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

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

You can have the best behavior plan in the world and still fail if the classroom doesn’t trust you. Mike and Dan pick up part two with Lupe Castaneda, and get practical about school-based ABA, BCBA leadership in schools, and the messy middle where collaboration meets real-world constraints. We talk through what it looks like when we’re “not the experts” in the family system or the classroom environment, yet we’re brought in because something is already going wrong, and the people in the room may not want change.

From there, we get into the hard stuff most people won’t say out loud: school politics, predetermined placement decisions, and how to protect your staff when they’re doing great work but still getting nitpicked. Lupe shares how he approaches teacher buy-in by building rapport, talking with paraprofessionals, and living the principle of “show me, don’t tell me” rather than being the BCBA in the corner with a laptop. We also explore supervision and mentorship strategies that improve retention, including bi-directional feedback, coaching, and shaping performance instead of punishing mistakes.

We then zoom into tactics for bridging 1:1 ABA into group instruction: small-group DTT, instructional pacing, short learning sprints, contextual fit, and preparing students for natural environments. Along the way we unpack clinical judgment, crisis prevention, and why it matters to teach teams how to think on the fly, especially when the difference between an extinction burst and failed treatment is not obvious to educators. We wrap with burnout prevention, skill diversification, and why staying curious might be the most underrated career strategy in behavior analysis.

If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a school-based BCBA or teacher, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s the biggest obstacle you hit when trying to collaborate in schools?

Tune in, drink up and ALWAYS ANALYZE RESPONSIBLY.

Transcript

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Welcome Back And The Real Problem

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 ABA On Tap. And this is part two of From Adaptive PE to BCBA Leadership in Schools, Lupe Castaneda Bruce, a fresh perspective. Cheers.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Good old teach. I trained teach many, many years. I remember a whole day on not for the company, but for the company I worked for. We trained a teach within that. So I guess you you have a good point about we are not the experts. 100%. We're not the experts in the client, that would be the family. We're not the experts in the environment, that would be the teacher. However, kind of the other side of the coin is we're probably we're usually, and like you said, there there are certain districts that are becoming more proactive, but usually we're not called in because things are going great. We're called in because it's not working in that classroom, and the the structures, the things that the teacher's doing aren't working. And then we're coming in and we're gonna have to try to take something that's not working. A lot of times, and we come in with other things, and the teacher's not happy because they want to do things the way that they want to do it. They don't want to do things differently, otherwise, they would be doing things differently. And again, I'm generalizing. There have been plenty of teachers that have been very open and accommodating. There are also plenty that are like, that's not how I want to do things in my classroom. What I want is just this kid to leave my classroom because they're being disruptive in my classroom. So when you say we're not the experts, which is true, what are your thoughts now on the collaboration piece of like we're getting called in to make changes, but the environment doesn't isn't really excited about making those changes?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Man,

Building Rapport In Tough Classrooms

SPEAKER_00 2:08

that is so fresh in my mind. That's that experience right there, you know. Okay, so usually at that point, you know, you will have support from admin, you know, school admin, because you know, now they realize there probably are some issues within a particular classroom or not, or with the staff. So what they want to do is, of course, they want to prevent further escalation in that particular case, right? You know, further escalation with you know, maybe you know, attorneys and other things becoming more involved, right? So the district itself, you may have support from the school district, but then when you you know really start delving into the the areas of concern, it could be some particular staff that is in just the ex the example you just gave there. So really it's building the relationship. That's what it is. I'm gonna go in there, I'm still still not going to ask. I'm gonna make observ, I'm gonna observe, and I this is recent in my you know experience. So I'm gonna observe, I'm gonna take notes, I'm gonna talk to the teacher. I don't want to just sit in a corner like we you know often do, you know, when we get called into consulting, sitting with our notepad or with our you know, with our laptop and writing notes, collecting data, I'm gonna talk to that person. It does have to go, you have to build that relationship, is what I have found. Even in the most difficult situations like you described, those are very difficult situations where but if I can be if I can talk to that person rather than just ignoring them for two-hour observation and said, I'll see you again tomorrow or next week or something like that, rather than do that, you know, I'm gonna start talking to them. I'm gonna ask them what their concerns are. I'm gonna talk to the paraprofessionals also because it's the paraprofessionals in that classroom that do a lot of the legwork, just like with our RBTs, right? So, you know, we it goes back to building those relationships because if I go in there, and that may take, and I will tell admin if it is admin that brought me in and not a family, you know, that brought me in or an advocate, I'm gonna tell admin, look, I need to establish a rapport. She needs to, I have to build that trust. How do I get how do I build that trust? It is through, once again, going back to those soft skills, you know, asking questions, observing, and not just writing, even assisting. You know, if you see that the teacher is struggling with one particular student, maybe not your target student, but you know, the student may have, you know, maybe attempting to elope from the classroom or something, why can't I get up and go, you know, help with that, you know, that other student momentarily? Yes. I know that ethically I can't work, but if it's a safety issue, I'm gonna go, you know, go assist, redirect that student, you know, until the paraprofessional is able to get there because now the teacher is you know busy with another particular. So I'm gonna do, Mike, I think you brought that up. I forgot how you said that, you know, do rather than say, right? Or something like that. What are we going to do? Show me, don't tell me. Show me, don't tell me. There you go. That's it. Show me. And that is why I do get called back by some school districts because I'm not gonna be that BCBA. We shouldn't be that B C B A, just gonna sit in the corner with our laptop or with our uh with our notepads, right? We're gonna actually help. I'm going to do, you know, something, I'm going to help, and that is where I get the biggest buy-in, even from a difficult situation that you described, Dan, right there. And um, if I can show them, then they're going to believe me. They may start trusting me more. And if I listen to them, once again, going back to those other skills, that's what I think, that's how I approach those kind of situations, as difficult as they may be, you know.

When School Politics Decide Outcomes

SPEAKER_04 5:58

Let's let me let me pivot to uh similar circumstances, but maybe things that are a little bit more political, and you sort of alluded to that in your example, Dan. And then there becomes this, I'm gonna sort of comment on an experience we had this past school year, and I'd love your insights, Lupe. But one of the things that I started telling staff in particular situations was look, we're being called in here proactively. In this case, it was nice. It was uh maybe not so proactive in in the full sense, but they were trying to get ahead of some issues that they were about to face having had some incidents with a student in a pretty restrictive setting. And as we were hiring this person, it dawned on me that it didn't matter how successful we were in changing this student's behavior within the school day, the politics were already too heavy. So the idea of placement change was already eminent. We were plugging in a gap, and it didn't matter how well we did. My staff was not gonna be reinforced to any level by some retention of our services or the student. The decision had been predetermined. The teacher doesn't want the student there anymore, the mom wants to sue the school district. Yeah, I know. I'm being a little hypothetical here, but the idea is it's already a losing battle, so it's exactly what we predicted happened. We did really well, our staff was doing really well, but every day I'm getting complaints about the staff. They didn't do this, they had their earbud in too long after lunch, they might have been chewing gum, and it's like, man, we're really nitpicking here. You know, that's really hard. But at the end of the day, all I can do is okay, thank you for the advisement. Let me talk to my staff, and then had to go back to my staff to say, hey, I've observed you. I'm there once a week. You're killing it. And then there's all this negative feedback you're getting on the other side. I think we were hanging out with him last night. I think he's feeling comfortable, I think he felt supported, but I don't know if you've got any any gems of wisdom uh for us on that.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

It's probably been, I've only come across you know similar situations, maybe just a handful of times, you know, over the years in in that particular where the decision has been made, you know, prior to us coming in. And you know, one of them was also, you know, within the last couple of years where I got called in to uh provide remote supervision for several staff that had been hired to provide behavior supports, several RBTs. They had one BCBA on staff. I go in and and uh I'm just a remote supervisor, right, to help, you know, kind of guide some of these other uh circumstances. So within that particular arrangement, there were one or two students whose you know whose placement was already decided, and they were just kind of like waiting. It was just a waiting process, it was gonna happen regardless, you know. So giving the support, you know, like you, like you said, to your RBT, to whomever was in that, to your staff that was in there, realizing, hey, this is it's it's gonna it's gonna happen regardless, you know. In that particular case, you know, in that case, I think just providing support to the to the staff was best, was the best approach there. I don't think once the process has started, especially with large organization that's a school system, right? I don't think there's much that we can do unless our data does support that. And I gosh, and I'm uh I remember one case where our data did show this kid is doing great. You know, why do we want to change from this particular setting to another? We do, you know, yes, there is a lot of support because the school in this particular case was saying the district was saying, hey, you know, we're spending a lot of money with this individual support. And like one of you guys has said earlier, you know, we do want to fade ourselves, right? We want to work ourselves out of a job, you know. So, and it isn't in the best interest of the students. Sometimes that takes convincing too to the families that we, you know, hey, yes, one-to-one support, your child is doing awesome, but we're gonna eventually gonna have to fade that support out. So the data in this particular case, what we can present, if we are collecting data, if your RBT, your staff member is collecting a lot of data, we can present that. And I'm sure you guys have as well. But I remember that helped convince or at least help the district, the team consider change of placement. And they, you know, their thing was, hey, yeah, of course they're doing well, they've got a one-to-one. And our goal was well, we want to systematically fade this, you know, this support from a one-to-one all day to systematically fade it to what the child needs, and then maybe only keeping that child, I mean keeping the support with that student certain parts of the day, the more difficult parts of the day. I've had success, more success that way, and that's only been a couple of circumstances over the years. I don't know if that answers your question.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

I think you nail it. I mean it's another idea. I'm not sure it's no, I think you're right. I I think you have to go into it with the knowledge and then do your best to put your best foot forward, though you might be fighting an overall losing battle uh in terms of the placement change. And I, you know, so I think I what we ended up doing is really just highlighting our pros' uh determination and saying, man, you're bringing it every day despite knowing that this is an uphill climb and we're probably gonna the student's probably gonna slide back no matter how well we do. Yeah, the data's tricky too, because in those situations it it does become this matter of at least recently, it became a matter of, hey, the data's showing everything they want to see. The day-to-day observation of the interactions is saying everything that you would want to see to retain in this placement, and then the politics became heavy enough that I pulled our staff out of there because I said, I can't have you going to work like that every day, and I'm sorry, it's got nothing to do with you, but I'm gonna protect you and send you to a different assignment. Unfortunately, that assignment was also very politically written. This poor guy, we we we took care of him. Shout out to our guy out there. I won't say his name, but uh, he knows who he is. And uh he's I mean, he's so effective, he's so well spoken, he's presents himself well, and then you know, to his to our dismay, he just became this pariah for some of these administrators or parents that just wanted things to go wrong. They they had to have it go wrong to prove their point. So but I think you give the good insight there, which is sometimes you have to accept that we're fighting a losing battle, but ethically we still have to show up with 110% of our grit and our determination. And that that's a beautiful way to state it.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

And I love the the way that you know you guys did support your your your team member, right? Your staff member by you know, you know, reassigning, eventually fading out of that contract, which you know can be difficult for us that have you know private, you know, practices, small practices, you know. But uh hey, you know, ethically you've got to do that, and you're you know, you uh your staff member is gonna stay with you guys for that much longer because of the support they feel, right? From that they they get from you, you know, and that's the way we need to consider that whether we're working in schools or you know, our private practices or small practices that we may have.

SPEAKER_04 12:58

Sure. Let's talk about that a little bit too.

Mentoring With Bi-Directional Feedback

SPEAKER_04 13:00

I mean, you've got to support these young professionals. What have you learned, you know, having been a young professional at some point in myself? I remember a lot of correction, a lot of very managerial hubris that you know, until recently when we started our own thing, where I woke up one day and I'm like, wow, I'm not stressed about going to work. I'm not worried about that data set, I'll just fix it later. I'm not worried about this treatment plan and the sort of unorthodox goals I wrote. What's the difference? What oh, I don't have somebody above me barking at me about this, that, or the other that's trying to fit operations and not best behavioral practices. And I think that that that can be tricky for any of us, right? You you hit a certain point in your career and you want to have that authority. How you implement or lend that authority or command that authority versus exert it is a big difference for your young professionals, for your patients or clients, for their families. Give us a little bit of your experience on that, because I'm sure you've worked with many young professionals. What's your secret sauce? What do you think those young guys need? Because they already know everything, especially if they just passed the test. Right? They they already know everything. So what can we teach them?

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Okay, so bi-directional relationship, right? I came across that term for the first time in LeBlanc et al. And you mentioned Shalla Alai. She was one of my and still is one of my mentors, uh professors way back when. But uh uh so LeBlanc Sellers and Alai, they they wrote this book about what is it now, four or five years ago? Building a sustaining, meaningful, and effective relationships as a supervisor and mentor. Excellent book. So they talk about bi-directional relationship. When we start, when we hire an RBT or a student analyst or, you know, a trainee, right? When we are working, we bring in someone, we tell them from the very beginning, this is going to be a bi-directional relationship. You're gonna give, you're gonna receive a lot of feedback from me, you know, based on my observations, our interactions, and so forth, from me as a BCBA. But at the same time, I am asking you to provide feedback to me as well. What could we do differently? Does the feedback do you need feedback, written feedback? Would you prefer immediate feedback? Would you prefer just verbal? Would you prefer more coaching, more, you know, BST? I want you to provide me. We're telling, you know, the trainees or the RBTs that. So I think that's the way that we need to approach that too. Yes, we're gonna be good. And what I tell people, I think we're good at providing feedback, maybe not so good at receiving feedback, especially if it is someone that we are training, right? You know, that is a student, and here we are, you know, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years in the business, and now I'm asking, or now, you know, you're you know, your trainee who was in your year one or two of grad school are are now providing feedback. It's not that easy. We have to, but we I tell them early on, you're going to receive a lot of feedback, but at the same time, I want you to give me feedback. I think that's the way that we should. This book, you know, read through this book. I highly recommend it, you know, for us that are learning to become supervisors, mentors to newly minted or those that are in training BCBAs. What is it? Is it still the case where over 50%, maybe even higher, of our field has five or uh five or years, uh five years or less experience now? I think it's still around that a lot of young people in the field. And I think those of us like you guys, myself, and many of us that have been in the field for a while and have learned through our you know our experiences, you know, I think we need to seek out those in training, these young guys, to be able to mentor. I had written in my notes too, so bi-directional relationship is definitely one, but you know, I'd wrote is that we need to network. Often we work in silos, don't we? You know, whether it's you know a large company that's you know owned by PE or something like that, or whether it's even your own small company like yours and mine, if we don't make the effort to reach out like you guys have through this podcast, like you have in your experiences like me, a lot of my networking comes through conferences that I attend, and or you know, LinkedIn is a big one that I you know network with other people. If we don't make that effort, you are going to feel alone at some point. Even if you are in an organization with 10 BCBAs, you may not be able to network and you know brainstorm with those other BCBAs because they are so busy, and now here you are working at ISA, you feel isolated. You know, that goes back to you know one of the other things too is preventing feedback. But you know, Mike, the feedback that we provide, you know, I the coaching that we do, that's what it is. It's a coaching. Think of ourselves as a coach, right? We're molding, we're shaping behaviors, we're providing feedback, we're you know, observing, and then we on the other hand, we are asking for that feedback, you know. I think that's so critical in the way that we supervise and mentor young individuals.

SPEAKER_04 18:12

That highlights what you said earlier about listening in terms of that bi-directional relationship and taking in the feedback, and even before you're getting feedback, to your point, Lupe, listening to what the actual issue is. That might be listening to somebody describe it, that might be being on the spot to observe it directly. And then I think something of importance is your diversification of skills, meaning just because something's not working in the moment doesn't mean you have to come in and derail some young professional's effort. They might be onto something. Can you preserve any part of what they're doing? Make some adjustments and make it a little more successful for them. I think the same goes for teachers who are otherwise trying to maintain a very specific structure. We come in there and try to make all these changes, we're gonna throw off not just that teacher, but the other students for the sake of one. So that's a difficult skill. I I you know that's something that I am always trying to get better at to learn more about is uh how to take existing systems knowing that there's already a problem behavior. So people want to see drastic change in the environment, but sometimes that's not necessary. Actually, I'd say oftentimes it's these little things that you're adjusting here and there, allowing for that student to shine for just long enough that that teacher, that their peers, those staff members can go, hey, look at Johnny today. Wow, we didn't know he could do that. Once you can get that one little single morsel of buy-in, I think you're you're cooking, you know. You're in the game. Yeah, you're in the game. I love the way you describe all this. It can be so nuanced and it can be so difficult to decipher. And then I think your experience really shines a lot of your anecdotes, really shine a lot of light and bring these these very subtle nuances, these important terms that again can be very beautifully semantically, very beautiful semantically, and then how do they work? And I say I appreciate y'all your experience and bringing those things to life in your stories because I think that's very helpful.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

The coaching piece you you brought up is always interesting too, because I always find it so ironic that the field of behavior analysis has such a problem with retention. It seems like we should be able to use our own behavior analysis and retain our staff better. But for some reason, that seems to go out the door when it comes to our own staff. It's only our clients.

SPEAKER_04 20:24

So the answer if somebody's having a problem is to write them up, push them on the spot, punish them, that'll make them better. Of course, we we know that.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

We know that. It's also not to change the way you manage, but expect the other person to change.

SPEAKER_04 20:36

Well, you're a BCBA, you're perfect. It's got nothing to do with you, it's got to do with the other.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Because the other intrinsic to the person, not extrinsic to the environment.

SPEAKER_04 20:48

We had to get a little bedumptiss in there for all our jokes. We were on a roll there, man. We might sound

Moving From 1:1 To Classwide

SPEAKER_04 20:54

anti-ABA.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

So what would be so we've talked about how a lot of us come from the one-on-one side and move to the group contingency side or some semblance of that, working one-on-one to one-on-five, one-on-10, whatever it is. What would be some strategies that you would have on effective integration coming from that one-on-one background? Some things either that do work or don't work in the larger scheme of a class setting where the teacher might not have that luxury of the one-on-one?

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Yeah, and uh I experienced this. I, you know, I do supervise, you know, uh, some teachers, you know, for that are training uh in grad school at one of the universities I can get to, uh, they've got a teacher grant for uh ABA, and they are they pay for teachers to get certified, which is wonderful. As long as we can keep the teachers there, you know, the once they become BCBAs and they don't run off and get you know a high paying job, right? You know, I try I try to scare them away from that saying, hey, you know what, yeah, you're gonna be making a lot more, but you're also gonna be working a lot more.

SPEAKER_04 21:50

But anyway, summers, summers are gonna be working summers.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

See, is that and what I've heard even from some of these teachers is like, I can't do DTT, I can't do I can't work on this. And I say, Well, you can. DTT doesn't necessarily have to be one-to-one. Look, and I'll show them. I said, right now you've got your classroom, 10, 12 kids, you've got them working with, you know, you have fortunately, you're fortunate to have two or three paraprofessionals. You've got a small group with one paraprofessional, you've got another small group here, you've got another small group there, and then you've got, you know, one to two kids there. You can you can do if we learn how to do DTT, you can do it in that small. You're already your classroom schedule, your routine, your arrangement is already set up like that. Now you're not gonna do DTT, you know, 40 hours a week. But what I like to say, if you can get this in a small, say I've got three or four students, you know, at once sitting at a table, one of those kidney tables, those horseshoe tables, right? That uh that uh we see in classrooms, and you've got your paraprofessional or you've got a teacher, you know, you yourself are doing this. If I've got two or three kids, and I'm gonna take into account, okay, what is DTT? I'm gonna teach my staff how to do this. Teacher was teaching her staff how to do DTT and also collecting aid at the same time. I said, look, we're gonna teach, I'm gonna, and this goes back to instructional pacing, right? Pacing, even when we are doing one-to-one, we need to be aware of that pacing, right? So we've got to have a good pace, all right. If I can I can teach those three, I'm gonna, even if they are, they've got different skills, say we're working on math skills, one of them's working on counting, another one is working on you know, one-to-one addition, and then yet another one is you know already more advanced than that. I can teach skills, I can do a DTT. I'm gonna give, you know, the DTT uh components here, SD response, consecrate that that response in a trial interval. I'm gonna go from one to another to another and keep this pace going at about you know two or three responses per minute if I can. If I can become fluent at teaching in that manner, I can I can do this several times a day. And I do try to stress, look, give them short bouts of instruction, right? Because you're already set up in this manner, small groups, you can do this, yeah. And and of course we may have some behaviors going on, but that's the way I approach it is that look, you can integrate some of our strategies, even DTT, in a classroom setting by breaking up into these small groups. It's not only special ed classrooms that do small group. We see this in Gen Ed classrooms too. I've been in many Gen Ed classrooms where they are fortunate to have maybe a support uh paraprofessional to provide support to you know several students in the classroom, including our target student typically. And I'll say, hey, can I teach that paraprofessional to incorporate you know some of these behavioral strategies with while she is working with these kids that she's already pulling out anyway? So that's the way that I'll use it. Now, of course, we do have we have others, you know, such as the good behavior game, right? That can be used with classrooms. So we may want to include that if it's in a larger classroom, a gen ed teacher. They can easily run something like that if we do that, with modifications, I think, for that particular classroom and the staff in that classroom. So those are areas that we can go from our one-to-one into we our goal should be prepared preparing these students for their natural environments, right? So if we've got them one-to-one for you know for five years, I think that's probably two or three years too long, depending on the age of that child, right? We need to be, as soon as we, you know, intake this child, whatever age they are, we want to prepare them for their natural environment. So that means that if you can, even in a one-to-one setting, clinical setting, if you can start incorporating more small group activities, yes, you're gonna have two or three other clients in your clinic with one-to-one. They've got their their RBTs with them, but now you can incorporate group activities. Let's do a morning circle time, right? Yes, they're gonna have one-to-one, which they're not gonna have in the classroom, but can we simulate that routine? A morning circle for a young kid, right? A group instruction. How about eating, eating in a at a table with five or six other clients? Yes, they have their RBTs with them one-to-one in the clinical setting, but just eating at a table, teaching a child to eat at a setting with other students where they're not reaching, you know, stealing, you know, food and things like that. You know, I think that's the way that we can prepare them for, you know, and or incorporate into classroom group settings.

SPEAKER_04 26:26

You got something? No, go ahead. Okay. You just made me come back to something that I thought of earlier. And I know in speaking to you, Lupia, that you're I I I would love to have, and maybe I will someday have the opportunity to watch you in action because I hear you describe things, and I know that that experiencing you at work versus how hard it is to describe what you're describing, there's probably a difference there. And I'm gonna hopefully this question might lend to that gap. But what you just described right now was perfect. This idea that you're sort of bouncing back and forth between this individualized instruction toward basic skills and things that are gonna help the student integrate, and then concurrently, you're finding any excuse to integrate that student into the greater group toward generalization of those skills. Man, that is tricky. That is so hard for us because we can get things going well one-to-one, that it's a real doozy to go into that group situation where now you feel unsuccessful. As an APE with APE in your background, undoubtedly you face those situations where you had a basic game for a certain age group, knowing that the game is age appropriate, but the skills that you have in your grouping may be so diversified that it's gonna be impossible or nearly impossible to recreate this game the way we usually see it. Now, I think a lot of people are gonna resort to some sort of physical prompting to recreate the situation and make it look the way it's supposed to be, in terms of following the rules of the game and making sure that if the kid does kick the ball, they run to base right away. And then there's all the stuff you're talking about, all the adaptations. I don't know if that made any sense, but if that jogs anything in your memory, lend to us of your experience there in terms of what adaptation, modification, accommodation, what does that really mean? And

Short Learning Sprints That Work

SPEAKER_04 28:21

what are all the different ways that that can look like given your rich experience?

SPEAKER_00 28:27

And talk about some memories. Yeah, those early years, it was like, you know, aside from yelling out for help, I need some help, you know. I've got a kid that's trying to leave the gym, you know. The you know, that, you know, certainly I see I it's not an easy, it's not easy. And that's what we need to, you know, understand as VCBAs, especially with no school assistant. We can with school, no school experience. We can't be the one to saying, oh yeah, if they only did this, if they only did that, right? Then everything we've been there, we've done that, we've tried to manage, even when you have two students or two clients, you know, you know, because the other RBT is is gone out for a bio break or something like that, right? Even just managing two clients, teaching two clients for just five minutes, you know, is difficult, much less a classroom. It is not easy. And anything that I say, I've certainly experienced this, even on my own, trying to teach a group of students. I was fortunate to have paraprofessionals that would come along in those classrooms, so APE uh classes, right? They'd come to me, so they knew their students well. I was there to guide and lead the activities and so forth. Those bring back some great memories. I love those, but also some very stressful memories too. You got kids running everywhere. But I see this in classrooms, especially education classrooms, gen ed physical education classrooms, where you've got potentially over a hundred students, you know, several different classrooms, and then you've got a handful of students who may need some specialized supports in those classrooms. I've been in those classrooms, and that's part of the consulting that I do because that's a big area, big difficulty with many of our students, right? So it is, you know, uh from the very beginning, advocating for more support there. Even as an outsider, I'm gonna say this is a dangerous situation. They know that too, the school systems. We're gonna have to advocate for more support. We need more hands. But if it is a classroom, say a self-contained classroom with 10 students with various needs, uh, they may have one or two paraprofessionals to assist there. I am going to take, you know, I am going to suggest just what I had to describe to you. Let's let's do more small group activities. Short sprints is what I call them, short learning sprints, just kind of like the precision teaching people, which I'm learning a lot about. If I can do short sprints several times a day, I am going to the likelihood that this kid is going to acquire skills in those very short bounce bursts of uh of uh of teaching, the likelihood they're gonna learn more from that rather than 45 minutes and you're having to redirect the kid who keeps bouncing up after every two to sec two to three minutes, you know, you're redirecting them back there. If I can get that kid to sit for one to two to five minutes and increase the pacing of instruction during those times, teaching the same concepts, he is more likely to learn in those situations multiple times per day, short sprints, than they are by me keeping them, you know, for 45 minutes worth. Maybe they get an opportunity to respond once or twice during that 45 minutes because they've been running away every couple of minutes, you know, because it is so aversive to them. I I I don't know if that answered your question, but you know, those are what I'm thinking right off the top of my head.

SPEAKER_04 31:29

No, I mean I think it speaks to it too, without getting into particular examples of particular games that you've made adaptations to. I think that's what's so difficult about capturing your knowledge base given all your experiences. And I and I hear it in the way you're speaking, but it is so difficult to describe, oh, and this one time I did this, this, and this. Well, why? Well, I'm not sure I remember, but it worked out, and I think it goes back to what you're talking about with the active listening, the active observation, and those little changes you make to get to those short sprints. And it could be that it it looks, you know, sometimes the optics of those situations are terrible, but we come away going, Oh yeah, Johnny did that twice. All right, man, we'll get him to do it three times tomorrow. You know, and that's like we're gluttons for punishment, you know. That's amazing that the whole lot of us, you know, despite the criticisms we face, despite the challenges, we can survive on that level of reinforcement. I had a joke at the end of the school year of one of the school psychologists, you know, the the student is gonna end up changing placements and had a horrible end of the year, but we were at the end of it, we were like, hey, we gave it the best shot we could have. Like, we have no doubt about that. We did everything we could to make this happen, and while the at the end of the day it failed, so to speak, we feel okay. We we there's nothing more we could have done. And I that's what I hear in what you're describing is I'm doing everything I can in that moment. We're building on those short sprints and those small successes, and at the end of the day, if we keep doing that day to day, we end up at the objective. You know, that's a that's a that's a great thing. That's I I really appreciate your description, and that's why we love what we do, and uh, we love everybody that does it, because at the end of the day, whether you're on the wrong path or not, or you're learning new things, I know that the whole lot of us wake up every day with that little tidbit and we're holding on to it and we go back to it. So it's good stuff. Thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Doing some high-intensity interval training with your uh your kids in learning trials. That's that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Yeah, it's not a one size fits all. We know that, right? You know, we've got there are many ways. I mean, you asked, what's the what's the joke? You asked uh two different two BCBAs to to create a treatment plan for one particular student that they've you know been interacted with and assessed. You're gonna have two different, very different potentially treatment plans, right? Why? Because our science is it's vast, right? And and and we can and we should individualize it for that, you know, for that particular person. But

Clinical Judgment In The Moment

SPEAKER_00 33:52

so I do think it takes, you know, another thing, you know, that this leads to just you know bouncing around in my head is clinical judgment, right? Whether it be, we need to teach clinical judgment. How do we how do we teach, train someone, whether it be a paraprofessional, an RBT, a teacher, a parent, to think like a behavior analyst like uh uh Bailey and Birch's book, How to Think Like a Behavior Analyst. That's my goal. I want to teach you the skills, I want to teach someone the skills to so that they can think on the fly. They can think in that moment, right? And that is, you know, what I think is so critical. Clinical judgment. I think uh Justin Leif and his colleagues have written, there's a chapter I wrote, I mean, I wrote that I read uh on clinical judgment teaching that we should be teaching, you know, RBTs, parents, teachers, other staff members how to think in that moment, how to use clinical judgment. Because a lot of times they rely on us as the BCBAs. Oh, you cannot think for yourself. You have to follow this protocol the way that I wrote it. And we and and now you've got to wait another week before we come to come provide supervision before you make any changes. Can you imagine? And we still do that in our field. Can you imagine that? And we see this in school systems, right? You gotta wait for the next IEP meeting to change a goal. No, that's not it. The data indicates the child is indicating something needs to be changed right now. Why wait six months or even a year for those annual IEP meetings, right? We need to get this done now. But it's the same thing, clinical judgment, right? We need to teach that to our to our staff, to all staff, to the families, too. How do you think in the moment? And I think, Dan, was it you that are you doing crisis intervention, prevention, intervention training? I think you see, I've heard that in some of your other podcasts. So that's critical. I'm also a trainer for another uh system, you know. I've been training for about eight, nine years. It's really big in my, you know, my specialties, you know, teaching crisis prevention, intervention, and as their last resort, physical management, physical restraint, right? You know, so we have to think with these systems, especially when we're dealing with individuals, working with individuals who can engage in severe challenging behaviors, we have to train the staff that we are training, train them how to think on the spot, right? In that moment, because what I say or do at this moment can determine whether uh whether the child's behavior escalates to peak escalation or they can start to recover or de-escalate in time. So I think that clinical skills, clinical judgment skills are so critical, whether it be a child with you know a history of significant disability, I mean uh uh challenging behaviors, or whether it be a child that's just not learning from your traditional instruction in a classroom setting.

SPEAKER_04 36:35

Man, you you're you're lending some gems and just your dis your descriptions are so rich. It it's awesome to listen to you. It made me think of something that I was talking to an RBT about recently in terms of coming up with a strategy. Sometimes you get very excited. I'm gonna try the strategy, and you implement it in the moment, and by and large it kind of fails. And in terms of your clinical judgment, the answer is well, then it didn't work, right? Well, I don't know, refine it and try it again. Try it a few times, in fact. In fact, maybe try it for about a week before you abandon ship, and I'm saying a week loosely because I don't know if that's how long you need, but I know you need to try it at least more than once, right? I mean, that's how open-ended is that? You know what I'm saying? Talk about judgment and action, you know. And for the rest of us, you know, 20, 30 years into the field, I've learned how to dance. I know my choreography, I know how to change rhythms. I hope I do. I'm maybe touting myself too much, but I feel comfortable in that going in with a plan and going, wait a minute, I see where I got this wrong. Let me adjust a little bit. Oh, that looked better. Oh, that looked better. Let's keep going. Or hey, three, four times, okay, this isn't gonna work. Let's pivot. Let's move, you know. That's that's there's no straight line, uh, there's no linear way of describing or teaching that. Only experience, in my opinion, is going to teach us that, which means we're gonna face some some terrible failures. It's gonna feel there's gonna be some pain at some point, especially if you're not being planful about it. But you can avoid that pain by being the most planful you can be, and then you can humble yourself in that moment going, wait, I thought this was gonna work, it didn't work. Well, wait, let me try again, and oh, it didn't work, let me try again, it's okay. It's okay. The the fact that I can tell myself, let me go back to the drawing board. I think that's our best ethical clinical judgment. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Always comes back to you, right? What can you do differently? You have to go back to the drawing board. Yeah, and that's just telling other people what they need to do differently.

SPEAKER_04 38:25

We started with that conversation with Libra talking about that. I mean, it's just like we we want to put it on the student, we want to put it on the parent, and then the beautiful thing our philosophy of science teaches us is wait, we're the environment. What are we gonna do as part of that environment to make a change in that bee in the middle? That's I love that.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

Man, how effective can that be? Can it can we become to fail in front of others, right? To allow ourselves to fail in just like you described, we're gonna try something, but I'm gonna try it while you watch because I'm helping you train, whether it be a parent, whether it be a RBT, a teacher, I'm gonna try something, let me try it. And if it doesn't work, we'll go back to the drawing board as you said. But allowing ourselves to fail, that's a hard thing for a BCBA, right? Somebody that's been a training for two years and 2,000 hours worth of supervision and experience. We need to do that. I'm gonna try this out. This is based on, you know, this is uh based on the data, this is based on our science, but it may fail in this situation, especially if we're dealing in classrooms, implementing a new procedure in a classroom, right? I've done that many times, and I think that we should do that, do that. We'll we'll say, hey, this is the plan, teacher, but let me implement it first and try. Yeah. So but that can be very impactful to the people that we are supervising, mentoring, training, right?

SPEAKER_04 39:50

Yeah, that's it. That's amazing. I mean, again, it's just it's that that's empiricism. And and we can't go in at brute force, meaning we have a very limited margin for error. But you're absolutely right, that margin for error might allow us to become human to those teachers and say, oh, wait, you know, and and in that moment where something doesn't turn out exactly as envisioned, but the fact that you might be able to behaviorally describe to the teacher, oh wait, this is why this happened. And all of a sudden you've got a little bit of predictive control, and if you're able to affirm that, man, that goes a long way. But you're absolutely right. The idea that you're coming in as an experimenter, that's what we do. I'm gonna wait, you're doing this, I'm gonna manipulate this variable. Would you try this? Oh, I'm sorry, that didn't work out. But did you notice the behavior changed? Oh, that means if you change your behavior, Teach, the student's behavior might change too. Now, it may not be the desired outcome or our last stop, but the power of knowing that if you change something, the student's likely to change something too. I think there's there's a lot to be said there.

SPEAKER_02 40:53

I think the the tricky thing with that is always like the the extinction burst versus failed treatment, right? So how long do we stay? At what and there's no like, yeah, there's no objective determination, right? Between like, hey, it's the treatment that's not working versus stick with this treatment and it's just the extinction burst and it'll get better. Yeah. So that's that's definitely a I mean that's just not just with ABA in schools, that's with ABA and everything, right? We go in and tell them.

SPEAKER_04 41:18

And the extinction burst kind of making it seem like it's failing. I think there's your greater point. That's so hard to explain to people that aren't that don't have our background. They don't know, guess what? The reason I want to stick to this is because the behavior got worse. What? What are you talking about, man? That means we hit the function. That's that's not easy to explain.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Yep.

Teacher Pain Points And Better Data

SPEAKER_02 41:39

Um, Lupe, you so you've talked about collaboration being a big thing, and I think you said for the the difficult situations, really building rapport and relationships, and it sounds like you've spent a lot of time talking with teachers directly as part of your personal and professional ventures. What would be some things that you've gotten directly from the teachers, maybe some pain points that they've shared with you, with their overall experience with ABA or things kind of from the teacher's mouth you would share to new BCBAs?

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Yeah, I think from the teachers, you know, from the teachers themselves, and I've heard this over and over is you know, hey, you know, I can't do this. That contextual fit, you know, I had a behavior specialist, they may say they had a behavior specialist or behavior who may have been a BCBA, you know, write this plan as we talked about earlier, but it doesn't fit. I can't possibly do that. I've got 20 other kids, is what they're telling us. So I think that's something to understand, right? You know, it goes back to that contextual fit, right? So also, or well, they always behave when you are here, you know, that's reactivity, right? Observer of reactivity, right? Well, they only behave, they only do this when you're not around or when the uh paraprofessional is not around and so forth. So those are things that we need to consider going into a school system uh to consult. We have to think about all of those, those what ifs, right? What if the teacher says this? What if they they they they buy into what you did, but then they realize after the first, you know, Mikey were saying, after after the first, after they got the extinction burst, it's like, whoa, no more. That's too that's too much. They don't wait it out, right? We don't we need to explain. I think I think what we should explain. If I am going to re recommend an extinction, a certain extinction procedure, right? You know, we we we we should be able to describe or anticipate what may happen if it doesn't work, or if the behavior escalates, it gets worse before it gets better, right? I think we need to have all of that. We need to take that approach caution. Hey, these may be some side effects of this particular intervention that we are going to try, right? You know, that we are going to implement. But we are going to and we explain to them if it isn't work, we have to give it some time. But if it is not working, we will change it with you, with your input. What are you seeing when I'm not here, you know, or when the paraprofessional is not with him, or what have you. I think that's one way that we can we can approach it is. To kind of foresee, I guess, you know, explain to them what what may happen, what could happen in a particular situation. I think that can be helpful. That gives them a little ease. Also in explain it to them as well and assuring them we will change it. If it's not working after a few days, we will change it. And this goes to the data collection too. How many times do we try to get you know a teacher to collect data, right? Data throughout the day. You know, it's like really, you know, what I have found with regards to data collection, if I do need to find data collecting, they're already collecting data. They've got notebook pages worth of anecdotal data, right?

SPEAKER_04 44:41

Narrative, narratives. They love the narrative data.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Well, why can't we put that into a structure? I'll explain to them. Look, you're already collecting data. But what I've learned too is I find the easiest data collection systems. I may select, okay, these are the difficult parts of the day that your child, let's just collect data here, and it's not going to be frequency data, although that is best. You know, in many situations. Let's go ahead and use a partial interval recording system. We know as behavior analysts, that's not the most accurate, right? And may overestimate, sometimes even underestimate a lot of the behaviors, but at least we get some buy-in. We get the teacher to collect some objective data, right? You know, some direct observational data. And that could be I started off with 10-minute partial interval systems, you know, recording. It's like, wait, when you were a classroom teacher, that's just too much. Then I played around 15, which I think is okay. I've gotten a lot of buy-in from 30-minute intervals on that type of a system throughout the day. Teachers can do that, and we've got a lot of data, but once again, we know you know, as behavior analysts, it's not the most accurate, but it gives us an idea. It's better a lot of times than the narratives that we get, the pages and pages of narratives that we get.

unknown 45:54

Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 45:55

Well,

Where To Find Lupe Online

SPEAKER_04 45:56

as I warned you gentlemen at the start of this, we we we are nearing our two-hour mark, sir. This was easy, as as I predicted. Yep. Lupe, uh, where if if you want to be found, if you if you want to be set out, tell our listeners out there where they might find you, where they could reach out to you again, assuming that you uh you want more work.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

Yeah, I mean, even if it's just for networking, right? For mentorship, what have you. You can find me on LinkedIn under my name, Lupe Castañeda, or I did uh just create a website. I've got a uh school-based website, it's called improvestudentbehavior.com. Okay. And then of course I just created another one, mentoraba.com. I think I'm gonna hang out on that website more often. I just created it over the weekend, so and and I'll it'll it'll be a work in progress. But LinkedIn are the ones where I hang out most. I'm also on Facebook, but really I'm just kind of a lurker. I belong to several groups on on Facebook, you know, but under my same name. You know, I go by uh Alamo BCBA. Alamo is the Alamo City? You know, yeah, Alamo BCBA L L C is my company name right now. Oh, that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Nice. I love it. Anything else that you wanted to discuss that we didn't touch on?

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Yeah, you know, okay, we, and I think you guys have addressed it in some of your previous episodes. How have

Burnout Prevention Through Skill Variety

SPEAKER_00 47:15

we, those of us, and I'm including all of us here, been in the field so long, right? Preventing burnout is burnout is huge. That's what I want to talk about. That's what I'd love for you guys to continue talking with those who have more experience. What do they do and what can we help our young professionals? You know, how can we help them stay in the field? For me, I've got like I've got one of my colleagues recently called it, I don't know, job or career ADHD. I bounce around. I like to do a lot of different things. Schools, I still do, and I know you guys do. You also do, I do direct service, you know. I mentioned precision teaching. I actually sought out, I'm getting trained by doctors uh Kendra and Donnie Newsom with fit learning on precision teaching. I took a class 30 years ago, 25 years ago with Michael Fabrizio on precision teaching, but it wasn't until recently I started to so I think we need to, you know, one way that we can prevent burnout to help keep us going for decades in this field, do lots of different things. But I'm taking this training so now I can teach academics. Guess what? Yes, insurance funders are not going to pay for academics, but if we get a school system that wants us to help teach, you know, a learner that's not learning from traditional teaching, I've got that skill. I'm gaining those skills to maintain to increase my competency there, competency there. We know that precision teaching has been around for decades in our field, and it is very effective, can be very effective for various learners. That's why I'm doing it. So that I can now bring it to some of my clients, maybe private clients or maybe school systems that may want to learn on how to better educate, you know, students. That's also getting out of our wheelhouse. We don't just do behavior reduction, right? We do skill acquisition. And if we can become more skill uh more effective at teaching skill acquisition, even academic skills and other skills, let's get training in that. So that's my you know uh advice to to BCBAs to stay. Do a lot of different things, maybe even like you guys, start your own company, although that can that has its uh you know challenges as well. I know that, you know, but doing a lot of different things, whether it's you know, working precision teaching, working in schools, doing a little bit of direct service training staff on you know, uh crisis prevention, intervention, you know, working uh in other areas, you know, gerontology, isn't that a big field right now? That's a big area that we need that need our help. So that's the way I think I would give advice to any new or young BCBAs. Do a lot of things that you are passionate about. Learn more about, you know, learn some other skills that you can incorporate into that act, right? Act uh training too. That's an area. I love to read that literature. I'm not fluent in it by any means, but I love reading that because I think it can be very effective for some of our learners, you know.

SPEAKER_04 49:59

So Dan's uh currently working on the behavior change of uh insurance funders and uh credentialing and uh billing denials. He's gonna I'm kidding. He's not, but he's but he's learned a lot about that. Maybe he won't talk about learning a lot about uh staying calm, you know, re-escalating.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

He can do the best service by getting authorized for it on the front end and reimbursed for it on the back end. That's that's Dan.

SPEAKER_04 50:23

I have the the distinct privilege to have Dan take care of a lot of the administrative stuff, and then you know I've been developing the direct work, but I appreciate him tremendously because for the first time, yeah, probably the first time in my career, I have somebody running administration and logistics through a service delivery lens, not the other way around. So it has made a tremendous difference. But I love to back to your point, Lupe, improving contextual fit as a deterrent for burnout. That's beautiful. If you want to have that as a title, I I I like the way you say that because I think I think that the burnout comes from feeling stuck. And if you're always learning something new and you're able to apply it and improve your performance with and the outcomes of your clients and and patients, I'm sure that goes a long way toward that idea of burnout. So thank you for bringing that up. In fact, I I think you just invited yourself next season to talk about uh burnout and diversification of skills. That's a point you buy. Yeah, yeah. Well, keep learning, right? And again, the the point you made earlier in terms of you might see a system like teach, and well, I'm not sure about the empirical validation and the peer review. Hey man, what is it worth? Go check it out. Can you use any part of this? Because somebody took a lot of time to develop that. They didn't just do it haphazardly, they do it with they did it with close observation and their own version of the scientific method, whatever that may be. So, is there value to extract from that? How does that fit in contextually into your skill set? How do you feed your skill set, you know, bidirectionally the other way? You know, can you can you do something with teach, although it's outside of ABA? Of course you can. Of course you can. And again, I reiterate my public apology to uh for my inflexibility for many years on those things.

SPEAKER_02 52:06

I don't know, Mike. When he said you don't necessarily need to use teach in a classroom, I saw you light up. Well, I I I agree with that, but but I I would also jump out of your channel.

SPEAKER_04 52:14

I would also say for you now, if you really want to use teach in your classroom, let me give you some suggestions as what I've seen that might, you know, uh some adjustments here and there that could work for you from an ABA perspective. Anyway, I digress.

SPEAKER_02 52:28

Apologize to Pex.

SPEAKER_04 52:31

So the reason I I have to explain myself, Dan. Geez, we're holding up Mr. Custom the other here. So Dan says that because what was what was my mantra in the past? So I I I abandoned PEX many years ago. But I I qualify this, not because I don't think it's empirically valid or effective, I just never ran it per their protocol. So I took what I wanted from it that I thought was effective. And so that's why I never call it PEX, because in all fairness to the Bondis, I don't run PEX.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

So I hear you, I'm right there with you, man. And and and and PEX, exact same thing. Yep, exactly. We can we can use components of this. FCT, come on. You know, I mean, that's you know, yeah whether you know, we're we're going to incorporate some means of communication, and that may include picture exchange, but not the full system. I I never really did uh follow the process of the system. That was my fault.

SPEAKER_04 53:22

So I won't apologize to Pex. I'll apologize to Pex for not for not learning the full system. Anyway,

Final Gems And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_04 53:29

Lupe, it has been a distinct pleasure to have you on, sir, to converse with you. We can't thank you enough for sharing of your content expertise. Whatever ABA on tap can ever do for you in terms of promotion or you want to come back on and talk to us, you know where to find us. Please. You are now an honored guest, an inductee into the uh the hall of yeah, an alumni, ABA TAP alumnus. We might have to make some t-shirts out of that. Uh, but yeah, thank you for your time. I like to close with a few gems that we pick up along the way with our guests, and sir, you gave me a ton of them. So I've got listen first, be a strong contextual fit, promote bi-directional relationships, show them, don't tell them, and always analyze responsibly. Cheers, Lupe. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 54:15

Always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_03 54:18

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.