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Wednesday 8 August 2012

It's been awhile...

Wow, it's been almost a month since my last blog post.. and what a crazy month it has been!

Last September I started my masters in Special Education at the University of Alberta.  This summer I was determined to take 3 courses (on paper it didn't seem like to much).  Well I just finished all 3 (minus 2 papers).  I took them all in the course of 4 WEEKS... It was crazy.  The last 2 weeks I took a course in the morning on Learning Disabilities and in the afternoon I took a course on Positive Behaviour Support (PBS)!  I LOVED my PBS class!!!  Actually it was amazing!  My professor (Brenda Fossett) was one of the best professors I have ever had.  The U of A is lucky to have her.  We spent 2 weeks learning about Functional Behavior Assessments (indirect assessments and direct assessments), creating competing pathway diagrams, building PBS plans, setting event strategies, antecedent strategies, teaching desired behaviour strategies, and consequence strategies.  AMAZING!!!  She taught the course as we would teach in our classrooms (direct instruction, lots of examples, lots of time to practice the skills and lots of feedback).  If anyone in Canada is interested in learning more about PBS, take a course from her!!!

This is a book that many of parts of the course were based off of!

Functional Assessment and Program Development for Problem Behavior: A Practical Handbook

Also... I can now announce that I have a new job in September.. I've known for a little while, but I wasn't able to announce it until my former employer knew and everything was settled.  I will be a learning support teacher at a middle school.  My new school board is a completely inclusive school board (which I'm super excited about).  I will be supporting my kiddos by doing some pull out as well as working with their regular classroom teachers.  This will be a VERY different role for me, but I am super excited about it!  If anyone has any advice on this new role I would love to hear it!!!

Happy Wednesday!

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