A mom from our community, Kelsey General, joins me today along with Amy Evans, BCBA and Precision Teaching practitioner. The two work closely together with Kelsey’s children Brentley and Lincoln who were both diagnosed with autism at 25 months old. I talk with them about some of the struggles that Brentley and Lincoln face and the programs Amy uses with them that have made considerable progress in their fluency.
Amy describes the difference and importance of fluency versus accuracy. When working on fluency, learners have the ability to work for long periods of time on a skill. They can do the skill over and over and they won’t forget it and can even apply the skill to different contexts. Precision teaching is collecting data on these skills and the attempts at the skills. The Standard Celeration Chart is used to collect and chart the data and see progress.
Typical curriculums are not always designed with children like Brentley or Lincoln in mind. So practitioners like Amy who specialize in instructional design can help design programs and use precision teaching to make meaningful gains. Amy tells us about her roles in each of the children’s learning.
With Brentley, a child with severe autism and who is minimally verbal, Amy works with his data and helps break down the skills into very specific pieces based on his progress or tracking with skills. As for Lincoln, he is fully conversational and Kelsey’s goal is to get him into a traditional classroom eventually. Amy works directly with Lincoln, breaking down basic skills that learners would see in a typical kindergarten or first-grade classroom. The hope with this work is that Lincoln can work past perfectionism by focusing on speed and fluency and not shut down when he encounters difficulty.
Kelsey’s boys are truly one of our best success stories and the work Amy does with them could certainly be beneficial to many of my listeners. Kelsey reminds us that equipping ourselves with the tools to help our children can bring us a lot of peace of mind. Amy shares with us some of her great resources and a self-care tip that surprised me a lot!
I really enjoyed talking with these two and I hope you loved this episode as well!
Today’s Guests
Amy Evans:
Amy Evans has been a practitioner of Precision Teaching and Applied Behavior Analysis since 2008. Amy has worked in private learning centers, public school classrooms, home-based intervention, and homeschool settings, combining the principles of Behavior Analysis, Precision Measurement, and Direct Instruction to solve educational and behavioral challenges. Amy’s primary expertise lies in fluency-based instruction, precise behavioral measurement, visual and quantitative data analysis, and curriculum design. In the past five years, Amy has focused on dissemination and training, which included writing playbooks and guides, creating high-quality online professional development courses, contributing to books and research related to the implementation of precision measurement, presenting over 25 workshops and symposia, and transitioning more than 40 small to mid-size organizations to Precision Teaching and digital standard celeration charting. Amy loves being a go-to resource for all things Precision Teaching.
Amy is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and has previously held Special Education teaching certifications. She owns and operates a remote tutoring and educational consulting company, Flex Academics, serving families all over the US and Canada. Amy co-founded Octave Innovation, an organization dedicated to improving the skill sets of behavior analysts, teachers, and instructional designers. She served as the Vice President of Finance for the Standard Celeration Society For Three Years (2015-2019) and currently organizes and emcees the chart share at the annual conference. Amy holds a master’s degree in special education from Pennsylvania State University (2013), and a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in the Spanish language from the University of Nevada, Reno(2009).
Amy lives in Denver, Colorado, and enjoys hiking, travel, vegan food, and the occasional dance party.
Kelsey General:
Kelsey is a single mom to two boys living in BC, Canada. In 2016 her oldest son was diagnosed with autism at 25 months old. After learning he would not qualify for the support he needed, Kelsey began her journey of learning how to help him. Since then Kelsey has continued her education in the field in order to provide her children and others in the community the direct intervention they needed. Now, Kelsey homeschools both her kids with support from a team of consulting professionals while also working with other families providing behavior analytic services and parent coaching services. Kelsey and her boys enjoy spending their free time exploring and in nature hiking, biking, camping, and snowboarding. You can follow her adventures and learn more about getting children with autism outside safely on her Instagram page, @littleadventurefamily.
You’ll Learn
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