that either extreme is going to present, whether you're not physically prompting, which means they've got full autonomy and now there might be a certain level of impact on the environment, or you're trying to use physical prompting, which, I mean, you know which side I err on in terms of prompting. I try to use it minimally. but certainly the circumstances called upon me to do differently, which actually was to the surprise of some of the staff that was working with me. They were like, oh my goodness, you actually, you physically prompt? And it's like, well, very rarely, but when you're being asked to keep a student in their seat, and said student, for example, or hypothetically, might also get out of their seat and throw things around the classroom, at which point do you then decide, okay, it's appropriate for me to physically intervene? You know, other impactful behaviors, whether it's, you know, hair pulling or other things that immediately are going to need some level of physical attention. And then if you're not using physical, so for a school district that's saying no physical prompting on our campuses, they call you in to keep a student in their chair to help keep a student attentive in their chair because that's what most school settings want. Apparently you can't learn unless you're sitting behind a desk. If you're standing, there's a problem. I mean, and the point there is that if the student's moving around and not visually attending, right, they're not in one place, then it's going to be harder for them to attend, which makes sense. But back to your point, if they're asking you not to physically prompt but somehow help the student stay in their seat, you know, you're going to have to get really creative. And then the next question is how receptive... or tolerant is the rest of the environment when the student is moving around knowing that the policy is no hands on. And again, I think that those policies make a lot of sense in terms of student body autonomy and student safety and even staff safety, but then the challenge that you promote, that you pose there is really difficult. How do you then keep a student from running into other classrooms and being disruptive unless you can physically block them? And at some point is that now a prompt, right? Or what is that? So it does. It presents varying challenges depending where you are. And this is the terrain that you have to read as you enter a situation with a staff member who's going to be assigned and is going to be there three to five days a week or two to five days a week, depending on the assignment and the availability. And you essentially have to teach them in two to three days what how to fly solo, as then you address the other staff or the other classroom that you might be working with or whatever the case may be, and then come back and give enough check-in over time to make sure that it's not just compliance day-to-day, but that you're actually enacting certain behavior change. So, man, it is a lot, and there's super important situations for us to try and help out in. We are at our hour mark, sir. This went quickly. We're going to have to come back to some solutions soon. episodes for both the crisis and the schools and ABA. But you threw out a lot of good questions. Any closing comments here, Dan, as we wrap it up for today?

SPEAKER_00: 59:40

I did want to get into the matching law and reinforcement and punishment and how a lot of times, like in the example of our first client, how they thought they were using punishment, but they were all actually using reinforcement. But that'll be part two. Maybe we can touch base on So we've kind of identified the struggle, I think, in this episode, identified how some of the interests can be misaligned and identified some of the challenges from both parties. Again, you're really, really good at working with a client one-on-one. That doesn't mean that you can just take that and extrapolate that. That's a different skill set. It's like playing offense. I'm a really good offensive football player. That doesn't mean I'm a good defensive football player. There's some other strategies. So I think we've kind of acknowledged the difficulties that all sides face in this situation. And then I look forward to next... time talking about um some of the behavioral um strategies behind them maybe giving some textbooks from our side and then either in the next episode or the following episode really looking at some solutions because i don't want to be here like just just chirping and talking about you know what's going wrong uh i don't want to be that podcast and i think we do a good job of not doing that so this is a little bit of that acknowledgement you know first identifying the problem Next, we'll talk about some of the theory behind it, and then I think it'll be really important that we identify solutions. Because at the end of the day, we all have the same desire. We want this child to be as independent and successful in whatever environment they are as possible.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:18

I like that. I think that's a really good note to end on. You walk into those situations, we have a... a good amount of influence, not that people are going to be receptive immediately, but I think that what you just said is of most importance. Everybody's there has to have a good heart. I mean, I think that few people are going to endure it. It's not like you're doing it for the money. You're doing it because you've got a family member, some sort of experience, whatever it is, you've got a lot of humanity to you in those environments. And I think that when we can go in there and and add the analysis, a true scientific, clean analysis of behavior and demonstrate how it can work for the student and for everybody else, we can certainly ensue or incite a lot of effective change that impacts not just the student, but the whole community around them, which is super, super cool.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:08

And also, just to... touch base on one thing you just said, demonstrate how our strategies work, but also, and potentially at least equally, if not more important, demonstrate that we're willing to listen to them as well. Nobody wants us coming in and just telling them exactly what we can do with Johnny and his home, because they're like, well, yeah, if we got his home, we could do the same thing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:30

That's key. Again, you come in, you understand the systems as they exist, knowing that the very systems might be what are failing, but you kind of have to come in and adopt them and demonstrate. It's the systems, or it's the person that was implemented, or it was user error, or it was both. And then, yeah, trust. Trust that you can come in, try to work the plan as it exists, and then change that from within, I think, is a really good approach. So, last thing, Mr. Dan?

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:58

Yeah, last thing. So you mentioned earlier, both of our significant others work in the school system. Yes, I do. So we have, well, this will probably be a good time to get them on in an episode as well. And I encourage any of you listening, if you're a teacher and you're like, you know, screw these guys. They don't know what they're talking about. Like we have to deal with them or a few bad experiences, whatever, please reach out to us. We want to make a discussion and we want to have the end product be better. So please reach out to us. I think Mike and I are in a kind of unique perspective situation because we do get both perspectives. Our significant others come home and tell it to us from the school perspective. We see it from our perspective, so I don't think we're completely biased in one regard, and we will have them on. But if you're on the other side of things or you have anything to add, please reach out to us because we do want to make this collaborative and something that we could send to other ABA companies, send to schools, something that will be productive that they can use to train their staff and achieve better results.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:59

That means find us on Instagram or Facebook, ABA on Tap. So stay hopeful out there. Stay hopeful. Stay helpful. Stay analytical. And always analyze responsibly. Analyze

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:12

responsibly. Cheers. ABA on Tap is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.