Special Education Summer Institute 2025

This session will provide rationale behind why structuring the physical areas of your classroom and providing visual supports can help create a more organized and functional learning environment for students with unique learning needs.  Participants will be offered a variety of different examples that could guide their own classroom planning and organization.  Targets of this session will include room arrangement, student work areas, and physical and/or visual boundaries, as well as a variety of visual supports.

This session will provide rationale behind why structuring the physical areas of your classroom and providing visual supports can help create a more organized and functional learning environment for students with unique learning needs.  Participants will be offered a variety of different examples that could guide their own classroom planning and organization.  Targets of this session will include room arrangement, student work areas, and physical and/or visual boundaries, as well as a variety of visual supports.

Echolalia is often seen as a barrier—but for Gestalt Language Processors (GLPs), it’s a meaningful and essential part of communication. This session explores the stages of Natural Language Acquisition and provides educators and support staff with practical tools to recognize, respond to, and build on gestalt language. Participants will learn how to identify a student’s stage of language development, design affirming instruction, and support spontaneous communication through collaborative, neurodiversity-aligned practices. Discover how shifting our lens on echolalia can lead to deeper connections and greater communication success.

Echolalia is often seen as a barrier—but for Gestalt Language Processors (GLPs), it’s a meaningful and essential part of communication. This session explores the stages of Natural Language Acquisition and provides educators and support staff with practical tools to recognize, respond to, and build on gestalt language. Participants will learn how to identify a student’s stage of language development, design affirming instruction, and support spontaneous communication through collaborative, neurodiversity-aligned practices. Discover how shifting our lens on echolalia can lead to deeper connections and greater communication success.

This session is designed to equip educators with the tools and knowledge to effectively teach social, emotional, and behavioral skills that promote generalization and real-life application of skills. Often called ‘contriving situations’, Natural Environment Teaching (NET) provides a basic strategy for accelerating student learning by providing real-life situations for students to practice and generalize prosocial and self-regulation skills.
Participants should have taken the following prerequisite sessions: Instructional Control, Explicit Instruction: Teaching with Clarity Strategies for Social Emotional Behavioral Success. 
Participants must have a solid understanding of the three-term contingency (e.g., A-B-C’s of behavior), the SDI framework, and a basic understanding of reinforcement principles.