Autism Classroom Resources Podcast: A Podcast for Special Educators

We all use visual supports in our everyday lives, we just don’t realize that’s what we’re doing. Visual supports tell us where to sit at a concert or what rooms we aren’t allowed in at a restaurant. Using visual supports in your special education classroom helps your students understand expectations in the classroom like they help us understand expectations in the community. There are ways that yo...

Building strong relationships with parents as a teacher begins with having great communication and showing that you truly care about their child. Having positive interactions with parents is key to building these relationships and successfully working with families. My guest today, Michelle Vazquez, is sharing some incredible insight on how to build relationships with parents as a teacher. In this...

What can you do in the first few weeks of school to help create a more smoothly operating classroom for teaching special needs students? I often talk about the importance of putting strategies and systems in place in order to ensure your classroom runs efficiently and implementing some very basic strategies in the first weeks of school can help set you, your staff,  and your students up for s...

How can you change a negative rapport between a student and a staff member into a positive rapport? Is it even possible? Today, I am sharing an episode from inside the Special Educator Academy where I dive into the research behind ways to change negative rapport into positive rapport with your students. We all know we need to build relationships with our students and pair ourselves with reinforcem...

Is it possible for your job as a special educator to be easier while your teaching is more effective? The simple answer is yes! I am so passionate about using my knowledge and experience to help other teachers thrive in their special education classroom with as little stress as possible. I created the Special Educator Academy to provide incredible educators with the support and confidence they nee...

Behavior management in the classroom is challenging and when you begin teaching students to accept “no” when they communicate a request, it can be even more challenging. Oftentimes when we are working with students on making a request, we are enforcing every time. In turn, our students then expect to get what they request whenever they request it. As we know, there are times when students cannot h...

Finding reliable information and useful ideas for your special education classroom on the internet can be challenging. Instagram and Pinterest are filled with examples and ideas for the classroom and activities but so many of them are not practical. So many teachers get lost in the idea of having a “Pinterest classroom” but we truly need to focus on setting up our classrooms in a way that is most...

How can you avoid special education teacher burnout and continue loving your job? One way to prevent burnout is by implementing a framework that sets your classroom up in a way that it almost runs itself. With the CORE framework, the aim is to develop a highly organized classroom with systems in place so that you are not constantly directing staff and students and you can actually focus on teachin...

There is no one “right” strategy but most instructional strategies in special education have similar elements to other strategies. Every student is different which means that what might work for some will not work for others. However, with all strategies, we need to ensure we are providing students with enough practice and enough instructional loops to learn the targeted skill.    I...

Highly structured environments allow for teachers to implement evidence based practices in the special education classroom. As we know, implementing EBPs is key to helping students learn and thrive. That is why the CORE is designed around evidence based practices. The CORE contains elements and systems that when put in place, allow us to provide meaningful instruction that's individualized for our...

We know how important data collection in special education is but how can we make it work in actual classrooms? There are so many factors that play into our data collection and analysis systems that go beyond our control and can make it challenging for us and our paras to collect data. In this episode, I am joined by Sasha Long who is sharing recommendations for data collection, tips for beginning...

One of the most important factors in teaching language and communication is to ensure that we create many opportunities to practice throughout the day. As special educators, we know that to help our students improve communication skills, we must provide the tools needed for them to communicate beyond just when we are working on communication. In this episode, I am diving into the importance of enc...

As special educators, it is so important to help our students expand their  functions of communication and enhance their communication skills. It is especially important for our students who use any kind of augmentative communication that we help them to build their communication skills. In this episode, I am sharing 8 things you can do to help support communication within your classroom, par...

There are so many ways and reasons we use communication. Helping our students communicate effectively and expand the ways in which they are communicating is key. It’s important that we work on why a student is communicating and what they are trying to say rather than focusing on how they communicate it. In this episode, I'm talking about why the functions of communication are important, what diffe...

The end of the school year is quickly approaching which means that both students and teachers are getting a little squirrelly. So how can we keep our students on track, reduce the chaos, and keep student behavior under control? In today’s episode, I am sharing 5 strategies to help reduce end of year behavior challenges so you and your students can continue to thrive. What’s your best way of coping...

The past few years have been especially stressful and exhausting for teachers. Students still have not fully adjusted to being back in the classroom and we have been seeing more behaviors than we have in the past. That means that now more than ever, coping strategies and true self care are so crucial for teachers.  In this episode, Kelsey Sorenson of Wife Teacher Mommy is joining me to talk a...

A crucial part of building strong relationships with families is ensuring that there is a clear communication method between home and school. One of the hardest parts of establishing a communication system is deciding what needs to be shared and how to share this information in a way that works for both you and the families. We all know how busy special education teachers are and families are ofte...

One of the most important elements in an IEP run smoothly is a strong and established teacher parent relationship. These relationships are the heart of the educational experience for all students, not just Special Ed. Teachers and parents both want to ensure their students are being provided the best education possible and establishing trusting and positive teacher parent relationships is crucial...

Focusing on literacy can be difficult for special education teachers. The relationship between language and reading and the difficulties some of our students have can make teaching literacy challenging. Literacy expert Sara Marye is joining us to share some amazing strategies for teaching literacy to help us better reach our students. Sara is a former teacher, literacy coach, and assistant princip...

Having someone come into your classroom for a teacher observation can be a stressful experience that most of us are not too fond of. But being observed by an instructional coach, principal, or even another teacher can be a very positive thing. Having others observe you and your classroom gives you opportunities to make your classroom better. When we can move past the stress of being observed, we c...

Working with the adults in your classroom is oftentimes more of a challenge than working with your students. Working as a team can be complicated because you likely did not hire them and you are not their boss, but you are evaluated on how well you work together to serve your students. Even with varying opinions and experiences, it’s so important to handle difficult relationships and conflict with...

There are a lot of differing opinions on how to do things best in the classroom. This can cause some challenges when collaborating and making sure all staff members are on the same page. Even with differing opinions, expectations, and experiences, collaboration in special education is so important so we can best serve our students. It is so important that we keep the focus on our students and stud...

The CORE framework is all about helping you create systems to make your classroom run efficiently and smoothly. A key component to an efficient classroom is making sure that your team works well together and understands what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. Making sure that your special education paraprofessionals know all the details of how the classroom runs will help create...

Getting to school and finding out you have a staff member absent can be a major source of stress if you are not prepared. The good news is your autism classroom setup can greatly reduce the amount of overwhelm and stress in these situations. If you have your plans in place, a staff absence will not throw off the whole day for you or your students. Having your classroom systems set up and practiced...

Finding the right tools for effectively training paraprofessionals can be time consuming and challenging. I know how valuable your time is and how crucial it is to have your staff properly trained so I am sharing some of my favorite resources to help you provide training for paraprofessionals in special education. As a special educator, you know how important it is for your paras to know the “why”...