handwritten on February 4, 2014
Unfortunately, with the current weather delays and cancellations, I have missed many more practicum days than originally anticipated. However, today I felt like was a milestone in my development as a teacher. For the first time, I was able to cold probe a student. Basically, in the language that PATTAN uses in their verbal behavior program, cold probing is applying the various types of verbal operants during a manding session. As I soon realized about two minutes into my cold probing experience, instruction is rewarding but extremely challenging. There is a balance that a teacher must find in being able to record data while motivating the student to answer questions, imitate behaviors and...
handwritten on January 24, 2014
One of the goals I wish to work on this particular semester is becoming confident and comfortable with the Verbal Behavior Program that is implemented within our Autism Support Classroom. Currently, I am not comfortable using the terms such as Manding, tact, interverbal, echoic, learner response, imitation and matching response. I have memorized what each term means, but am unsure how I am to use these terms in an academic Manding session within the classroom.
Thus, my ultimate goal is to be able to successfully and accurately conduct a Manding session with one student or two students before the end of this term.
The second goal I wish to accomplish is to become more familiar with and...
handwritten on January 24, 2014
This semester I was assigned to teach in an all-special education facility containing 163 students ages 5-21, located in urban Pittsburgh. Approximately 29% of the student body is female while the remainder is male. Almost all of the students are African American. There are two regional preschool classrooms located within the school. These two preschool classrooms total around 40 students. The remainder of the students who attend this school are considered to be either Autism Support, Life Skills Support or Multiple Disabled. The Secondary Life Skills classrooms focus on functional activities and vocational training. There are two vocational training programs one of which is school-based...
handwritten on January 14, 2014
This week is my very first week working in an Autism Support Classroom. I must say, I was extremely anxious going into this placement. However, I soon learned that my head teacher as well as the two paraprofessionals were wonderful people and were going to train me as best as they could.
The Autism Support Classrooms at the Conroy School are extremely unique in that they run on a very organized/rigid philosophy such that the entirety of the program is based off of Skinner and Pavlov's theories. In other words, it is about encouraging the students to ask for things or objects be it sign language or through a picture communication board. The goal is for students to come to a point in their...
handwritten on December 18, 2013
I cannot believe that my third semester of teaching flute lessons has ended. Where has the time gone? This semester I had a mixture of both old and new students. Most of my students had already been playing for at least two years. I had one beginner this semester who was absolutely wonderful. By the second week she had learned almost all of the notes and by the end of the first month she was able to play both low and high notes successfully! My semester can be best summed up in a series of new lessons that I learned alongside my students.
Lesson #1: Consistency is important. This was the first semester where I found that I had been teaching some students for three semesters in a row. Other...
