• Matt Timm, Ph.D., Tennessee Voices for Children
  Phil Strain, Ph.D., University of Colorado at Denver
  

Many parents find themselves struggling with the challenging behavior of their young child at some point in time.  This session examines evidence-based strategies and service systems of demonstrated effectiveness in preventing or reducing behaviors of concern.  Special emphasis will be placed on collaborative relationships between families and professionals.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Ron Roybal, University of Colorado at Denver
  Kelly Wilson, University of Colorado at Denver
  Katie Engelhardt, MA, University of Colorado at Denver
  

This session will focus on classroom wide and individual visual support systems used to promote children's appropriate behaviors.  Visual Systems used to promote language, social skills, child engagement and following routines will be highlighted.  Presenters will demonstrate how to use these strategies through the use of videos, photos, and live demonstrations.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Ann Donoghue Dillon
  

PCP is the process of gathering people invested in a child's life and engaging them to form a vision, create action plans, and check on progress.  This session will explore this process and study how it has worked for very young children, especially at transition at age 3.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Rochelle Lentini, M.Ed., University of South Florida
  Denise Binder
  

The Teaching Pyramid model provides guidance to early childhood educators about the use of behavior support and instructional practices that is based upon research on effective instruction for young children (National Research Council, 2001), promotion of children's social competence (Guralnick & Neville, 1997; Webster-Stratton, 1999; Hyson, 2004), and positive behavior support (Fox, Dunlap, & Cushing, 2002; Fox, Dunlap, & Powell, 2002).  This session is an overview on implementing the Teaching Pyramid across an entire early childhood program by establishing staff buy-in, building a leadership team, and implementing pyramid benchmarks of quality.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Amy Hunter, LICSW, ZERO TO THREE
  

This session will describe the critical role of attachment and relationships to infant and toddler development.  The session will use self reflection, video, discussion and interactive experiences to explore the attachment process.  The session will identify multiple strategies to foster positive attachment relationships with children and parents.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Micki Ostrosky, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Greg Cheatham, PhD, Arizona State University
  

In this introductory session the presenters will provide an overview of the CSEFEL Pyramid Model to help participants develop a basic understanding of the social emotional framework.  Each level of the pyramid will be discussed with key aspects highlighted.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Susan Sandall, Ph.D., University of Washington
  

This session will provide an overview of the Building Blocks framework, a set of educational practices designed to help teachers and teams include young children with disabilities in early learning environments.  The framework includes four levels of support: a quality early learning program, modifications and adaptations, strategies for embedding teaching and learning opportunities, and child-focused instructional support.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Barbara Smith, Ph.D., University of Colorado at Denver
  

This session will present effective ways of collaborating with colleagues and families to promote children's social and emotional development and address challenging behavior.  Effective collaboration is necessary for implementing Systems of Care, wrap-around and program-wide adoption of the teaching pyramid or PBS.  Strategies for promoting collaboration and team-building will be presented as well as ideas and resources for running meetings that build trust and commitment.  Participants will develop action plans for either state, local, or program level collaborative initiatives.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Phil Strain, Ph.D., University of Colorado at Denver
  Edward (Ted) Bovey, M.A., University of Colorado at Denver
  

This presentation will address four basic questions regarding peer-mediated social skills intervention: 1) What are the key skills to teach, 2) How to teach typical children intervention skills, 3) How to embed social skill opportunities and, 4) Child Outcomes

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Susan Jack
  Rochelle Lentini, M.Ed., University of South Florida
  Laurie Beckel
  

The Teaching Pyramid (Fox, Dunlap, Hemmeter, Joseph & Strain, 2003) provides the framework for providing tiered support to strengthen children's social emotional competence and provide support to children with challenging behavior.  The application of the pyramid model in early childhood settings requires a focused effort on increasing teacher competencies at each level.  Joyce and Showers (2002) noted that coaching is the key factor in teachers translating knowledge and skill development into application in the classroom.  In this session, the coaching model will be applied to increasing teacher's use of the Teaching Pyramid practices in classrooms.  Practical strategies, resources, and facilitation techniques for supporting teachers with implementation of the Teaching Pyramid will be shared.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Judy Carta, Ph.D., University of Kansas-Juniper Gardens Children's Project
  

Parent-child interaction is a critical ingredient in promoting children's early social-emotional development.  In this session, participants will learn about the Indicator of Parent-Child Interaction, a tool that practitioners can use to assess when their interventions are effective in helping parents support their children's development.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Pam Buschbacher, Ed.D., CCC-SLP, Speech-Language Pathologist, PBS Specialist
  

Social Stories, Routine Scripts, and Rule Books are powerful tools in preventing and managing challenging behaviors in young children.  This practical and interactive workshop will provide information and practice in designing and using these tools in a variety of formats (i.e., photo, icon, print, and videotape) to support young children's social and emotional understanding and development.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Kwang-Sun Blair, Ph.D., University of South Florida
  

This session will present a variety of functional assessment methods that will help early childhood educators and families assess challenging behavior of young children.  The focus will be on identifying factors that influence the occurrences of the challenging beheavior, and interpreting and summarizing the assessment data that would lead to potential programming strategies.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Karen Blase, Ph.D., Florida Mental Health Institute
  

Data about the effectiveness of interventions are critical but such data will not help us with successful, sustainable, and large-scale implementation.  This workshop will focus on frameworks and principles related to effectively changing the behavior of practitioners, services, and systems.  Participants will learn about 'active ingredients', usability testing, implementation drivers, innovations zones, and PIP and PEP cycles.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Linda Broyles, SEK-CAP Head Start, Kansas
  

Through the implementation of the Teaching Pyramid philosophy of managing challenging behaviors SEK-CAP has seen increased staff satisfaction, decreased staff turnover, increased internal capacity to deal with challenging behaviors, decreased mental health referrals and increased opportunities to teach.  Linda will discuss with session participants what it takes to develop, implement, and sustain the model.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Mary Louise Hemmeter, Vanderbilt University
  Pat Snyder, University of Florida
  Lise Fox, Ph.D., University of South Florida
  

This session is designed for programs that are systematically implementing the Teaching Pyramid and want to capture the outcomes of their efforts.  A framework for measuring implementation fidelity and outcomes will be presented.  In addition, we will describe a variety of tools for measuring fidelity and outcomes and strategies for using data from these tools to make decisions regarding implementation.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Donna Britt, Ed.D
  

All behavior has meaning.  Successfully reducing or removing challenging behaviors requires digging for the meaning and cause.  Participants practice the strategies of careful observation, wondering, and flexible response as they explore four causes of challenging behaviors, the child, caregiver, environment, and parents.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Rochelle Lentini, M.Ed., University of South Florida
  Anne Nicole Taccetta
  Rachel Lee Anderson, University of South Florida
  

Research has established a link between social emotional skills in young children and success in school (Raver, 2002, Smith, 2004).  Many children need focused instruction of skills to identify and express feelings appropriately, problem-solve, and interact with peers.  Participants will learn how and when to teach skills within developmentally appropriate activities to ensure that children learn and generalize these skills.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Barbara Kaiser
  Amy Santos, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Greg Cheatham, PhD, Arizona State University
  

Culture is the lens through which we see the world.  In this interactive session we will discuss the impact of culture on our teaching style and on young children's social emotional development.  We will focus our discussion on immigrant and migrant families in early childhood programs.  Finally, we will share resources and practical ideas.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Rob Corso, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University
  Barbara Smith, Ph.D., University of Colorado at Denver
  Ardith Ferguson, Colorado Part C Program
  Roxane Kaufmann, Georgetown University
  Al Zachik
  Tom Rendon
  

This interactive session is designed to assist state administrators and training and technical assistance providers develop systems that support local providers implement evidence-based practices to improve social emotional outcomes and reduce challenging behavior for young children birth through five.  Individuals from several states will share their experiences in planning and implementing a comprehensive statewide professional development system utilizing a prevention, promotion, and intervention framework which integrates evidence-based practices to address the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of young children with and without disabilities.  Participants will have the opportunity to discuss approaches, strategies, and challenges for a) designing effective interagency planning teams, b) creating models of training and technical assistance systems that effect change at the local level, c) implementing meaningful coaching and mentoring models, and d) developing long-term sustainability plans that include evaluation approaches that measure outcomes for children and families.  The session will provide a panel representing CSEFEL state leadership team members from Colorado, Iowa, and Maryland.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Tweety Yates, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Mary Louise Hemmeter, Vanderbilt University
  

We all know the importance of supporting the development of young children's literacy and social emotional development.  This session will focus on fun ideas and strategies for linking literacy and social emotional activities across infant, toddler, preschool and home visiting programs.  Resources, books, and hands-on practical ideas will be shared.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Lise Fox, Ph.D., University of South Florida
  Susan Jack
  

Program leadership teams are essential to the implementation of program-wide adoption of the pyramid model.  The leadership team is responsible for determining the areas of emphases and implementation steps for model adoption, ongoing evaluation, data-based decision-making, professional development, family partnerships, program practices and policies.  This session will provide training materials and tools related to team formation, planning for program-wide adoption, initial 3-day leadership team training, and ongoing teaming efforts.  Participants in this session should be familiar with program-wide adoption of the teaching pyamid (e.g., program-wide PBS).

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Kimberly Diamond-Berry, Ph.D., ZERO TO THREE
  

"Infant Mental Health" often conjures up various images in our "mind's eye."  Some imagine an infant or toddler on a couch in the office of a mental health professional.  Others think of working with very young children who have challenging behaviors.  Still others imagine a consistent, caring relationship with a trusted caregiver.  Geared toward direct services staff, this session will briefly define Infant Mental Health in the context of early care giving relationships.  The session will also focus on the "everyday routines" that support healthy infant and toddler social-emotional development, and the role of direct services staff (e.g. teachers, home visitors, and family support specialists) within this context.  Program strategies and best practices for partnering with parents will also be considered.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Anne Nicole Taccetta
  Rachel Lee Anderson, University of South Florida
  

Planning for transitions and supporting young children between activities should be done through evidence-based practices and strategies (Ostrosky, Jung, & Hemmeter, 2003).  This session will focus on strategies that promote successful transitions between activities through the use of video samples and make and take activities.  Participants will learn how improtant it is to "MOVE" with a plan of action so that transitions are smooth and engaging.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Glen Dunlap, Ph.D., University of South Florida
  

An overview of the process of developing behavior support plans will be described, including a brief coverage of functional assessment with the emphasis being on the development of assessment-based support plans.  Examples will be from home, child care, and preschool settings, and will include children from 2-5 years of age.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Edward (Ted) Bovey, M.A., University of Colorado at Denver
  Katie Engelhardt, MA, University of Colorado at Denver
  

As the number of young children diagnosed with autism continues to rise, early childhood programs are frequently being faced with the challenge of including these children in their settings and supporting their significant social, language, and behavioral needs.  This session will provide attendees with a proven framework for including young children with autism in traditional early childhood settings.  Information regarding key programming components, classroom strategies, teaching strategies and individualized supports will be presented.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Bobbie J. Vaughn, University of South Florida
  

This interactive session will provide an in-depth focus on fuctional assessment and support plan development using the Teaching Tools for Young Children with Challenging Behavior.  Participants will use case studies to analyze and summarize functional assessment information, and develop a behavior support plan.

• Micki Ostrosky, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Tweety Yates, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Amy Santos, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  

When sharing information on social emotional competence with teachers, numerous training dilemmas emerge.  This session will address common training issues such as teachers who want a quick fix or early educators who dismiss all suggestions offered.  Through discussion and interactive activities, solutions will be generated to address these tough issues.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Roxane Kaufmann, Georgetown University
  Neal Horen, Ph.D., Georgetown University
  

This session will provide an overview of early childhood mental health consultation and highlight 2 resources: a Training of Trainers Guide on Mental Health Consultation and a Tool Kit on Evaluating Mental Health Consultation.  Participants will explore the materials, practice using some of the training modules and discuss how they might be used back home.  Presenters will discuss some of the issues inherent in consultation such as who provides consultation, what occures during consultation, the importance of defining the approach and the importance of evaluating the process.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Kelly Wilson, University of Colorado at Denver
  Ron Roybal, University of Colorado at Denver
  Edy Purcell, M.A., University of Colorado at Denver
  

We will examine the framework necessary to support children in inclusive environments during large group activities.  In this training, teams will identify structure and routines within their large group settings.  Participants will leave with additional tools and strategies that make large group time's fun, interactive, and engaging experiences for all children.

LEARNING OUTCOMES