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 comfortable with collecting data inside the classroom. In other words, I want to collect the data successfully during my functional and behavioral instruction plan implementation. However, I also want to learn how to analyze and interpret the data and change my plan accordingly depending on the results I am getting. Often times, I collect the data, but I don’t truly understand how to interpret what I am seeing so that I can alter my plans and see better results.

My ultimate goal is to see improvement or progress in the students I begin to work with whilst learning to acquire patience in the process.  

Lastly, I want to become more confident in myself when managing classroom behavior. Obviously, this is a difficult skill in a general education classroom, but it is even more difficult when working with students who may not have very strong expressive or receptive language skills.  I hope to become extremely familiar with the behaviors of all of my students so that when I am teaching I am aware of such behaviors and can begin to find strategies to prevent these behaviors from occurring. For example, I want to learn strategies to keep my students engaged, to prevent them from running away during their Manding sessions and to prevent them from participating in behaviors such as crying or hitting. 

Though challenges may arise, I am willing to learn everything I can from my new group of students.