From Adaptive PE To BCBA Leadership In Schools: Lupe Castañeda Brews A Fresh Perspective (Part I)

ABA on Tap is proud to sit down with Lupe Castañeda (Part 1 of 2):

If you’ve ever walked into a school confident in your assessment, your data, and your “best practice” plan, and still watched it fall apart by week two, you’re not alone. Mike and Dan sit down with Lupe Castaneda, a longtime school-based BCBA and consultant, to talk about what actually makes ABA in schools work, and what quietly makes it fail even when everyone has good intentions.

We start with Lupe’s path into the field, from early exposure to children with disabilities to adapted physical education, autism support, and becoming one of the earliest full-time BCBAs employed by a Texas school district. Along the way, he shares the moments that reshaped his practice, including a hard lesson about making changes without family input and a blunt IEP meeting reminder that experience means nothing if you cannot explain what you will do for this specific child.

From there, we dig into the practical heart of school-based behavior support: family-centered programming, meaningful long-term goals, parent education, and the legal and team-driven reality of the IEP process. We also break down two essentials for any behavior intervention plan or functional behavior assessment in a school setting: collaboration and contextual fit. A plan is only “evidence-based” if it can be implemented by real educators in real classrooms with real constraints, and if it respects the priorities of the student and family.

This is Part 1 of our conversation with Lupe. Subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2, and if this resonates, share it with a BCBA, teacher, or parent navigating school services. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve seen when ABA meets the classroom?

Tune in, drink up and ALWAYS ANALYZE RESPONSIBLY.

Transcript

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Welcome And School Contracting Reality

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Welcome to ABA on tap. I'm Mike Ribio with Dan Lowry. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly. All right, all right. Welcome back to another installment of ABA on tap. I am your ever-grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, along with my esteemed partner, Mr. Daniel Lowry. Mr. Dan, how are you doing, sir?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Doing great. Great weekend, man. Ascend last night, a celebration of our company Ascend. And today we've got a couple great podcasts. Guests, really, really looking forward to it, man.

SPEAKER_04 0:55

So I'm glad you bring that up. Shameless self-promotion, and we're going to do more of it in the near future. So as everybody should know by now, Dan and I are proud co-owners of Ascend Behavioral Solutions here in San Diego. And we had a chance to get together with our staff last night, take them out to a fantastic dinner. And the reason we took them out is it marked the end of a very particular season for us in our business, which was the school year. One of the things that you and I have learned a lot about over the past three, four years, I'd say, despite having some expertise before that, was what it takes to do that direct contractual work. The so-called non-public agency behavior intervention development. I'm sure our guest today will have some other fun terms that describe that in his neck of the woods. But it's a fascinating situation to be in. There's so much to learn, so much diversification of our skills, so much humbling.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I mean, I live with a school teacher. I I know what it's like to you live with a school principal.

SPEAKER_04 1:49

You were in the principal's office uh every every day for a good two years, weren't you? I I also, my my my my lovely partner and wife is is also involved in this type of programming. And it's so complex legally, it's so complex then ethically based on what we go in and do and and how it is that we actually define ourselves and actually achieve the term effective. Our guest today, well, he's gonna school us. I love it. I love it. I'm ready, man. School's in. Without further ado,

Meet Lupe Castaneda

SPEAKER_04 2:19

Mr. Lupe Castaneda. All right, sir. So you know that I originate from the booming metropolis of El Paso, Texas. I've got uh I've got I've got some kin today. I'm excited. I can hear it in his voice.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

I there will be no cowboys talk.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

Oh, well, he's from San Antonio. He might be a Texans fan. We'll get into that later. We know he's a Spurs fan, so we're good there. Everybody's happy about that. Lupe, uh, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir. It's a pleasure to to see you on our screen, to get to talk to you today, given what we know about you and your fantastic work. We want to thank you for a little bit of your Sunday afternoon. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I am great. I'm great. So uh thankful to be talking to you guys live. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_04 3:07

Well, we we appreciate that and we appreciate your listenership. Uh, that's probably one of the best things about this, not only to be students and get to sit in the seat with uh Professor Lupe today, but to then hear back that maybe Professor Lupe listens to us sometimes, which is uh woo doesn't get much better than that. Sir, you have a wealth of experience in your career, and we want to know about as much about it as you're willing to lend, because that'll set us up to then start asking questions and really, you know, probing, dissecting your knowledge for our listeners. So without further ado, tell us how it all started. Uh, I love when people start with things that are seemingly unrelated, and then they find themselves using those skills from way back. I uh my personal story shares some of that. So tell us how it all started for you, and I know that it's been a long, illustrious career. Bring us up to the current, and we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Man,

Childhood Roots And Early Compassion

SPEAKER_00 3:59

how far do you want me to go back? Because it goes back a long way.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

We got time, sir.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Yeah. High school, college, whatever, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 4:09

So just really quickly, I have a first experience from my senior year where I got to do some literacy stuff with fourth graders, and I would probably trace my passion for schoolwork back to that point in time. So, yeah, you take us as far back as you think is helpful.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Okay. I may have to take you to elementary.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Oh, all right. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

And no, this is, you know, thanks to my mom and my dad, you know, who are fortunately still alive today. But you know, back then we used to have, you know, there are six in my family, right? So mom and dad work and stuff like that. And we had to do something after school. Where do we go? We didn't have these after school programs. We were latchkey kids, I think, even before Latske kids became, you know, the label, right?

SPEAKER_04 4:48

I think you and I are that generation, yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Right, yes. And so my mom worked at a hospital as an aide, you know, some kind of an aide, a PT aide or something. And so, of course, she worked at a children's hospital down in Corpus, and she worked with uh individuals, you know, children primarily with disabilities. We had no idea what they were, but you know, so we would go out there, we'd go hang out with her after school, you know, which was just a couple of blocks a walk from our elementary. We, as my siblings, you know, my younger siblings and myself, we'd go over there and you know, just go hang out, you know, with my mom and her patients, you know, and got to uh, you know, trying to remember back then it seemed like PT, OT, there was a lot of equipment around and things like that. So we got exposed to individuals with severe disabilities way back when. And not only that, my mom, of course, grew to know some of the families, so she provided respite care, okay, to some of these families. So families, you know, parents wanted, you know, to go and maybe have a date night or something like that. And sometimes, you know, they would, you know, ask my mom to care for you know their child in our home. So that continued for for years as far as I remember. So I think that early exposure, and it's not only me, I'm the only one in my field. My siblings are in tech and other other fields and things like that. But I think the way what from what I see them, I see my own siblings being so compassionate. I have to take that back to those days, the way that we grew up, right? We we have this compassion towards all people and so forth. But I think that was my earliest exposure.

SPEAKER_04 6:17

Well, that's that's uh that's fantastic. So it starts in childhood, you get to watch your uh your father's part of it too. These people, these kiddos are coming over to your house. So it's it's a whole family affair.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yes, yes, absolutely. So, you know, moving down, you know, I you know I I I wasn't certain like many of us, right, when I started college. Okay, what are we going to do? What am I going to do? I back then was really into health and fitness, you know, powerlifting, things like that. And I was thinking, okay, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go become an exercise physiologist. All right, cool. All right, so let's get going with that. All right. Started school. I needed a major at the college. I mean, I needed a minor, and I was in a kinesiology program. Cool. Professors there said, you know, hey, you know, my advisor said you need a minor. And it's like, what do I minor in? You know, I want to be an exercise physiologist, is what I want to do, a trainer, right? And uh she said, Well, you know, suggested special education. Okay, I've never done that, you know, although you know, knowing back now, you know, I was exposed to it early on, special people with special needs. And so uh said, okay, I'll do that. I took my first ABA course as an undergrad in the special ed program. So I think one of you, I'm not certain, Mike or or Dan, whether one of you guys have a developmental psychology background, right? There you go. So, you know, because it was special education, well, I took some of that, but I took my first ABA class. We went into a classroom into a uh to do to collect data into a school setting. And the the text that we used back then, I think it was a first or second edition, was the Alberto Oentraut meant ABA for teachers, right? Applied behavior analysis uh for teachers. Man, that's I don't know what edition that's in, but I used one of the first editions there. That was my first exposure. But even after then, I I didn't know. So I combined, ended up combining kinesiology, special, I mean physical education for people with uh with uh special needs and special education. That became my first job at a school district in the Dallas area. So I was an adapted physical education specialist. That is a cool gig. I still APE, I miss that, you know. So I did APE, uh teaching children, students with uh disabilities in small classrooms, learned how to do that, and I was thinking, oh, this is pretty cool. I enjoy doing this, you know. And I soon realized that there were some kids I just didn't know how to teach. I couldn't get them back and participate in a small group activity with me because they kept running off, or they didn't seem to understand what I was saying, how I was teaching. They didn't seem to benefit from typical teaching strategies that I was taught as special education or as a special educator. Those students happened to be children with autism. Okay, so that was way back in my school district 30 years ago and over 30 years ago, and then back then too. This is part of the origin story. It's like, okay, I need to find out what this is, how to teach these guys. I ended up getting a master's in kinesiology, specifically adapted PE, and we worked with kiddos with autism and uh various disabilities in the school systems and things like that. I actually have published published research. My thesis was published in that area, qualitative study. It was pretty cool talking about the families that we get to know in our careers. That got me exposed to families way early too, and that was part of my thesis is interviewing families in that field. So I said, okay, this is cool. I, you know, I said I want to do more of this, finish my master's there. Cool. I wanted to do more. I said, okay, now I think I want to go, I want to pursue a PhD. And you know, fortunately, back then we had professional uh grants, training grants, and that was gonna be paid paid off there. You know, I was gonna say, cool, I just gotta stay in this field, and then I wanted to minor in something. And something I wanted to minor in was behavior analysis. I didn't know what it was other than that that first class I took as an undergrad, but it was the families in the school district were saying, Hey, I want my son, I want my daughter to participate in this ABA thing 40 hours a week. You as a school personnel, you as a school district need to provide 40 hours of ABA. It's like, what is this? Everyone, we didn't know that, you know what it was, especially the intensive uh behavioral intervention that existed back then. So I found just down the street in Denton, if you're you know, Mike, you may be familiar with that of your social media. That's where I got my yeah, yeah. My master's was in Denton, Texas Women's, okay. But then I discovered the ABA program just down the street in Denton, University of North Texas, you know. Yeah. So that was where I said, okay, I'm gonna get this PhD in in the field that I absolutely love, adaptive PE, and I'm gonna minor in applied behavior analysis. And then I'm gonna tell my school district, hey, I'm going to, there's this certification called the BCBA. And it's like, what? Well, they didn't know what that was. Yeah, if I become this, then we can hopefully meet, address the parents' needs. We were getting more and more children, parents of children with autism back then. Talking about ABA, that's where I got my first training, too, is through the parents that would bring in experts, do this, you know, weekend workshop and things like that. And so I got my first training through, fortunately, through some of the parents that were insisting. So parents, families, they are advocates for their children, of course. That is where I think why our field is where it is today because of these parent advocates. We'll talk more about that later. But anyway,

Finding ABA Through Adapted PE

SPEAKER_00 11:41

so that's what I did. I became the autism specialist for my school district after uh, and then then one of the first BCBAs in full-time BCBAs in a school district in Texas. I know that for a fact because that was my gosh, after I got my BCBA over 23 years ago. You know, so that's a bad shit. It was great. Yeah, it was because of the families and of course the children that I work with.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

Oh, UNT, that's a that's become a powerhouse. That's uh that's a hub. We we actually have some associations. So I'm I don't know if it was around your time, but I'm I'm I'm terrible with names.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

So Shawla, Shala Oh, yeah, yeah, one of my mentors right there still is to this day. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 12:21

Great, great lady. We I had a chance to interface with her when she came out to an outfit that I was working with and provided some training. And then Kevin Callahan, is he?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Yeah, he was in the special ed department. Kevin Callahan. I remember meeting with him, and I thought for a second that I would go with him, you know, with uh the special ed doctorate there. But I I started the program over at Texas Woman's because it was a full ride, you know.

SPEAKER_04 12:44

Yeah, he he came over once too to provide some training. I had the the pleasure of having him join me on one of my cases that I was supervising, and I was developing this semantic categorization program to try and, long story short, help with social dramatic play, help some of our BTs learn a little bit more about how they might model that, which falls outside our our usual trial-based system or our traditional trial-based system. It's a little bit more open-ended, and had the pleasure of having him say, Hey, I think you've got something here. And I'm like, Oh, yeah, this guy, I really respect this guy, and he thinks I've got something here. But yeah, just really cool people. What a what a great place to be. Dan, you want to jump in? You got anything?

SPEAKER_01 13:23

I I do, but do you want to go first?

SPEAKER_04 13:25

Go for it, go for it.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Okay.

Families As The True Experts

SPEAKER_01 13:26

So you said that like the families are your kind of like your guiding light in this situation. So can you speak on that? That seems to be a big passion for you on that one.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

It is, it is, and I think it is for most of us, right? Uh, at least I hope it is. But I'll tell you what, I learned lessons. They have shaped, the families that is, have shaped my behavior from the very beginning, even when I was just a uh an adapted PE teacher studying, you know, applied behavior analysis. Of course, I also did a special Olympics because that's a related, that's related. That is adapted sports, right? Special Olympics. I remember one time that I was, you know, I was like the director of our school program, special Olympics program. I was getting ready for a track meet, getting signing up all of our athletes, right? And we had a pretty large congregation there of athletes in our in that school district, I think over 200 at one point. So that was kind of cool. So I was uh signing them up, those that we had practiced and and signing up for their events. I remember this one kid, and I I thought about her. She had she had a seizure disorder, and I was thinking, okay, they had signed her up in the past. She had been running the 100-meter dash.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

And and I said, Man, I'm really concerned about these seizures. So I registered her for the 50-meter dash. When we announced, you know, the the events to the families that we're gonna go to this track meet with their children and accompany them and so forth. This I got a call from this father saying, Hey, why is my daughter, why is my daughter enrolled, you know, signed up for the 50? She always does a hundred. And I thought, oh, well, I'm I thought I was doing you know what was best for that child without resorting, without consulting with the family. And he was he was he was uh irate, you know, he corrected, he she's been doing this, she's okay, you know, how dare you change from 100 to and that was my first experience with the family saying, I am not the expert at all, you know, even though I I coached this kid for several weeks prior to the track meet, I thought I was doing something in her best interest because of this seizure disorder, and because I thought I was being compassionate, which I was, right? But I didn't consult with the family. That is where I think that takes me back to wow, you know, to the point to where it is the families that should, you know, have a say. They are the experts in their child. I just said that to a family just a couple of uh couple of days ago, too. You are the expert in your child, I'm a guide. That's all I am, a guide. Okay, you know, and that's where this started.

SPEAKER_04 16:02

What a what a great story you've got there, and I love that you uh specifically use the word compassion. Compassion has become one of those words like innovation in our field that I I I love uh the semantic value of both of those words, and then ascent is another one. Get they get kicked around a little bit, they just kind of get plugged in, and people don't really uh you know, you you can put it on your brochure, hey, now we're ascent-based approach, right? But you didn't really change anything in your backyard or in your kitchen, it's the same stuff, and I worry about that, but I love the example you just gave in terms of you were being compassionate. I don't think the whole lot of us, when we're maybe over-exerting our expertise, we're doing it from a good place. And then you're saying, but wait, I didn't talk to the family. So that puts us in a position where sometimes, as the content experts, we're telling we're being told by the family, no, no, it's gotta be this way. And that's a lot like schools. They're saying, No, no, no, wait. The existing structure is this way. You can't come in here and change that. You're gonna have to change what you're doing. I don't know if you have anything more to say about that. That's beautifully stated. I think that's really important for the whole lot of us to adapt right now because it's not like and I know that there's other uh, you know, you go out of the Reddit rabbit holes, you we might be deemed as intrinsically evil uh in our practice, and you know, dark overlords and the ABA industrial complex. And I understand why those things get said when we miss that little thing you just pointed out, Lupe, which is hey, I was coming from a good place, but I miss that detail. And that makes all the difference. So you probably have I don't know if you have any other examples of that in your career, but I think that's a really important spot to spend some time in.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, I that is first and foremost, of course, that that first experience. And it it happens too, you know. We still have to kind of think through this. And I know that I do try to actively, you know, and we should involve the families, right? And and

Make Programming Meaningful

SPEAKER_00 18:02

and that goes back to one of the uh the resources. I've got a list of resources here, you know, that I think can help guide us as professionals, right? Anybody working with families, I think, is the this work by by Gerhardt and Vari, right? Have you seen that? Make it meaningful, you know, programming for individuals with uh with autism and so forth. That's the book that they've put out about two years ago. Really, really taking into account that person first, right? I mean, that person-centered, that family-centered idea, right? And and that's been around for decades actually in the positive behavior and intervention support literature, right? Sent person-centered, family-centered. Okay, and that's what we really need to go back to. And then Gerhardt, who uh, if you guys aren't familiar or if anybody is, you need to go back and read this, his work. He talks about, he's worked primarily with individuals, adolescents, and adults on the spectrum. And he's done this for over a couple of decades at least. I remember him from way back when, but he they've got this book. He and Shanna Bari, I believe is her name. They put this together and it is really looking at the family. What are your goals? The questions, he's got some questionnaires, he's got all kinds of forms that we should be using as behavior analysts. And and and some of the questions are, and we probably do this, I think those of us who've been in the field anyway, when we're interviewing and taking families for the first time, we ask them, Where do you want to see your child tomorrow? Where do you want to see them in a year? Where do you want to see them in five years? And sometimes this gets very, it becomes a difficult conversation sometimes. Where do you want to see your child as an adult? So it's not only looking at today, what does he need today? She needs today, or tomorrow, or next year. It's what do you see? Where do you see your child? And so Peter Gerhardt really emphasizes this in our programming. That's that's why the the book, make it meaningful, rather than just following a template or you know, a curriculum guide, right, that we often do. We need to consider that, and that's where I take it. And you know what? I still make mistakes. You know, I had to redo I've got a peer-to-peer review coming up next week for a family, an adult, right, that aged out of school. And I didn't, once again, I interviewed the family, observed, did everything I need to for part of the intake, wrote up a nice treatment plan, at least I thought, and then it got denied. And then it got denied because of a medical necessity. Okay, but you know what? I didn't do I spoke to the mother, I spoke to the parent. I didn't ask, I didn't delve far enough into what were her challenges. Single mom, right? What were the challenges with this adult son? And it comes, and I didn't see this reported anywhere, but she was saying it comes I was denied because he didn't engage in serious problem behaviors, serious challenging behaviors. Well, I was there, he was fine, he was observed, and I had observed him a few more, you know, past, and I didn't think to ask mom, what is difficult for you? What are your challenges? Because obviously this kid is fine, he doesn't need a behavior intervention plan. And she let me know, and and she says, Well, they're saying he doesn't have well. I told him I didn't report that because I didn't observe it, I didn't hear it from you. Guess what? I didn't ask it, you know. I didn't ask, and and we show it as clinicians that's I've been doing this for we've been doing this for a long time. That's gotta be part of it. I know sometimes we get so involved in learning about the family and their history and things like that that we f sometimes you know may forget to ask that question, especially if we don't observe the behaviors occurring. And and so that is where you know that was recent. So you see, I think we need to consider the family, their needs, their perceptions, right, over ours, you know. And once again, I just I just miss that part, you know. So we can always learn from those experiences.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

That's a whole other episode of AB right there by itself. I wanna I wanna highlight one thing. That you talked about, because I could spend the next two hours unpacking the richness of your statements there, and then I want to pass it over to Dan. But you mentioned something very important, which is this compassion, this make it meaningful feel. This is not new. While we may be countering the backlash of the neurodivergent community for some of those mistakes we've made, so then a whole lot of us are now talking about ascent-based approaches and compassion. I really want to highlight what you're saying, which is this is not new. And if and if you're circling back to the idea of compassion, it might be, with all due respect to all of us out there, that you mistakenly put it aside somehow as you focused on some other linear aspect of milestones, developments, your prone procedural acuity, your curriculum. And again, I don't put anybody on the spot for this. This is human error, and it's our chance to get better as a field and better as professionals. But you're absolutely right. The compassion was built in from the beginning, and sure, the times have changed. We can go back and look at some oddly titled Lovas publications where he was doing some things that don't look so good right now. I'll be the first to say that. The optics are terrible, but the heart, the compassion, I think is there. It's never been lost. And you know, I I allow everybody, everybody, we have free speech here for the most part, and certainly on ABA on tap, we have pulled it. And every anybody can feel the way they do, but I think what you're saying there again is important to highlight. Compassion never left the field. Maybe we didn't, maybe we failed to apply it the way it was originally intended for a little while, and hence we faced some backlash. So yeah, we're not bringing compassion back, we're restoring it.

unknown 23:42

Yeah.

Parent Education And IEP Power

SPEAKER_01 23:43

So with the with the family systems, that's that's something that we've we've been big proponents of it. Our company currently, and then the one that we came from. We've been bringing parent training classes, which we're kind of I don't want to say famous for, but that's something that a lot of our clients really like is we we do these parent education uh where we get parents together. And like you said, we used to call it parent training, but we're not training them on how to be parents because they're the experts, right? We're educating them on some additional things that might be useful. And one of the things we do actually in the first couple weeks now, like you said, is resources because a lot of times these parents are really overwhelmed. And you speaking from the school side of things, a lot of times, you know, I I remember we did a dad's group too, because a lot of the parent groups were moms, and the moms were like, My husbands won't listen to me, you gotta tell them. So we would do dad's groups once a month. And I remember some of these dads, like we had some military dads, because we're here in San Diego, just breaking down, talking about the first IEP meeting that they had where they would get the uh the like test results and things like that, and they were like, Whoa, this is super humbling. Um it just kind of showed this disconnect maybe between home and school or the understanding. And one thing that we have now in our our parent resources is my buddy Matthew Story, who's civil rights lawyer for school parents advocating against or litigating against schools here, is the IEP pocketbook. And it's just a great kind of like you know, 40-page but all visual reference about things that most parents wouldn't even know. Like in an IEP meeting, like you have the right to record an IEP meeting, you have the right to request documents, you have the right to request independent educational evaluations and things like that. And it's it's just interesting that I think that parents will come to us and they'll be like, Well, what am I entitled to? And it's like, Well, you're entitled to FAPE, a free and appropriate education. I can't say specifically what you're entitled to, but on the flip side, it's not often like the school is like, here's the menu of things that you're entitled to, which one do you want? It's more like, this is what we think your kid needs. Do you agree? And most parents are like, Well, I guess, because you're the educator, you're the expert. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because I know you come from the school side of things, kind of that dichotomy between parents and and educators on the IEP setting and treatment plan.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Yeah, I mean, it seems to be a reactive approach, right? You know, or you know, is is a lot of the services, okay. So negative reinforcement, okay? School systems bringing in BCBAs, RBTs, I think you guys are, you know, have some RBTs in schools. It's a little bit different in Texas, and we are trying, uh, as you know, part of advocacy advocacy, trying to uh get the BCBAs to participate more in schools, okay. But what I do see, and you know, some of my work, you know, with schools after I've left, I've been a full-time BCBA for four different school districts here in Texas, full-time BCBA and employee. But you know, based on those experiences, I you know became familiar with the school system and so forth. And now I'm a consultant with uh, you know, with uh various agencies that consult with uh or contract with school districts, or I'll contract with the school districts specifically. But a lot of my work has been with those special ed advocates. You know, I've gotten to know them over the years, over the decades, it seems like several of the special ed advocates who are parents themselves, but know the legal system very well. And so they will refer to me because they know that you know that uh when I go in there, I'm not only gonna be an advocate for that student, right, for the child, but I am gonna be objective. I am going to, we still have to go through the process. That's the legal process, right? The IEP meeting, the IEP process. So even if we get called in by a special ed advocate, special ed attorney or what have you, or a family attorney, we still have to go through the process. And I do think learning the system, having experience in the system, even attending some, you know, some trainings on special ed law, those resources that you just mentioned, Mike, I think that kind of information will be so beneficial to us as behavior analysts, you know. And that's what I do see, unfortunately, with the you know, the school systems and the parents, you know, and and and so forth. There are a few though, and I don't know if you guys are experiencing in you know your area, but there are a few districts that rather than have a reactive approach, wait until parents start advocating for their child, they are being proactive. They are building programs that involve us, you know, involve the services. So I've seen that with a couple of school districts, and I'm thinking, yes, that's it. You know, let's do this. Don't wait until the parent brings their advocates in, or don't, you know, why do that? You know, let's do what is right for you know these students. And I know it goes back to uh, you know, it goes back to finances and things like that, school finances and building programs that are going to cost, you know, the school districts and so forth when it is so tight nowadays, but that is the right thing to do. I don't know if that answered your question, Mike, but that's those are my thoughts, you know.

SPEAKER_04 28:46

I think uh no, that I think that that that answers a whole lot. It I'm

Proactive Schools Versus Reactive Services

SPEAKER_04 28:50

I think what I take away from what you just said, too, that's something that's important for the whole lot of us, is ABA is is one, it might be our board certification, it might be what we lead with, but you just mentioned a slew of other skills and and information that you have to come in with, like education code. Uh, I had the distinct pleasure of actually that's how I came into ABA. I got hired by an ABA company. Shout out to Dr. Paul Coyne, not sure if he's still with us, but he brought me on because I was bilingual to do educational consulting through one of our state agencies here, the regional centers in California. Yeah. At that point in time, they were offering educational consultation, which was a way to have people access advocacy but without cost. Now, one of the beautiful things about that role is it put me in a neutral position, meaning I had to be objective because I couldn't go in there and bark at the school district and tell them what they needed to do. I had to be the ward of the state and present myself accordingly and learn all the code and learn and learn to tell parents, hey, who told you to request that? I don't know if that's actually what's gonna work. I know it sounds good, but the way this environment scholastically is running, they don't have the right personnel. If they assign that person to your kid, they're not gonna get the right training. There's a lot of things that are difficult or challenging here that are less linear than just the infamous one-to-one aid, right? Everybody needs the special circumstances instructional assistant. I understand why parents want that, but that can be such a detriment if that young professional isn't being taught to fade, to step back, to not always be helicoptering. And that's what I often see. And then when when as BCBAs, when we're not making ourselves accessible into those settings to teach those young professionals how to step back sometimes, that can fail miserably. And then unfortunately, when we do go in there to teach those young professionals, we're adding a whole other body, a whole other voice to the environment that's already outnumbering the students sometimes. You know, there's so many challenges that come with the idea that we're gonna be school-based BCBAs. So much you have to know beyond your basic three, four-part contingency and functional analysis. I mean, that's just the beginning. That's literally the tip of the iceberg. Give us a little bit of your knowledge on that. I I threw a lot at you guys there, so let's unpack it. Collaboration, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Collaboration. There you go. You are forced. So we talk about this in our field, but many of the uh the funding sources, right, do require us to collaborate with other professionals, you know, who are involved in that child, our clients' lives, right? So collaboration, where when we are working with schools, you are immediately collaborating with others, the child, the student's teacher, the paraprofessional, the parents, you know, the administration, you know, and things like that. Other specialists in the in the field, speech, OT. So that is the key right there. How do we collaborate? How do we learn to collaborate? It's another one of those soft skills, right, that is often being spoken about in our field right now. But in a school system, you are already there. You, you know, you get a consulting gig, or even you get a gig as a behavior specialist, and eventually maybe they can create a BCBA position in that school district, you know, hopefully. Well, you're learning, you know, sometimes, you know, on the job, how to collaborate. I may be able to. I've done this, you know, you may have done this wonderful functional behavior assessment, FBA in the school system, right? And and written this, you know, behavior intervention plan, but then you realize, hey, wait a minute, this is an IEP committee decision. We love the fact that you took, you know, that you took control or that you took it upon yourself to create this behavior intervention plan, but we've got other team members that need to be involved in here. So you see that from the very beginning, we as behavior analysts, if we go into the school systems, we learn and we're like, oh my gosh, this is a team. This is a collaborative approach to meeting this student's needs, right? And even, I think, Mike, you you had said earlier, we even though we are, you know, we have this nice clean assessment process and so forth that we learn in grad school, you know, that may not fit, exactly fit in the school system. However, we still do, we still are bound by our ethical code of conduct, right? You know, for BCBA. So we have to, you know, well, we have to be able to share that with the school personnel as well. And, you know, I've you know reached out to the you know, to the ethics hotline early on when I started with schools too, just to ask them questions about you know the assessment process. Well, we are bound, you know, by our uh ethics code, so we have to consider that too in those situations, you know. But that's been my experiences and my thoughts there.

SPEAKER_04 33:35

Collaboration, collaborative treatment, another one of those words that it sounds beautiful, it's perfect, but unless you're actually engaged in the in the actions of collaboration, that can just be uh that can fall flat semantically and it just looks good on a on a pamphlet, but it doesn't necessarily look good in practice. And I like the way you describe it because I mean collaboration means uh you know my recent experience is it doesn't just mean knowing the the uh case manager, the main teacher. So if you're uh depending on what kind of campus or age the student is, you might be meeting several other teachers who have their own questions and their own systems in their classrooms that you may or may not want to change, you know, with your best intent, but you know that you might have to work with it first and fit in before you make those changes. I mean, campus supervisors, maintenance people, VPs, the list goes on and on and on in terms of how successfully one might integrate themselves into a school setting toward that, you know, again, beautiful word that you're using that you actually practice uh called collaboration. That's that's uh, you know, again, it it it can be so minimal, look so good, and then again, it can involve uh for our in-home programs, interfacing with the pediatrician or the occupational therapist on a school campus, speech therapist, occupational therapist, you know, all sorts of ERMS, the emergency-related mental health specialists. I mean, it is it is it is a countless amount of people that we might be able to collaborate with in order to actually provide improvement or to make those little changes, those little fine-tunings, and that student's various environments that might lead to some level of positive change where those other educators or those peers can look at that student and go, oh wow, check that out. They're doing well. They're not doing those things that we otherwise expect them to do, but now they're fitting into this you know greater flow that we call school. That man is so gratifying. So gratifying. And if you don't do it, it you know, not that you can't be successful with the individual student, uh, but I would contend that if you don't reach that level of collaboration you're talking about, Lupe, you're you're not making the full impact.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Right. A word that, a term that the PBIS has had for, you know, I mentioned PBIS a couple of times already, that they've put in place is contextual fit, right? Contextual fit means that, okay, so we go in there, we're maybe even employed as a BCBA for the school district, you know. Whatever plan I create, you know, whatever strategies, teaching protocols I may develop, you know, has to, of course, collab be work, you know, work with the collaboratively with others, but at the same time, it has to fit contextually. So we can go in once again, especially if we're coming in from the outside as a consultant. We create this wonderful, beautiful treatment plan that's 10 pages long that the funding sources require us to create, you know, a behavior intervention plan. But if it does not fit contextually in the school, meaning uh in the school system, say it's in a Gen Ed classroom and I've got this five-page BIP, right? You know, it's like, what? You know, you're gonna expect this Gen Ed teacher with no other support in that classroom to implement this particular program for this one student when she's got 25 students in that classroom, contextual fit. That does not work. Even if it's in a self-contained special ed classroom, we still have to do our part and train people. And then, you know, in a special ed classroom, self-contained, they may have maybe just maybe they have a handful of students, 10, right at the most, but each of them has individual, significant individual needs. So even then, yes, smaller classroom, but your plan may not fit contextually. That is something we've got to learn if we want to if we want to make ourselves more welcome into the school districts, of course, those other soft skills too, and you know, that we can talk about later as

Collaboration And Contextual Fit

SPEAKER_00 37:34

well. But I think that's really important. Contextual fit.

SPEAKER_04 37:37

Well, and I love the basic premise. I'll pass it over to you after this, Dan, but the the basic premise of context, people might dissect that too far. Even just the idea that if you are the main consultant school base for this teacher and she has 10 students, and you've given her 10 distinct independent plans for 10 students, which should be your job to individualize. The context says, How is she gonna run 10 different plans at the same time? So that I love that you gave that example. I mean, that's quite a paradox for us to deal with professionally because we do have to individualize the approach, and then what you're saying is it's got to fit into the greater group setting. We're so good at the one-to-one stuff from the in-home medically based services. The whole lot of us, I I'll be the first to say, I'm not that good at the group contingencies, but I'm getting better. And it's it's beautiful to be able to go from that content expertise to then now spread it out to to groupwise contingencies and then be able to collaborate with those educators better and knowing, hey, I need to empathize with you because sure, my RBT is here looking dealing with this one student, and even for the RBT, they deal they individualize too much for that student, they run the risk of isolating that student from the rest of the class, right? Even though they're in the same exact classroom. If you're running your own thing and you're not fitting in, contextually fitting in, then again, we're missing the mark. And it's such a nuance, but I love the way you describe it, Lupa. That that's really, really well stated.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Yeah, the contextual fits very tricky, right? Because we are so we got it back. Okay, we left it.

SPEAKER_04 39:07

Thank you. We lost audio there for a while. Thank you for

Listening Skills For New BCBAs

SPEAKER_04 39:09

the hand signals.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Yeah, the contextual fit's so relevant because we are used to pretty much predominantly one-on-one therapy from the ABA side of things, and then going like to one-on-five, one on ten, one on twenty, one on thirty, it's it's a whole different ball game. And like you said, Mike, the going to group contingencies is tricky, but also we have so much less control over the environment, right? Because a lot of what might motivate some of these individuals, especially maybe on the higher functioning end, or we even work with um, which is nice, and I don't know why ABA has historically gotten pinholed in autism, but we work in the schools with individuals not diagnosed with autism, which is great, which oftentimes their peer attention is what's very motivating for them, and we don't really have control over that reinforcement, right? So and the control we would have would be to isolate them from their peer attention to have more control, which has all sorts of ethical issues. So that's really tricky. But I want to get back to what you said with the collaboration piece. So you said that's kind of where it all starts in the forefront. So talk to us about that in terms of like you're a new BCBA, maybe consulting with the school district, or I don't know, maybe Lupe 25 years ago when you were just getting into the school district. What would you tell that new BCBA or 25 years ago, Lupe, like some strategies or some tricks? What would you tell that person?

SPEAKER_00 40:29

You are not the expert, is what I would tell myself.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

You can't tell a new BCBA they're not an expert, Lupe.

SPEAKER_04 40:37

The smartest person in the world. Come on.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

It's like you don't know, you know, and you don't know what you don't know.

SPEAKER_04 40:46

You don't even know what you don't know when you just pass it.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

I I remember a few years ago another example, and sorry I'm giving a lot of examples. I just came back. Go ahead, it's I remember a school district asking me if they had this this this family they were working with, and uh, you know, they were strong advocates for their child. Things were you know kind of tense, you know, for over the last uh several you know months because of the programming for their student, for their child, you know, for that student. And so they asked me, okay, so they you know, they as in the IEP committee, someone in the I asked me, it was like a parent staffing, you know, it was a staffing prior to the IEP meeting. And so they asked me, okay, this parent's gonna ask for this, this, and that, and they're gonna, they're gonna they're they're gonna you know talk about these particular areas. How can you how what are you going to say that is going to be different from every other expert, right? So-called expert that has uh interacted with that student and this family. And I I said, you know, this was a few years ago. I was thinking, oh, well, I've got all this experience working with it. I can tell the family that I've worked with, you know, hundreds of individuals like their kids, and I've worked in schools here and there and things like that. And they just kind of laugh. You know, the person who asked me said, This parent's gonna eat you up. They don't care how much experience they have, they want you to know what you are gonna do that is different from you know, for their child, you know, this student. And so sure enough, you know, you know, I start talking during the actual IEP meeting. Oh, yeah, well, I've you know, been doing this for you know, since you know, for 30 years or whatever. I mean, it was several years ago, so it wasn't 30 years back then, but I've got a lot of experience, and the parent just cut me off. I don't care. What are you going to do for my child? My child is doing this, the school keeps calling me because of my child's behaviors. What are you going to do? So she called me out right there in the IEP meeting, right? So that goes back to collaboration, to understanding the family's needs, their perspective, things like that. I know that this is a little bit off topic, but it is somewhat related, you know. So, but I think when we go in, we need to improve our listening skills, right? That is one thing. I've always thought, and you know, and Mike, you from a developmental approach too, I mean, uh uh Dan, is that I've always thought that we should almost, you know, we're almost when we especially working with families in the homes, or even listening to school staff about some of the stressors they are experiencing with not only you know one student, but you know, their classrooms and lack of administrative support, all these things that we hear. I've almost thought that we should have some counseling, you know, training as well, right? You know, because we need to become good listeners. So kind of stuff. The bedside mana, the first step that we can do to help improve, I think, collaboration is listening. We listening and then maybe paraphrase for what we heard, repeating what we heard, so that everybody, whether it's a parent, whether it's a staff member, you know, the teacher, or what have you, we need to listen first, rather once again, than going in as the expert. So, you know, that's where I think could be a first step. Can we become good listeners? You know?

SPEAKER_01 43:56

I love that, and that's actionable. And I think people use you know, collaboration. And stuff like that. And yeah, we all want to do it, but we need some actionable things. So listening, paraphrasing, that that makes that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_04 44:09

I mean, I think that's perfect in the sense of you may not know what your exact strategy is going to be in that moment. But if the parent comes away knowing that they talked, you listened, and then you were able to say, Oh, so you're worried about this, this, and this. Okay, that's what we're going to work on. You may not have the exact thing that you're going to train the staff to do, but in that moment, to your point, Lupe and Dan, you've started the collaboration because the parent can walk away saying, Hey, that guy heard me. He listened to what I said, he fed it back to me, and then he assured me that he's going to be working on that with my student. Again, I I don't think anybody expects us to have the exact answer in that moment. If we have some ideas, perfect. But if we at the very least come away with the exact concern from the parent's mouth directly, I think we're we're right in the mix. That's a great point. What a what a what a great little simple strategy that again might make somebody say, Well, wait a minute, what are we going to do anyway? What you're going to do is you're going to start by listening so you know what the exact problem is. Because if you don't know that, how are you going to collaborate? How are you going to uh provide individualized treatment?

SPEAKER_00 45:15

That's right. I think something else that we can do, which is related to listening, is that we can probe, right? We can probe question. We can question, not question authority or question knowledge, but we can ask the other providers in that team, hey, what are you guys doing that may be helpful for this program, right? Whether it be an OT, whether it be a PT, whether it be speech, because you know, we do, of course, teach a lot of that, you know, those skills, you know, across across other domains, right? Don't we teach? We, you know, as behavior analysts, we teach a lot across many domains, but we can ask the others for their advice, for their input, right? Instead of us just being the one, hey, they brought us in so that we you can tell us what to do. No, we need to ask. So listening first, right, but then asking those probing questions. Ask the other professionals in that room, you know, what it is that they're doing that may be helpful for that may be working, you know, because I don't want to change that, you know, and ask them for their opinions, their professional opinions.

SPEAKER_04 46:14

And what that ultimately means in my experience is you may not have to reinvent the wheel, just spin the exact same one, they're spinning in a different way. You may not now have to, you know, do a whole bunch of other things that I think we lost you there for a second, but I think you're back. Oh, maybe not. We're having some Zoom troubles, but anyway, I'll continue. The idea that if you listen to those other professionals, you might find underlying foundational skills behaviorally that you can work on that support what those professionals are doing, where oftentimes we're seeking to do our own thing. Yep. I'll give you a quick example that I'm doing right now in collaborating with a school as part of an in-home program, and it's for a visually impaired child. So they're doing the VI stuff and the mobility stuff that you know, things that involve like teaching new skills like Braille, right? It would be easy for me to say, okay, so I'm gonna jump in on this braille piece, and then I feel very comfortable that I step back and said, Wait a minute, what does the child need to do to learn Braille? Oh, they need to start feeling things with their fingertips and sweeping left to right, top to bottom, like they're reading in this kind of very particular motion. Well, that's the behavior that I'm gonna engage in. Whether they're touching dots on a page or not, I need to get this left to right motor coordination sweep, fingers, palms up, and then palms down. I need to get them exploring in that direction, and it's worked really, really well. You know, and again, it it really I I I pride myself in saying I had to stop and almost I was shocked, like, well, wait, I I'm out of my scope here. Like I this is this is now ethics. Like, who am I gonna call? Who am I gonna well? Wait a minute, let me just analyze for a second, and then well, these are the content experts in visual impairment. Let me ask them, and then now I'm ethically practicing, especially, and then I can affirm my concept by saying, Hey, is that working for you guys? Yep, it's working for the family too. Oh, everybody's happy, we're okay, on to the next challenge, right?

SPEAKER_00 48:08

Yeah, great example, great example. And I think Dan, you had mentioned also when we were in schools, we, you know, of course, you know, what is it, 80 over 80% of us work in the field of autism, right? You know, with but when we're in the schools, we are working with multiple, you know, uh populations, right? You know, of all ages, too. And and Mike, I love that example there, you know, asking, you know, that's a very specific example too. But I do think as behaviorists, we, you know, this delves into another area that you know that we wanted to talk about is that you know, our ours is a science. We have a science, right? Science of learning, science of behavior that we can apply to many populations. And if you need to to to gain competence, right, in a particular area, like working with a visually impaired student, right? You know, like you described, Mike. I mean, let's do that. Why can't we do that? We should be able to apply this in you know, with any population. And that's why I like working in the schools, because you are, even if you stay in schools for a few years, you are going to be exposed to uh various populations, the large system that is really hard to navigate and things. You're gonna learn a lot, you know, I think as a behavior analyst in that particular setting. So just another way to improve our skill sets, you know, whether we stay in schools or not long term.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

It's

Integrating TEACCH And ABA For Inclusion

SPEAKER_04 49:29

fascinating to see the integration of our traditional uh autism treatment technology. So I one of the things that I enjoy more than anything, and then I enjoy sort of trying to help them move away from is I think that, and I I'd love to get your perspective on this, Lupe. I think it made a lot of sense, say back in the 80s. Hey, there's this young autism thing coming out of UCLA, they use these things. Hey, there's this teach method coming out of North Carolina, and all of a sudden our classrooms start looking like this, and then you've got these in-home programs, and now there's a parallel between the classrooms and the in-hoe programs, which is great for generalization. So we're all excited, and then we go, wait a minute, but maybe that's not the way school's supposed to look or home is supposed to look necessarily. Maybe that's not the least, the least restrictive setting we can create. So to your point, I I appreciate when I go in and I see you know token economies being implemented in a certain way, and then I can interface with a teacher and go, hey, you actually don't have to do it that way. You can as long as you're consistent on your account and you're delivering reinforcement after a certain amount of tokens, it doesn't have to look like a star chart in a high school classroom because that may not be age appropriate or peer appropriate. And in fact, your school's your your classroom store, good idea. But did you see how that student and that student and that student actually aren't spending their bucks? So that means they're not being reinforced. And again, no, you know, no criticism on the teacher, but as much as being able to say, awesome, you brought all this ABA stuff into your classroom, and then now I get to tell you, hey, you don't have to watch, it can look like this the way you kind of want to see it from your educational perspective. And I love that that mix of that that thesaurus, if you will, of terminologies and practices. It's like you're talking about the same thing I'm talking about. I just call it this, you call it that. Guess what, teach? You're in your setting, you can keep calling in that as long as it gets implemented this way.

SPEAKER_00 51:26

Yeah, you brought up the teach, man. I remember that. I got training early on, 40 hours of teach training. I remember one summer our school district sent us through. I thought it was awesome. You know, but even back then, you know, you talk about early on. Here we go, go back to what would I change? It's like early on, as I was receiving grad training, it was like, teach. No way. We've got this, we've got this field of ABA. You don't need teach in a classroom, and then that's the way I was thinking. It's like, come on, man, you know, I need to looking back then. I I I was I was considered, you know, the expert. As many of us feel as we're in grad school or fresh out of grad school, newly minted BCBAs, things like that. But we have to consider those other areas because you know what? Over the years, I have recommended visual supports, visual strategies, structured classrooms, routines, classroom routines. Why? Because that is what works. And it may be a little bit different, right? The teach program came about because you were teaching the visual strategies, you were teaching to the strengths of the individual with autism, right? And that's where you know a lot of that was developed. And I remember the training early on, but certainly it works, you know. So why are we going to change that? But that's just another, I think, more advice for for those of us who want to work, you know, in schools and and do the best work in schools too. We while maintaining our science, while staying close to our science, we can still work within that system, within other, you know, interventions brought upon uh brought upon that uh that that expert in visual impairments and things like that, right? Speech paths and others. So that's the way I'm thinking.

SPEAKER_04 53:15

I have to uh follow Lupa's lead here and and lend a public apology for for to the teach people for being highly critical. And I think you bring up something very important. Maybe early on in my career, early on in the advent of the new era of ABA, we'll call that with the autism treatment and whatnot. One of those things that didn't make us friendly was I th at least for me, you come in with such a chip on your shoulder with this empirical validation that you want to be the only one that's right in the room. And you might miss that the teach stuff works. So I think my approach currently is more okay, what are they doing? Okay, let me check this out. Okay, I see how that can work. Okay, I understand that again, that thesaurus. The they call it that, we call it this. The kids doing cool, the teacher's happy, the parents are good. That's affirming the consequent. We're all set. I don't care what you call it, it's an effective behavioral strategy. If I put it through a contingency machine, I see where it works, and it's affirming the consequent. And I saw let me uh let me follow Lupe's lead in saying I apologize for my inflexibility early in my career. And it's interesting because I think it's gone the other way now, where I really want to tell the whole lot of us, hey, we've got these traditional optics of what ABA looks like from say a discrete trial training, teach integration early on, which was adapted highly by people and people were happy about it. It really brought to light this idea of our empirical validation, even though we may not have been using those things in the way that they were in the lab, it brought us to the forefront, right? Uh, so it's I spent the last 10 years of my career kind of saying, hey, does it really have to look like this or can it look different? And you know, so your laminator machine broke down in the office. So is that you don't have your star chart? Oh my goodness, is that is at the end of the world? No, it isn't. Think about what that star chart was doing. Think about what it was doing in terms of your pacing, in terms of your delivery of secondary reinforcement. You can do that without the stars. You can draw stars on your fingers, you can a million other things that you can do that doesn't have to make ABA look like this, but you can still be well within the realm of uh ethical ABA treatment or intervention.

SPEAKER_00 55:27

Yeah, when you can implement, I'm sorry, and did you have something? No, go ahead, please. Okay, yeah. When we can implement when we can get a student who is in a classroom by themselves because of the severity of their behaviors, when we can teach that student using multiple systems like structured teaching, the teach program, right, with some ABA, with some of our other visual supports, but especially with some contingencies and some very strict protocols that we develop as behavior analysts, when we can get that one student who has been in a classroom one-to-one or sometimes two to one, you know, for the last several months for the previous school years, when we can get them integrated into a self-contained classroom where there are now 10 students, yes, with disabilities, then that is what success is for that student for us and for the staff, right? You know, implementing, integrating these other areas that may have some, you know, that should have some empirical support, but certainly with you know systems like the teacher program and others.

Part One Wrap And Return

SPEAKER_04 56:36

That's a great point, Lupe. And this does bring us to the conclusion of part one of our interview with Lupe Castaneda. Please make sure you return for part two.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

And always analyze responsibility.

SPEAKER_03 56:52

ABA on tab 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.