Best Practices

One of our biggest projects for this class was to create and submit a Best Practices power point. I, so far, have found this to be one of my favorite assignments. Being a Behavior Therapist, I decided to focus my best practices on behavior management in an Autism classroom. I can't tell you how many classrooms I have worked in and it has been so hard to help facilitate appropriate behaviors from the students because there was no classroom management happening. So it was very interesting for me to be able to dive into a project that I felt would be beneficial for any future classroom I work in. One aspect that I really appreciate about integrated learning is that, as an educator, you try to find your students strengths so that they feel empowered to do their best. Too many classroom teachers are only focused on (or have to be focused on) the standard. Everybody has to learn the same information the exact same way. Well...that is not how society functions. So I really loved looking at the big picture on how to structure a classroom so that each child has an opportunity to succeed. Yes, there are general rules and limitations that apply to every student, but within those rules and limitations, an educator can find a way for their students to succeed in following them. I'll admit that I thought this assignment would come easy to me because I have 9 years of behavior therapy under my belt. But it was actually really difficult trying to figure out what was necessary to include and what to leave out. I didn't want to have too much wording but I also wanted those who don't know behavior therapy and are reading the power point to walk away feeling like they had learned something. It was a time consuming project, but I feel like I have learned so much more about how to better myself as a behavior therapist than I did before. I also really enjoyed reading other best practice power points. It was interesting to see what my fellow classmates decided to focus their projects on and how many of our power points overlap. There was a lot of helpful and useful information.