Friday Sessions
Keynote
Bucket Filling - Singing Our Way to Kinder, Happier Classrooms with Bucketfilling
Presented by Red Gramer
Bucket Filling is a simple but profoundly effective way of encouraging children to be more thoughtful and caring and to exercise their ability to have a positive impact on others. In this music-filled, highly interactive presentation, Red brings the principles of Bucket Filling vibrantly to life, showing how music, stories, and an openness of heart can uncover the hidden Bucket Filler in every child (and adult). No musical talent required.
10:15 AM - 11:25 AM Breakout Sessions
Less is More With PBL!
Presented by Toby J. Karten
Discover how to facilitate Project-Based Learning (PBL) units that offer learners with IEPs voice, choice, and challenge through student-driven pedagogy and authentic engagement. Explore how the PBL framework provides inquiry, discussion, debate, and reflection to honor learners’ skills, concepts, and strengths. Walk away with PK-12 PBL strategies and resources!
10 Pearls of Executive Functioning
Presented by Matthew Fisher
Executive function impacts our students both in the classroom and in daily life. We will cover ten techniques to help improve executive function in the classroom and help get our students back on track. We will cover topics from organization (both notes and paperwork), time management, to study tips.
"Help! My student is out of control!"
Presented by Jen Hills
Every day in schools across America, students are removed from classrooms and learning environments due to disruptive behaviors. Valuable instructional time is undermined by competing challenging behaviors. However, when teachers have the tools to gain instructional control, students learn more and exhibit fewer difficult behaviors; maximizing learning potential for all!
Circle of Friends - A Program Worth Fighting For
Presented by Amber Moore; Danica Vincent-Olson; & Bill Moore
This session will inform participants of the impact of a Circle of Friends group at the high school level. We will share student stories, activity ideas, “findraising” options, and tips on starting a Circle of Friends group in any school at any level.
How to Create Culturally Responsive IEP Meetings
Presented by Sarah Edwards, MA; Dr. Gabriela Montalvo, PsyD; & Gabrielle DeWolff
Session goers can expect to better understand how to attune culturally your IEP meetings to meet the needs of your families from minoritized backgrounds. This session will first cover the current body of research and will end with examples of how the presenters incorporate culturally responsive practices into their work.
Megaminds at Work! Teaching Mindfulness and More!
Presented by Meagan Ackerman
This session focuses on leveraging brain physiology instruction to teach our students the power of mindfulness and other self-regulation concepts. Let's grow MegaMinds!
Effectively Targeting Your Reading Instruction using Data Tracking
Presented by Corey Pollard, M.S.
Learn easy-to-implement processes and systems for student data collection that will allow you to pinpoint student strengths and weaknesses to provide the best possible literacy instruction for struggling students. Using effective data-tracking will also allow you to communicate with parents and colleagues to provide a team-based approach to student success.
Yes Day: Social Media and Social Emotional Learning
Presented by Caron A. Westland, Ph.D.; Shanae Weber, MA; & Arianna Shami, MA
Any day can be “Yes Day”. Embrace screen time by integrating Social Media and Social Emotional Learning (SEL). Click Bait is real. By merging the knowledge of SEL and the lure of social media, teach students to be strategic social media consumers rather than pawns in a game of algorithms.
Successful Employment for Students with Intellectual Disabilities: College Inclusion Can Make it Happen
Presented by Cristi Kasa; Nick Wrape; & Samantha Gonzalez
Students with intellectual disabilities often struggle to gain jobs they love and that are connected to their strengths and passion. Using inclusive supports and Person Driven Planning the Office of Inclusive Services has been able to provide students the education they need to gain successful above minimum wage employment. Come hear from two of our students and our director and learn about the opportunities going to college can provide.
1:45 PM - 2:55 PM Breakout Sessions
The Bully, The Bullied, And the Not-So-Innocent Bystander
Presented by Barbara Coloroso
Whether they target others, are targeted, or play the role of the not-so-innocent bystanders, young people are deeply affected by offline and online cruelty. It takes more than slogans, posters, and anti-bullying programs to break the cycle of violence and to create more deeply caring communities. Brave-hearted kids willing to step up and step in to stop these attacks can't do it alone; we all need to pitch in to make a difference.
Hello World! Embracing and Celebrating Diversity through Music and Movement
Presented by Red Gramer
All children have a need to be seen and their selfconcept nourished. In our increasingly interconnected world, our students come from a broader range of cultural backgrounds than ever before, presenting students and teachers with the opportunity of developing an openhearted and embracing stance to those different than themselves and skills that enrich, expand, and nourish the lives of all involved. This presentation shows participants how to use music and movement, humor and play, to orient their classrooms into a lively, resilient posture of lifelong cultural learning and awareness. No musical talent required.
SPED Needs and Juvenile Justice
Presented by Wendy Loloff Cooper & Donna Trujillo
This session will explore both the research and recent experiences from an Attorney General Justice Innovation Grant related to the role disability plays in the lives of juveniles who have been charged with or committed offenses and the difficulty the combination poses for school success.
Setting Ambitious "Gap-Closing" IEP Goals
Presented by Jon Paul Burden
This session will review many current practices regarding the development of IEP goals, and will introduce a different perspective on ensuring that IEP goals are not just attainable, but appropriately ambitious in light of the student's circumstances. Goals will be designed to close achievement gaps.
Mindfulness in the Special Education Classroom
Presented by Charlie Merrow
Over the past year, Charlie Merrow has researched how special education teachers across the country use mindfulness practices in their classrooms. Through qualitative research methods, Merrow collected the most effective mindfulness practices special education teachers use. This session will present on the top five interventions and provide participants with hands-on tips for bringing sustainable, culturally-responsive, and inclusive mindfulness tools into their classrooms
Strategies for Success: Addressing Dyslexia and Systematic Intervention
Presented by Leslie Gaiser & Michelle Brenner
Explore the lessons learned as one district went from a hodgepodge intervention approach to a more systematic approach to support students with reading difficulties. A workshop packed with practical tips for supporting teachers in the classroom as well as schools and systems looking for next steps in this journey.
LEAD: Stories from Students
Presented by LEAD Students
Students from Cheyenne Mountain High School LEAD program, share their personal stories about life and school and how they are impacted by their disabilities.
Sigh…Emergent Literacy for Students with Significant Support Needs.
Presented by Diane Carroll
With appropriate support, students with the most significant disabilities can make progress to becoming independent readers, writers and symbolic communicators. This presentation will provide an overview of emergent literacy strategies that are used to develop reading behaviors that can develop into conventional reading for students with significant support needs.
3:15 PM - 4:25 PM Breakout Sessions
Resilience Can Be Taught: 10 Strategies Proven to Motivate Any Student
Presented by Christian Moore, WhyTry Organization
Want to engage every student in your classroom? This session will demonstrate 10 strategies proven to strengthen relationships, grab attention, inspire, and build resilience in students of all ages and learning types. Participants will receive valuable insights into teaching social and emotional life skills in ways that students can understand, relate to, and remember. These strategies have helped countless youth in K-12 schools, mental health, and correctional organizations worldwide in the areas of academic success, dropout prevention, classroom management, and bullying prevention. Learn how to engage every student using visual metaphors, videos, music, and activities.
Behavior Intervention for Challenging Students
Presented by Stacey Holland
When faced with behavior challenges, we need interventions and ideas in one place. This session will provide ideas and resources to help you get through those times!
Neuroeducational Evaluation - How to Advance Your Team's Evaluation Practices
Presented by Heather Hotchkiss & Krista Klabo
Participants will learn about neuroeducation evaluation and how this process can promote comprehensiveness. This session will help educators understand their role, applicability in the school setting, application for a broad range of suspected disability categories, and tools will be shared to help teams advance their evaluations and selection of interventions.
IEP Facilitative Skills: The Latest and The Greatest!
Presented by Mary Anne Fleury
Do you ever experience contention within your IEP meetings? You are not alone! This session will focus on strategies and tools to use tomorrow to improve the collaboration and communication within your meetings, creating more consensus than ever before!
Intentional by Design - Create Student Success Stories
Presented by Jeanne Bonds, EdS & Courtney Berry, EdD
Student stories are created when we discover the lagging skills, identify the root cause and design plans for accommodations and instruction that support student success. Accommodations and instructional practices should not reduce the rigor, but provide the intended access for deeper learning. Attendees will learn practical classroom applications in order to create student success stories.
Direct School Psychological Services: Intervention for Diverse Adolescents
Presented by Heather Study
This session will share a variety of screening tools and intervention approaches utilized in a direct service model for students ranging from those with significant needs to gifted levels in a high school setting. Specific case examples will be provided on how a range of psychological resources have been implemented on an individualized basis to support student social-emotional goals on their IEPs. Emphasis on an asset, strengths-based approach, applying positive psychology methods is inherent in this session.
Anti-Racism as Inclusion: The Curb Cut Effect
Presented by Dr. Dorothy Shapland & Dr. Elmer Harris
Can anti-racism practices in education lead to more effective inclusion? The curb-cut effect tells us that what supports one small group right now, will have far reaching benefits. Explore the child development science of racial awareness and find pathways for identity-affirming anti-racism practices to lead us to inclusion for all students.
The Executive Functioning Experience
Presented by Cyle Feingold & Tammy English
Experience activities that simulate the hardships and frustrations of what it’s like to have an executive functioning deficit and leave with strategies and supports which lead to greater independence. Come to our interactive workshop to problem solve, collaborate and find solutions to the everyday challenges executive functioning deficits bring.
What’s Next? Teaching The Skills That Matter Through EdTech
Presented by Cathi Allen
Now that we have more insight into the positive outcomes (Spoiler alert!) from educational technology during the pandemic, it is time for us to consider integrating evidence-based Edtech strategies into our everyday SSN and secondary students’ learning to support executive function development while reducing educators' data collection and assessment workload.