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ESSENTIAL FOR LIVING – 2 DAY CONFERENCE

October 17th & 18th

 PRESENTED BY, PATRICK MCGREEVY, PH.D., BCBA-D & 

CHRISTINA MARTIN, M.S., CCC-SLP, BCBA, LBA

with a Panel of Current Users of Essential for Living

(panel to include school administrators, SLPs, BCBAs in a school and center, and parents)

SEE SCHEDULE AT BOTTOM OF PAGE

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION WILL BE

CLOSING TODAY, OCT 15th AT 6:00PM

Registration at the conference will be $150.00 with Cash or Check

 

REGISTER TODAY HERE

 

Email Confirmations and Additional Conference Details will be Sent the Day Before to the E-mail Provided at Registration

If you are a Texas SLP or BCBA/BCaBA, Please bring your

SLP’s – Texas License # AND Your TSHA Membership #

BCBAs/BCaBAs please provide your BACB Certificate #

 

CONFERENCE INFORMATION:

All attendees will need to verify that we have your E-Mail address AND License/Certificate#(s) correct in order to receive a certificate of attendance via E-Mail after the conference.  This information will be placed behind your name tag for you to verify.  Please see the help desk after registration at the first break with any changes.  Coffee, breakfast items, and snacks are provided.  Please remember to dress in layers as temperatures may vary.

Essential for Living Books and Guides will be available for purchase at the conference.  Please bring cash and/check to simplify transactions.

Essential for Living was born from a desire to provide children and adults with moderate-to-severe disabilities, including but not limited to autism, a comprehensive life skills curriculum with social validity, along with evidence-based teaching and measurement strategies and procedures, that result in the dignity and quality of life these children and adults deserve.

Many children with named developmental disabilities, like Down syndrome, Tay Sachs syndrome, Angelman syndrome, or Microcephaly, and unnamed pervasive, intellectual or developmental disabilities also experience the difficulties previously described. In recent years, some of these children have also been ‘diagnosed’ with [i.e., categorized as having] autism. Regardless of age or history of instruction, neither curricular references to typical development nor expectations for these children that include ‘catching up’ to their typically-developing peers are reasonable or appropriate. Expectations consistent with safe, effective, and high-quality participation in family, school, and community living should be embraced, and ‘life skills’ and Essential for Living should guide instruction and habilitation.
Essential for Living includes over three thousand skills sorted into domains on communication, language, daily living, social, functional academic, and tolerating skills, along with a domain on severe problem behavior, which encompass the core components of autism and many other developmental disabilities.

Skills within these domains are sequenced from must-have, to should-have, to good-to-have, to nice-to-have, ‘referenced against’ safe, effective, and high-quality participation in family, school, and community living.
The must-have skills are also called the Essential Eight:
1- Making requests for access to highly preferred items and activities and for the removal or reduction in intensity of specific situations,
2- Waiting after making requests,
3- Accepting removals — the removal of preferred items and activities, making transitions, sharing, and taking turns,
4- Completing brief, previously acquired tasks,
5- Accepting ‘No’,
6- Following directions related to health and safety,
7- Completing daily living skills related to health and safety, and
8- Tolerating situations related to health and safety

With Essential for Living, most of these children and adults can learn to function as speakers and can acquire a repertoire of speaking, listening, functional academic, social, daily living, and tolerating skills filled with meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. 

These repertoires may include…

  • ‘expressing preferences for specific items, activities, and people’
  • ‘making a request for a cookie (biscuit) or a cracker’
  • ‘tolerating a corner chair and a sidelyer’
  • ‘walking with an instructor or care provider when directed to do so’
  • ‘turning on the cold water before the hot’
  • ‘stopping and turning around when your name is called’
  • ‘walking past a knife without picking it up’
  • ‘making a request for ice cream with chocolate syrup’
  • ‘sharing and taking turns with preferred items and activities’
  • ‘following a picture schedule’
  • ‘tolerating changes in that schedule’
  • ‘retrieving an item when requested to do so’
  • ‘making a request for chips (crisps) from a peer’
  • ‘indicating that they do not understand what someone said’
  • ‘naming items and activities that are part of breakfast’
  • ‘answering questions related to breakfast, before, during, and after breakfast’
  • ‘retrieving items in the grocery store from a shopping list’
  • ‘asking a friend about the location of their red socks with the blue stripes’
  • ‘using a debit card to make a purchase’
  • ‘taking their own medication with a minder’
  • ‘answering questions related to many previous or upcoming events’
  • ‘reading words on signs, to do lists, shopping lists, or menus’
  • ‘describing a headache or stomach discomfort’
  • ‘texting brief messages’.

Conference Schedule

Each Day (6 CE Hours)

 

Morning 

8:30 – 9:00 Registration
9:00 – 12:00  Presentation
12:00 – 1:30 Lunch Break
(15 minutes in break time at speaker discretion)

Total of 3 Hours of CEs

Afternoon 

1:30 – 4:00 Presentation
(15 minutes in break time at speaker discretion)

Total of 3 Hours of CEs

12 CE Hours for Both Days

SPEAKERS

Patrick McGreevy,Ph.D.,BCBA-D

Dr. McGreevy received B.S. and M.A. degrees in Psychology and Special Education, respectively, from the University of Iowa. He was a special education teacher for eight years, working with children and young adults with moderate-to-severe developmental disabilities. He
received the Ph.D. degree in Education from Kansas University under the guidance of Ogden R. Lindsley. Dr. McGreevy served on the Special Education faculties of the University of Missouri, Kansas City and Louisiana State University. He also served on the faculty of the Behavior Analysis Program at the Florida Institute of Technology. He is the author of Teaching and Learning in Plain English, an introduction to Precision Teaching, and the founder of the Journal of Precision Teaching and Standard Celeration Charting. He is also the author of ten journal articles and a book chapter on teaching verbal behavior. He is the first author of Essential for Living, a new functional skills curriculum, assessment, and professional practitioner’s handbook for children and adults with moderate-to-severe disabilities. For the past 30 years, Dr. McGreevy has provided consultations for children and adults with developmental disabilities in school districts, residential programs, and hospitals, specializing in the treatment of aggressive and self-injurious behavior in individuals with limited communication or language skills. Under the guidance of Dr. Jack Michael, Dr. McGreevy has also conducted workshops on teaching communication skills and language in the context of severeproblem behavior, which are based on B. F. Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior.

 

 

Christina Martin, CCC-SLP, BCBA

Christina is a Speech Language Pathologist licensed in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. She has a Certificate of Clinical Competence for Speech-Language Pathologists from the American Speech Language Hearing Association.  She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst licensed in Texas and Oklahoma. She earned a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Speech Language Pathology and a M.S. in Communication Disorders from the University of Texas at Dallas. She received a Graduate Academic Certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis from the University of North Texas. Christina has supervised speech-language pathologist assistants in providing speech and language services to individuals with a multitude of diagnoses.  She has also supervised behavior technicians and those pursuing certification as a behavior analyst.  She has been an invited speaker at national and state conferences, universities, and local organizations presenting on topics related to the integration of speech and language and applied behavior analysis. Christina serves as the Strand Chair for the Cognition and Behavior Across the Lifespan strand for the Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Association (TSHA) Convention Programming Committee.  She is also the TSHA CE Coordinator for the Texas Association for Behavior Analysis (TxABA) and Families for Effective Autism Treatment- North Texas (FEAT-NT).

 

 

PRESENTED BY

INSPIRATION SPONSORS