Speaker: Nancy Clements, MA, CCC-SLP
Session begins at 9am and ends by 3:30pm, Sign in begins at 8:30am
Thomas College, Waterville Maine
Register online at our secure registration site. Registration closes one week prior to each event, so register early!
Late registrations will be considered if space is available.
This workshop will begin by exploring three practical frameworks and teaching strategies. First, Social Behavior Mapping (SBM) is a visual framework that teaches how to better understand the social expectations in a given situation. SBM then guides us to strategies specific to an individual’s needs as they discover what’s “expected” or “unexpected” in a social situation and how their behavior impacts the feelings of others.
Next, we explain through a visual framework the journey between learning to be friendly and maintaining successful friendships through our Peer-a-mid of Friendships. We will delve into what it means to be a friend, distinguishing between 1) “being friendly,” 2) developing a friendship, and 3) having a “bonded friend.”
The visual tools named the Spiral of Social Success and the Spiral of Social Failure guide how we teach social competencies while also teaching how to manage social anxiety. We will also offer some basic concepts and ideas for running Social Thinking groups. We round out the day by demonstrating how to better understand the inner minds of individuals with social learning challenges when our standardized testing falls short. Video footage of the informal assessment will demonstrate ways in which all of us (diagnosticians, parents, paraprofessionals, treatment clinicians, etc.) can work more effectively with our students.
Participants will be able to:
- Describe how to assess “thinking with your eyes” and how this is different from identifying the direction of eye gaze.
- Describe the core components of the “Double Interview” and explain how it helps assess perspective taking.
- Describe the social-emotional chain reaction through the four columns of the Social Behavior Map.
- Define at least three of five different stages of the friendship pyramid and one example of how to teach “approachability”.
Contact hours are awarded upon completion of the workshop. CEUs (.6) are available with a $20 processing fee.
Nancy Clements is a speech language pathologist and Executive Director of Social Thinking Boston®, the East Coast sister clinic to Social Thinking Stevens Creek and Social Thinking Santana Row. She brings her highly creative approach to her clinical practice, where she maintains a very active and varied caseload ranging from early social learners through adults. She is especially interested in bringing Social Thinking concepts to all learners and continuing to analyze the impact of social thinking methodologies across all tiers using a Response to Intervention (RTI) model. Nancy enjoys formulating programs from the ground up through creative strategies, systems of implementation, and models of efficacy that are data driven. Having been raised by parents who were both educators, she brings an empathic and collaborative approach to coaching teachers, administrators and specialists.
Before founding and opening Social Thinking Boston in 2012, Nancy was the Program Manager for Communication Services at the Stern Center for Language and Learning. She developed an in-depth Social Thinking program, including developmentally based groups, off-site coaching and consultations, and a three-credit graduate course in partnership with Saint Michaels College. In 2011 she mentored within the Colchester School District to analyze the impact of social thinking methodologies across all tiers using a Response to Intervention (RTI) model. Similar models have been duplicated in the Winooksi and Swanton Vermont school districts.
Throughout her 30+ year career she has served as a direct service provider, consultant, and has presented extensively across New England, Nationally and in Canada. Her strong ties to the Vermont educational community have reemerged in the greater Boston area, where her early professional experiences included clinically based interventions through the New England Rehab Hospital and the University Hospital in Boston. These experiences provided the opportunity to work within interdisciplinary teams both in the assessment process and development of programs, including the use of technology. She began incorporating her knowledge of assistive/adaptive technology (AAC) into her work and introduced this concept to the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center while continuing to extensively explore and build her skills with folks requiring assistive technology for communication. This expertise led her to the University of Vermont’s Department of Communication and Disorders Program to implement an extensive three year national grant designed to teach graduate students about this technology while developing models of assistive/adaptive technology implementation in rural communities. Following her passion, she became a consultant for the Prentke-Romich company, traveling and providing extensive training about AAC. She became a leader in this field throughout Vermont and New England, often consulting to teams building blended programs, pulling together models from social communication, sensory integration, and technology.
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