Maria
Maria provides emotional and behavioral services for a small group of male students through her elementary school’s Affective Needs program. They are likeable students who enjoy Minecraft, superheroes, and animals. They all struggle with emotional regulation and self-control, and most have specific IEP goals to address their needs. Maria taught her students the Cerebrate lessons, Calm Coping and Calm Coping Skills to help them with their challenging and sometimes violent reactions.
The students were able to identify times when they did not use coping strategies and were able to come up with a plan to handle themselves in similar situations in the future. Maria integrated the students’ love of animals to help create additional ways to calm themselves, like thinking about how soft and cute baby pandas are to remind themselves to stay calm. Maria watched as the students used the strategies to regulate their emotional responses and control their reactive behaviors.
Liz
Liz is a behavioral specialist who supports a middle-school student in a school setting. Her student has a great deal of difficultly transitioning from a preferred task to one that does not interest him as much. He exhibits verbal aggression and tries to refuse interacting by putting his head down or avoid the situation by physically leaving the environment. Liz taught the Cerebrate lessons, Transition Tools and Transition Plan. Her student was motivated to use the timer tool, and he had a sticker reinforcement strategy to monitor his transition reactions.
At the end of two weeks, her student was independently asking for the time for each activity and setting the timer on his own. He especially liked being able to choose his own transition strategy from the list of options, and Liz saw him take more ownership as a result. Liz shared that he was able to make tremendous progress and is able to transition with little negative feelings or inappropriate response