Full Catalog of Upcoming Events

Age Level: All

Level: Universal

Topic: Universal-level Behavioral Interventions Overview for Administrators. This will help administrators set up surveys and information before beginning universal behavior support training with their staff.

Time: 1 hour

There is an Out of Area Fee for this course.

This tier-two course has strategies to help Pre-K through 12th grade educators
alleviate behaviors that appear to be cropping up post-COVID.

We will first explore the current students' age when Covid hit, and what skills they
missed due to that absence.
We will discuss the surgeon general's findings and then go through step-by-step
what we can do to teach all the curriculum required and still cover the skill deficits
missing in today's students.
This is a working seminar, meaning the video will stop, and you will have time to
discuss with cohorts the strategies and how you could implement them in your
classrooms.
Participants will learn:
1. How to identify anxiety and depression in students
2. Ways to revise the environment to set students up for success.
3. Ways to build relationships with students.
4. Ways to teach replacement behaviors.
5. How to use a simplified competing pathway chart
6. Ways to reframe our response so we are feeding the replacement behavior
and extinguishing the target.

Audience: All Staff and Administrators in General and Special Education

Age Level: All

Level: Tier Two

Topic: The pandemic brought some new behaviors to the forefront including: disruptions, peer to peer interactions, peer to adult interactions, resilience, and so much more.  This presentation focuses on what caused this and what we can do about it to help our students be successful.

Time: Six Hours

 HGRESA District Members Only.

• This presentation will show what data need to be collected to do an effective intervention plan using a competing pathway model. This uses a real preschool student and 10 days of data. Dr. Riffel will show how she takes the information from the functional behavior assessment (FBA) and turns it into a data-based intervention plan.

• Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) is an open-ended term because there is not a legal definition of what an FBA should entail. Therefore, some schools feel answering 20 questions about a student, an observer sitting in the back of the room for 30 minutes, or anecdotal notes is sufficient to determine the real function of the behavior.  To have a good FBA, we need to know the triggers and the impacts of the targeted behavior in conjunction with each other. The consensus among researchers is that we need ten incidents to develop an effective intervention plan. Dr. Riffel prefers 10 days of data collected by the classroom teacher looking for behavioral chains. Knowing how difficult this was, she spent years simplifying a data collection tool.
• This is a free tool that graphs antecedent, behavior, and consequence data and helps the educational behavior support team determine the true function of the behavior.
• Riffel will show you how to use the tool to enter data, analyze the data, and write an effective competing pathway plan for remediating the behavior using a preschool example.

Audience: All Staff and Administrators in General and Special Education

Age Level: Preschool

Level: Tier Two and Tier Three

Topic: Data can be daunting. We simplified data collection into a form that makes it super simple to collect and then that data gives you a print out that helps you make data-based decisions. 

Time: Two Hours

 HGRESA District Members Only.

• This presentation will show what data need to be collected to do an effective intervention plan using a competing pathway model. This uses a real elementary student and 10 days of data. Dr. Riffel will show how she takes the information from the functional behavior assessment (FBA) and turns it into a data-based intervention plan.

• Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) is an open-ended term because there is not a legal definition of what an FBA should entail. Therefore, some schools feel answering 20 questions about a student, an observer sitting in the back of the room for 30 minutes, or anecdotal notes is sufficient to determine the real function of the behavior.  To have a good FBA, we need to know the triggers and the impacts of the targeted behavior in conjunction with each other. The consensus among researchers is that we need ten incidents to develop an effective intervention plan. Dr. Riffel prefers 10 days of data collected by the classroom teacher looking for behavioral chains. Knowing how difficult this was, she spent years simplifying a data collection tool.
• This is a free tool that graphs antecedent, behavior, and consequence data and helps the educational behavior support team determine the true function of the behavior.
• Riffel will show you how to use the tool to enter data, analyze the data, and write an effective competing pathway plan for remediating the behavior using an elementary example.

Audience: All Staff and Administrators in General and Special Education

Age Level: Elementary

Level: Tier Two and Tier Three

Topic: Data can be daunting. We simplified data collection into a form that makes it super simple to collect and then that data gives you a print out that helps you make data-based decisions. 

Time: Two Hours

 HGRESA District Members Only.

• This presentation will show what data need to be collected to do an effective intervention plan using a competing pathway model. This uses a real secondary student and 10 days of data. Dr. Riffel will show how she takes the information from the functional behavior assessment (FBA) and turns it into a data-based intervention plan.

• Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) is an open-ended term because there is not a legal definition of what an FBA should entail. Therefore, some schools feel answering 20 questions about a student, an observer sitting in the back of the room for 30 minutes, or anecdotal notes is sufficient to determine the real function of the behavior.  To have a good FBA, we need to know the triggers and the impacts of the targeted behavior in conjunction with each other. The consensus among researchers is that we need ten incidents to develop an effective intervention plan. Dr. Riffel prefers 10 days of data collected by the classroom teacher looking for behavioral chains. Knowing how difficult this was, she spent years simplifying a data collection tool.
• This is a free tool that graphs antecedent, behavior, and consequence data and helps the educational behavior support team determine the true function of the behavior.
• Riffel will show you how to use the tool to enter data, analyze the data, and write an effective competing pathway plan for remediating the behavior using a secondary example.

Audience: All Staff and Administrators in General and Special Education

Age Level: Secondary

Level: Tier Two and Tier Three

Topic: Data can be daunting. We simplified data collection into a form that makes it super simple to collect and then that data gives you a print out that helps you make data-based decisions. 

Time: Two Hours

 HGRESA District Members Only.

• Riffel and her husband lived with a friend who had autism, bipolar condition, intellectual disabilities, obsessive compulsive disorder, and mild cerebral palsy. He taught them through a decade of living together what it took to build a dignified life. She will share what he taught them. 
• Riffel will also share success stories of children who were temporarily in her day clinic with severe behaviors and how through remediation they were able to be educated with the moderate students in the school (despite being labeled as having an IQ less than 50). The students have now graduated and are participating members in a dignified life with jobs, leisure activities, friends, and a positive living arrangement.

• For years, Dr. Riffel taught students with autism, trained educators how to work with students with autism, and ran a day clinic for students with autism with severe behaviors. She and her family had the opportunity to live with an adult with autism as his friend and this is where she learned the most information. She learned how to view the world from the brain of someone with autism and despite limited communication skills she was able to determine what was causing meltdowns and how to proactively divert those tantrums. She will share techniques she learned through the years with you in this seminar.
• She will first describe what a dignified life consists of and how that should be our goal even when the student is in kindergarten. She will share ideas for:
  • Sensory integration issues
    • Auditory
    • Tactile
    • Visual
  • Potty training
    • Many students are in high school and still not potty trained- she will share how she potty trained a 16-year-old in two weeks
  • Video modeling, video self-modeling, and PowerPoint relationship narratives
    • For teaching appropriate behaviors
    • For introducing changes in the environment
  • How to help a non-verbal child communicate with a verbal peer
  • How to teach self-regulation to a student with limited abilities
  • How to help family members have a dignified life as well
• Riffel will also share what Autism is like by sharing excerpts from learners with autism. Seeing the world as they see it is important to helping them navigate the world.

Audience: Special Education and Inclusion Staff and Administrators

Age Level: All

Level: Tier Three

Topic: How do you develop a dignified life for learners with autism? This presentation focuses on real stories from the field for the development of a quality life.

Time: Seven Hours

 HGRESA District Members Only.

• • The difference between a reward and reinforcement. The two terms are inappropriate interchanged in dialogue and this has caused a lot of confusion on how we change behavior. A reward is something given for the sake of giving. A reinforcer is something that encourages or discourages a behavior. For instance, I do not speed because the thought of losing money through a ticket is not something I want to do. Despite knowing the consequences, there are some people who do not care about the ticket because they know they will get away with the speeding 9 times out of 10. How do we reinforce students who seemingly do not care what will happen?
  • Riffel has been conducting research on reinforcement since 2004. She began this because she walked into a school that was giving away bicycles to students who were caught being good. Dr. Riffel does not believe in tangible reinforcers for students. Her research found that these are not the things students will work for anyway.

   

  • In 2004, Dr. Riffel walked into a middle school that was doing a monthly drawing from students who had been caught being good and one student would win a bicycle. There were over 1000 students in the building and this meant the odds of winning a bicycle were slim to none. After several months, students quit trying. There were so many things wrong with this scenario. The first being that a once-a-month reinforcement would work for all students and that the opportunity to earn something tangible would be reinforcing for all students. This was their only level of reinforcement.
  • We immediately went out and bought spiral notebooks and started walking in schools and asking students during class changing period at the secondary level and recess at the elementary level, “What would mean the world to you? What could an adult give you that would let you know you had done a good job, but it can’t cost any money?” In all the years since then only one student has broken the code and named something tangible.  It was a fifth grader in Wyoming who said, “Food would be nice.” (You know what we found out when we inquired).  We found that students do not want tangibles. 
  • We later broke their answers down into categories after reading Chapman and White’s 2012 research on “Appreciation in the Workplace”. We found a set of categories that all the answers fit into from Pre-K through 12^th
  • Riffel will share rationale behind reinforcement and schedules of reinforcement. She will also share a resource with over 70 pages of reinforcers based on research gathered from real students since 2004.

Audience: All

Age Level: All

Level: Universal

Topic: We have to teach and then reinforce the replacement behaviors we want to see.  This presentation focuses on how to reinforce and teach those replacement behaviors.

Time: Two Hours

Audience: Children

Age Level: Pre-K through First Grade

Level: Universal

Topic: Helping students understand the difference between tattling and reporting.

Time: Two Hours

Audience: Administrators and All Staff in General and Special Education

Age Level: Pre-K through First Grade

Level: Universal

Topic: Many students who are currently in Pre-K through First Grade missed social skills during the Covid lockdown. This presentation focuses on what social skills they need and how to teach them.

Time: Six Hours

This is a focus on anxiety, self-regulation, essential skills, and reinforcing appropriate behavior. This workshop will focus on teaching explicit steps to building an amygdala recalibration station for children 4-7. We will cover anxiety, essential skills, and we will focus on how to reinforce appropriate replacement behaviors through behavior specific praise as a teaching tool.

There will be an out of the HGRESA area fee of $50.

Audience: Everyone

Age Level: All

Level: Universal

Topic: This is Dr. Riffel’s ten rules that govern behavior. She typically includes this in many different presentations because we need to know where behaviors come from. Woven into the stories are many intervention ideas.

Time: One and a Half Hours

Audience: Everyone

Age Level: All

Level: Universal

Topic: This is Dr. Riffel’s ten rules that govern behavior. She typically includes this in many different presentations because we need to know where behaviors come from. Woven into the stories are many intervention ideas.

Time: One and a Half Hours

Audience: Family Members

Age Level: All

Level: Universal

Topic: This is the ten rules that govern behavior written specifically with family examples. It could be shown during a family night at your school.

Time: Two hours

Audience: Paraeducators

Age Level: All

Topic: This is the ten rules that govern behavior written specifically for paraeducators.

Time: Two hours

Audience: All Staff and Administrators in General and Special Education

Age Level: Elementary

Level: Universal

Topic: The science of motivation and how to use it is the focus of this presentation. We have this presentation available in elementary and secondary focus.

Time: Two Hours

Audience: All Staff and Administrators in General and Special Education

Age Level: Secondary

Level: Universal

Topic: The science of motivation and how to use it is the focus of this presentation. We have this presentation available in elementary and secondary focus.

Time: Two Hours

Audience: All administrators and staff in general and special education

Age Level: Elementary

Level: Tier Two

Topic: This focuses on internalizing behaviors and how to implement appropriate interventions for those internalizing behaviors. We have this available for elementary and secondary.

Time: Eight Hours

This presentation is meant to give an overview of internalizing behaviors and how we can address them at the schoolwide, classroom, and individual levels.

In Universal Behavior Support, we typically use office discipline referrals to determine our expectations and our focus. We use it because it is basically what we have available. Unfortunately, office discipline referrals are based on externalizing behaviors. While these are the most disruptive, there are other behaviors we need to be concerned with in the classroom as they can lead to anxiety, depression, phobias, and more. These internalizing behaviors can also become the trigger for externalized behaviors.

If we can learn to put some proactive strategies in place, we can mitigate the effects of internalized behaviors for most children. The Surgeon General (2022) reports a 50% increase in anxiety and depression since 2020. This training will point out what we can look for and what we can implement at all three levels.

Some of the areas Dr. Riffel addresses include students with low self esteem and making positive connections with all students.

Audience: All administrators and staff in general and special education

Age Level: Secondary

Level: Tier Two

Topic: This focuses on internalizing behaviors and how to implement appropriate interventions for those internalizing behaviors. We have this available for elementary and secondary.

Time: Eight Hours

There is a $50 out of area fee for participants from outside the Heart of Georgia RESA systems.

Audience: All staff members and administrators in general and special education

Age Level: Kindergarten through Second Grade

Topic: In 2022 the surgeon general indicated a 50% increase in anxiety and depression in the 3–17-year-old students since 2016. This presentation focuses on what we can do proactively to help our younger students be successful in dealing with anxiety.

Time: Six Hours

There is a $50 out of area fee for participants from outside the Heart of Georgia RESA systems.

Upon successful completion of this course, the learners of a school will have developed the following:

1. 3-5 positively stated expectations based on the replacement behaviors of those currently showing up in the office for office discipline referrals (ODR)
2. A matrix which shows 3-4 examples of each expectation in all the non-classroom areas of the school.
3. A lesson plan for kicking off each replacement behavior and for all the booster shots that will be required as data indicate the need.
4. A reinforcement system of replacement behaviors including gotchas and non-tangible reinforcements.
5. A consistency and fidelity plan for office managed versus classroom managed behaviors.
6. A data system that includes the six key elements for making data-based decisions.
7. A plan for including families and communities in the implementation of their universal behavior support plan.

Audience: Everyone

Age Level: All

Level: Universal

Topic: Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports for your entire school.  This is approximately 15 hours of preparation work time to get this developed for your school.

Time: Fifteen Hours of Planning Time

There will be an out of the HGRESA area fee of $50.

This is a three-hour presentation on improving school climate. It is pre-recorded and comes with a handout workbook and a supplemental video on building relationships in the event a disconnect between staff and students is found from the preliminary survey.

There will be an out of the HGRESA area fee of $50.

This presentation was written to assist educators in reducing their own stress by setting
boundaries, using time management tips, building a support system, building leisure activities,
developing a gratitude journal, Attending professional development, seeking feedback and reflections,
and using assistive technology to make their lives easier. It also focuses on an evidence-based practice
of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

There will be an out of the HGRESA area fee of $50.

This is a realistic look at how to collect the correct data to make data-based decisions in your behavioral intervention planning instead of guessing on the function of the behavior.

There will be an out of the HGRESA area fee of $50.

Audience: All Staff and Administrators in General and Special Education

Age Level: Third-Twelfth Grade

Level: Universal and Tier Two

Topic: The anxiety epidemic was already in an up-tic before the pandemic. Post Covid-19, the surgeon general has reported there is a 50% increase in anxiety in the 3-17 population. Teachers were not prepared at the pre-service level to work with students who were struggling with anxiety. This presentation ill share an overview of anxiety and give tips on ways to address anxiety universally and at the tier-two level.

There will be an out of the HGRESA area fee of $50.

Topics Covered:
 Determining Hard Stops in the Behavioral Game (Stop sending students home or to the
principal)
 Determining What Behaviors Are Causing Issues
 Setting up Expectations and Teaching Replacement Behavior
 Maximizing Structure
 Giving Students Opportunities to Respond (Keeping them on Task All the Time)
 Proactive Strategies for the Most Common Behaviors
 Acknowledging Appropriate Behaviors
 Acknowledging Inappropriate Behaviors
 Planning for Next Year at the End of Year (Mitigating Future Behaviors)

There will be an out of the HGRESA area fee of $50.

This course is based on recommendations from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on how to build a sense of belonging in your school.

The first part of this course focuses on training mentors for your students. Instead of adding one more task to the education team's plate in the school, we ask that you invite your district coordinator for professional development to attend and share how they can provide the training for the prospective mentors. This way, they will have the information for other schools. The National Mentoring Center has all the materials they will need.

The second part of this course deals with service-learning projects which may or may not be guided by mentors with the help of the classroom teachers.

The third part of this course focuses on student-led clubs, and this definitely will need mentors who have been trained to help guide the students in their clubs.

Finally, the fourth session of this course focuses on building community staff to staff and then building a sense of belonging with the students with a quick, professional development course on things that can be done at the classroom level to build a sense of belonging.

When all four quadrants are implemented, the student's sense of belonging to the school will improve.

There is a plethora of information to cover. This would work best if approximately 1.5 to 2 hours are spent on each section during weekly faculty meetings or over two professional development days at the beginning of the year.