October is ADHD Awareness Month and since nearly all school staff members – not just teachers – interact with students with ADHD, it’s a good time to make sure that they have a foundational understanding of ADHD and are familiar with the strategies and interventions that can be used to help these students be more…

Challenging behavior is not just frustrating; it can have serious negative effects for educators, students, and family members. Challenging behavior can be disruptive, interfere with teaching and learning, and lead to punishment and changes in class or school placements. It’s not just a problem for one student. The whole class can feel the effects and…

Caregivers and families play an important role in a child’s development and are instrumental to their social, emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being. Caregivers of children with disabilities or delays may need additional support to understand their child’s special needs. Caregivers might also need help in finding and accessing information and services for their child and…

As students and teachers make their way back to school, preparing for a smooth transition and successful year is important. Students with exceptionalities entering the classroom face new and familiar challenges and the demand on educators to skillfully support these students is rising. More than 60% of students ages 6 through 21 served under IDEA,…

Before we can discuss early language skills, we need to be clear about the definition of language development. Language development and communication are about more than talking. They refer to the different ways a child understands and communicates, only part of which include spoken words. Language development is important for children to adequately exchange information…

A recent study released by the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) and Understood, entitled Forward Together: Helping Educators Unlock the Power of Students Who Learn Differently, reveals an unfortunate reality impacting the education of the 1 in 5 students with learning disabilities and attention issues: “Even though more than 70% of students with LD or ADHD spend at least…

Helping children through the process of social emotional learning and setting them on the path to social emotional competence is an important role of the adults involved in their lives. Social emotional competence is associated with so many factors related to leading a productive, fulfilling life, including personal mental well-being, school success, positive relationships, responsible…

Potentially more than any other aspect of early childhood education, researchers agree on the importance of a child’s social emotional development, or social emotional learning (SEL). This is because social emotional competence is associated with so many factors related to leading a productive, fulfilling life, including: personal mental well-being school success positive relationships responsible decision making…

Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) is a more proactive, effective and efficient practice of supporting students in reaching their full potential than traditional “wait to fail” models. The foundation of an effective behavioral MTSS system is a strong tier one that includes all of the research based core components for effectively managing challenging behavior of…

Students with an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, think, learn, and process information differently from most of their peers. Beyond the facts and figures of subjects like math and language arts, there’s an enormous amount of data that students must pay attention to, interpret, organize, and act upon. Students with ASD also need to observe…