Consultation and Professional Development for SECAs and Other Support Staff Working with Challenging and Dysregulated Students
Program Description:
Help for the most challenging kids in the classroom
Special Education Teacher Assistants (SECAs) and other support personnel work with the most challenging kids in the classroom, many with IEP’s, but receive little professional development. They are assigned the kids who can’t sit still. Who speak out of turn. Bother their classmates. Don’t follow directions. Act inappropriately. Whose behavior triggers other kids, causes general disruption, and also affects the adults who, understandably, feel frustrated and disrespected.
Addressing the reasons they are “acting out”
It isn’t pleasant for these kids either. For many reasons, they are acting in the only way they know to meet their needs—need for emotional or physical safety, control over what happens to them, or someone to pay attention to them. Once we identify why they are “acting out,” we can implement responses that will diminish the need for these disruptive behaviors.
With proven, best-practice tools and techniques
As the clinical supervisor of interns who provide counseling in CPS, Val Wiley has spent the past 15 years developing proven approaches to help students like those described above. She understands that the usual tools and techniques don’t work with highly dysregulated kids. They need consistency, transparency, empathy, and patience in order to help them build new ways of thinking and acting.
Val will work with your school’s student support staff, individually or in a group, to give them the tools to help these kids feel better about themselves so they can act better. She will collaboratively develop strategies to implement and then discuss what worked and what didn’t so that they can be revised.
Key Features:
- Two-hour group PD and/or individual consultations
- Continuing support via phone or email
- Solution-focused
- No cost
