As winter approaches and the cold weather limits our activities we need to be creative and come up with some indoor activities. Don’t let the cold weather keep you from having fun with your classrooms! There are plenty of fun, festive activities your students will love. Here are a few of my favorites you can use with multiple age and skill levels!

If you are working in education, there is a good chance that you’re a helper. As therapists and psychologists, we are great at making sure everyone around us is well and taken care of. For many, this means pouring from an empty glass. Burnout is a very real situation for many in the field of education. Burnout can be defined as “a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who work with people in some capacity (Maslach, 1986).” So, how do you know if you’re at risk for burnout, and what do you do if it’s already happening to you?

1. You read testing and normative data. It’s not every day we work with someone who truly understands a bell curve, normative data, and what makes standardized scores…standard. It makes us feel understood too.
2. Another voice of reason. There are a lot of people that make up a Case Conference Committee and emotions can run high. You provide not only the data, but an objective perspective and cool head.

In light of new research and emphasis on Least Restrictive Environment (LRE), a lot of SPED departments are wanting to move towards a push-in model of services for speech and language, particularly for preschool students. This is how I provide push-in services to my Preschool students in Special Day Classes and how it can be adapted to fit general ed preschools as well.

Home exercise programs (HEPs) are customized plans that are designed to specifically target identified areas of weakness. They are typically an extension of therapy tasks that are explained and are structured in such a way that they can be practiced outside of the therapy environment. Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, and Speech-Language Pathologists know the golden rule that the more time an individual devotes to a specific skill, the greater their strength and/or ability will be to perform this task across a variety of settings- this is the ultimate goal for therapy. A common misconception is that HEP often take up a significant amount of time and/or that many parents/caregivers are constantly on the go with a pile of academic homework to complete in the evenings – who actually has time for additional work outside of everything else they have to do?

We want to help kids. It’s our job and it’s the reason we chose our work. Parents want the best for their children, too. However, sometimes the parent denies there’s any issue with their child’s communication. Or, when the assessment is done, the result is sometimes more serious than a parent can cope with.

BOSTON, MA -September 23, 2019 -The Stepping Stones Group (Stepping Stones), a leading national provider of therapeutic and behavioral health services to children with special needs and autism, today announced the acquisition of New England ABA, Inc., a Massachusetts based provider of in-home and community-based Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy.