If you are reading this, you already know that our disability service systems provide woefully inadequate toolboxes combined with built-in inefficiencies that inhibit inclusion and stymie chances for successful outcomes. Collaborative Curiosity & the Unstuck Protocol offers schools, agencies, institutions and families a path to:
- expand cultural expectations and practice from trauma-sensitive to neuroceptive-receptive (respond to raised eyebrows)
- prevent escalation and circumvent the need to correct, shame, blame, discipline, seclude or restrain
- approach maladaptive and unexpected behavior as ineffective communication;
- develop and implement support and service programs to, for, and with the child (rather than the service providers)
- improve efficacy of evidence-based interventions
Collaborative Curiosity offers a reimagined approach to understanding the interconnected functions of cognitive domains, executive functioning, and sensory integration processing. Attendees will gain fresh understanding of the learning process, upgraded tools for interpreting and amalgamating information, ways to place and keep the student at the helm, and how to apply the Unstuck Protocol, a practice for preventing escalation and empowering meaningful inclusion. We’ll share no-cost, practices and collaborative strategies for developing holistic, result-oriented IEPs.
The best way to prevent restraint and seclusion is to not have a reason to consider it.
- There are few seamless, non-punitive and non-patronizing tools that empower meaningful inclusion – most are reactive. By the time a student needs coping skills, a behavior plan, or is subject to discipline, disruption has escalated and LRE is at risk. The illusion of inclusion is when a student is merely physically present in the classroom. Meaningful inclusion is when an IEP supports a student’s engagement, participation, access to grade level academic and social curricula – and provides opportunities for generalizing combined skills.
- The special education process dissects the student into different skill deficit areas, then siloes services to address those separate needs and leaves the student out of the process. Evaluations, even if they are written in lay language, often aren’t understood by themselves or in the context of all evaluations. The process functions like the six blind men and the elephant, where no one is collaborating, and no one is listening to the elephant.
When adults respond to a child’s ineffective communication instead of their maladaptive behavior, meaningful inclusion and independent skill building become possible. This reimagined approach provides innovative, no-cost, functional, effective and collaborative strategies for developing holistic, integrated, successful-results-oriented IEPs and seamlessly inclusive service support plans (wow, that’s a lot of qualifiers!).
