On Friday, February 7, 2025, I participated in an Instagram Live event with Ege Cakaloz of Talkido to discuss how I’m using their screen-free technology to teach emotional vocabulary and social/emotional concepts to a young man with a seizure disorder, intellectual disability, autism, and vision loss. Learn how I am using Talkido’s technology to increase my client’s functional communication skills and independence by watching the recorded event, here.
Interview of Rose Griffin, SLP & BCBA
Anne Zachry
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Today is September 27, 2022. This post and podcast is titled, “Interview of Rose Griffin, SLP & BCBA,” which was originally recorded on August 29, 2022. In this podcast, I interview Rose Griffin about her past work in the public education system and the work she is doing now to educate professionals and parents to support children with special needs to address their challenges at the intersection of communication and behavior.
We’re here with Rose Griffin, who’s a speech language pathologist as well as a board certified behavior analyst. Correct?
Rose Griffin
That’s right, yes, less than 500 of us in the world. So …
Anne Zachry
Yeah, you’re a … you’re a rare species, and you’re very valuable. The crossover between your disciplines is really very valuable. I have another colleague, relatively local to me, who’s an OT and a BCBA. And …
Rose Griffin
… oh, yeah, that’s very rare. I probably know them. There’s not many of those at all.
Anne Zachry
Yeah … and, and so you know, her whole thing is, you know, kids, especially on the autism spectrum, that have sensory integration issues. And the degree to which that interferes with behavior, or it creates sensory-seeking behaviors that interfere with learning in the school setting, or whatever the case may be, but that sensory-behavior connection is where, you know, she really knows her stuff. And that’s very rare that I run into people who have, you know, those dual disciplines and understand the connections. And I think when you and I first started communicating about doing this podcast together, you know, my mind immediately went to functional communication. Because …
Rose Griffin
Yeah!
Anne Zachry
… because we have a lot of kids who … they have the speech and language services to teach them, you know, often in a small group or an individual one-on-one situation, sometimes pushed into a classroom situation, but most often not in my experience, and then somehow they’re supposed to generalize that to the world at large. And …
Rose Griffin
Right! It’s supposed to miraculously happen. Yeah.
Anne Zachry
Yeah, it’s just gonna be osmosis or something. And so, you know, there needs to be that explicit reinforcement of the behavior in the in vivo context, in order for them to make the connection between what you’re talking about in a therapeutic situation and real life. And that’s where the the behavioral supports come in, where functional communication skills are used as behavior strategies in an ABA based program. And so that in my mind, that’s that was where everything immediately went when I saw your qualifications, because I’m like, “Oh, she’s in that nexus of, you know …”
Rose Griffin
Heh, heh – yeah.
Anne Zachry
… where the … because all, all communi-, what is, what is the saying? “All behavior is communication”?
Rose Griffin
Right. There’s that saying. They say that a lot. Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
And all language is a learned behavior. So you know that the language-behavior, there really is no divide. And …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… it’s just … it’s more as … it’s different nuances of the same thing parsed out and, and so what have been your experiences? Because, I’m assuming you go into the schools or you do work with the schools as well.
Rose Griffin
Yeah, so, for 20 years, I worked as a school based speech language pathologist …
Anne Zachry
Okay.
Rose Griffin
… and I started my own business called ABA Speech five years ago. And I actually just decided in May to step away from the schools to focus on my business where I offer courses, and I have a podcast called Autism Outreach, and we have products, but I still love to be in touch with the schools. So it looks a little bit different now. Now, I’m just kind of seeing a handful of a private clients. But yeah, for 20 years, I worked as a school-based SLP. And I really loved being able to provide therapy in that natural setting. And I really did a lot of push-in therapy into the classroom and some students that I needed to see in my office, but you know, I worked in middle school/high school, so maybe I had kids with selective mutism. Or maybe I had a kid who was stuttering or maybe the classroom was really loud and I needed to pull a student …
Anne Zachry
Right.
Rose Griffin
… into my office to give them a break from the classroom.
Anne Zachry
Right!
Rose Griffin
But I’ve definitely tried to push in and do like a group so I can model therapy strategies for the teacher and one on one staff and things like that. Yeah.
Anne Zachry
Well, and the push-in model is so much more supportive of generalizing those skills from a pull-out situation to real life that gives you the opportunity to go into the real life classroom and say, “Okay, here’s where you need to do this, bro,” you know?
Rose Griffin
Yeah! No, absolutely!
Anne Zachry
You’re coaching people on the pragmatics, you know, people who have a hard time reading the room?
Rose Griffin
Yeah, that’s always … Yeah, that’s what … that’s hard. That’s ever-changing for everybody. I had some students that had more direct instruction, more traditional type ABA services, and I would go into the classroom and see them in their teaching area. And every student was just so individualized.
Anne Zachry
Exactly!
Rose Griffin
But, I tried to do whatever works for the student.
Anne Zachry
That makes sense. That totally makes sense. And that’s really how it should be done. It is supposed to be individualized.
Rose Griffin
Yeah!
Anne Zachry
I just … I think it’s a, it’s a fascinating overlap that a lot of people fail to appreciate … that, that connection between language and behavior, and how much …
Rose Griffin
Oh yeah.
Anne Zachry
… how much, you know, how often do we say, “No hitting; use your words,” and yet, that connection still doesn’t get made in people’s minds? You know, it’s like, well, after they’re toddlers, that doesn’t count anymore. It’s like, “No, it always counts! …”
Rose Griffin
Right!
Anne Zachry
“… That never goes away!”
Rose Griffin
That’s my own kids. Yeah, they’re like, you know, in upper elementary school and middle school …
Anne Zachry
Right. Well, and I have to say, you know, I mean, I use these skills just as much to navigate the politics of the IEP process, as …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
I’m using the same skills to deal with the adults in the situation, and to try …
Rose Griffin
Yeah. Yeah.
Anne Zachry
… and get an IEP to say what it needs to say,
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… without ruffling feathers, and without people getting their feelings hurt …
Rose Griffin
Oh, yeah!
Anne Zachry
… and taking things personally, when it’s about the construction of a legally binding document and not anybody’s personality, and …
Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, yeah.
Anne Zachry
… and so it’s, you know, having to dance around all of that, I find that … I mean, that my … I have my master’s in educational psychology. I’m qualified to go in and do school-based …
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
… you know, behavior assessments, but I don’t go in as an outside assessor. I’m there as the lay advocate. And so I keep that hat on.
Rose Griffin
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Anne Zachry
But I’m going in as an informed lay advocate, and I’ve also paralegaled all the way up to the Ninth Circuit of the Court of Appeals. So the only place I haven’t gone yet is the US Supreme Court. And so, so I … I’m coming at this from both a compliance standpoint, and from a science standpoint …
Rose Griffin
Uh-huh.
Anne Zachry
… that the law mandates the application of the peer-reviewed research to the design and delivery of special ed.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
But we don’t have any mechanisms in place to really truly facilitate that. And so when I find people who have extraordinary qualifications, who have worked in the school setting, who have like, “Okay, I found my work-around.” You know, it’s you’re having to drag the science into a setting that really isn’t designed for it …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and, and trying to implement it in a situation where you’re having to sell everybody on the inside of the legitimacy of what you’re trying to do …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… because it’s not how it’s always been done.
Rose Griffin
Right.
Anne Zachry
And so, there’s a lot of politics and culture, you know, internal district culture issues that have to be overcome before … you know, sometimes … the science will be legitimately applied. And so I see varying degrees of success with kids who have IEPs that call for certain things, but they jump from one school district to another. And what that looks like in one place to a different place are two totally different things. And the child does better in one setting versus the other with things that say they’re … identically described on paper.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
And it really does come down to quality control at the individual school sites. And what I one of the questions I wanted to ask you was about fidelity and data collection …
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
… because one of the biggest issues that I’ve run into in any aspect of special ed is the validity of how the data is being collected, basically going to the measurability of the goals, whether or not they’re legitimately measurable.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
Because, back in the 90s, to backtrack a little bit, there was some kind of workshop for teachers somewhere, and I’m not sure who the entity was that put it on, I have my suspicions. There’s organizations out there that tend to disfavor special ed …
Rose Griffin
Oh, okay.
Anne Zachry
… as something no government should be doing.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
And there’s a number of those individuals, certainly not the majority of people in public education, but there are a number of them who are employed within public education, who truly do not believe that this is how government resources should be expended. And they’re in the camp of Betsy DeVos, who wants to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
So, they’re there to undermine it from within and prove that somehow government doesn’t really work. “Well, yeah, not when you’re there, doing that kind of stuff!”
Rose Griffin
Uh-huh.
Anne Zachry
And so there’s people of that ilk who are peppered throughout the system, who are trying to prevent anything that’s going to produce a system of accountability, anything that’s going to create an audit trail. This is why you haven’t seen all of the business automation technologies that were perfected in the private industry over the last 30-40 years. They still have not been deployed throughout all of our public agencies …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… because then you … the people who are misappropriating funds and doing illicit things, they have no shadows to hide in anymore.
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
And similarly, when ABA showed up in the special ed arena with all of the data collection and doing it according to a scientifically valid method …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… well, that meant that you were going to take data on everybody blowing it …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and you were gonna … you were gonna create evidence that families could use to hold their school districts accountable if you actually took data on what was really going on. And you know, as … as a BCBA, I know you know this, that it’s not just … when you’re doing a truly scientifically rigorous ABA program, you’re not just taking data on how the individual responds to the intervention, you’re also taking data on how the implementers are implementing the plan with fidelity. You’re taking fidelity data on how well the plan is implemented, because it can only fail for one of two reasons: either a design flaw or an implementation failure. So you’ve got to have data on “Is the design working?”, which you only know, if you’re trying to implement the plan, according to its design. We have seen a huge, huge push against taking fidelity data as part of any child’s behavior intervention plan in an IEP because of the audit trail it will create, and the fact that it will capture people not doing the job rather than you know, using it as a quality control measure. And so it seems to … in my experience, what I’ve run into it, you know … and bearing in mind that I only get contacted by people whose kids IEPs are just gone off the rails, and it’s a horrible situation.
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
Nobody calls me up to tell me how great is going. So I’m only coming into the worst of the worst. But stepping into the worst of the worst, what I find are concerted efforts to cover things up when things have gone wrong, and then try to create a some sort of legal defense that shifts the blame away from the school district. And, you know, one of the preemptive legal defense strategies that their lawyers will, will have them do is like take as little data as possible. And, and so you have this … this energy against valid data collection and fidelity measurement that undermines the integrity of the process, even though the law mandates the application of the science. And that’s not the science, you know. And so, families … but families are the enforcement arm of the law, because you know, we’re a government of the people. So if … there’s no, you know, special ed police running around to make sure everybody’s doing it the way it’s supposed to be done. The only way the law gets enforced is when somebody breaks it and a parent reports them.
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
And so, we have parents having to bear the burden of understanding what the science is to even be able to know that it hasn’t been applied. And we have people in the schools who don’t know the science, much less how to apply it. And so we’ve got a lot of changes coming up on the horizon that we see are inevitable in that regard, but having worked for 20 years in the public schools having tried to apply the science to the benefit of children, what have your experiences been of trying to stick to the … to the fidelity of the science that’s behind what you’re doing? Has that been a challenge for you?
Rose Griffin
Yeah, I’ve had great experiences. Yeah, I’ve been a school-based speech therapist and have worked really hard to build rapport with families and teams, and, yeah, we really help students and support them in that natural environment of a public school. So yeah, on my end, it’s been really, it’s been really positive for my students to get those services within public school. It’s been great.
Anne Zachry
Have you had a hard time, though, with respect to the peer-reviewed research and being able to bring in the current research into the school setting and implement the new stuff?
Rose Griffin
No, and it might just be where I live, you know, I live in Cleveland, Ohio, a suburb of that. And we have a lot of really great providers here. And, yeah, I’ve just had really great experiences. And haven’t really had …
Anne Zachry
That’s fabulous to hear, because I’m telling you this, this is my uphill battle all the time. And I’m in California, which is one of the most progressive and heavily regulated states in the country for special ed.
Rose Griffin
Oh yeah. Wow!
Anne Zachry
I mean, we kind of set the tone for because we have more special ed due process cases every year …
Rose Griffin
Oh, I’m sure.
Anne Zachry
… that I mean …
Rose Griffin
It’s so big.
Anne Zachry
Yeah, some states go for years without having any at all.
Rose Griffin
Right! Lucky them!
Anne Zachry
And, and so it goes to the degree that the parents don’t know their rights …
Rose Griffin
Right.
Anne Zachry
… or things are going successfully and you don’t have the kinds of challenges that you know, that other districts run into. And I think it goes to quality of leadership. So it sounds to me like you’ve been in a very blessed situation where you haven’t had to contend with those kinds of situations, which are just, you know …
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
… more, more common …
Rose Griffin
Yeah!
Anne Zachry
… than people would like to think. I mean, you know, we have…
Rose Griffin
Right. Um-umm.
Anne Zachry
… our organization was actually founded in 2003, following the death of a classmate of our founder’s nephew, who was …
Rose Griffin
Awww!
Anne Zachry
… was smothered to death by his teacher in front of everybody in the classroom during an unlawful prone restraint. And …
Rose Griffin
Oh dear!
Anne Zachry
Yeah, and …
Rose Griffin
No wonder!
Anne Zachry
… and it was horrible and … and he never went back to school after that. It was a class for emotionally disturbed children, and this teacher was …
Rose Griffin
Oh dear!
Anne Zachry
… supposed to be there to help all these children with these mental and emotional health needs get better. And, instead …
Rose Griffin
Umm, oh dear!
Anne Zachry
… she was this authoritarian monster who just bullied them. And … and so, you know, these things do happen. And it’s not as rare as people would like. That case actually ended up being included in … and I’ve got written in the blog post that goes with this podcast, I’ll include links for it …
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
… we have an article about this from a while back, but that just explained our history and how this all happened. But this particular child’s family, he was a foster child. And so the moment his life was terminated, so was his foster mother’s parental authority. And so she couldn’t do anything to hold anybody accountable, because she no longer had parental rights at that point. She had no authority and no standing.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
But, a few years after that, Congress had commissioned a study on the use of seclusion and restraints and special ed in the public schools. And, it was public schools in general, but it turned out that special ed kids were the ones who are most commonly restrained and secluded. And, this young man’s case was in part of the that federal investigation.
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
We were shocked to see it, because it’s the reason why we founded our organization. It was the, you know, the final straw …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… that made us pull that plug. But, to see that in the federal report, and it was actually, like, one of the feature cases, and they actually had the foster mother go to Washington, DC, and testify before Congress about what had happened.
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
And, what they determined was the teacher had never been held accountable, that she had never received any kind of negative consequence for any of this, and was able to leave the state of Texas and go to Virginia. And, at the time of the hearing, when this foster mother was testifying, this teacher was only 45 minutes away running a special ed classroom in Virginia from where Congress …
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
… was hearing testimony about how she had murdered this child and got away with it. It’s a failure of multiple systems. But this goes to our whole thing that special ed is really … the work that we do in advocacy to address these kinds of problems is really part of a larger social justice issue. Because …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… it wasn’t just the special ed system that failed.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
It was the foster care system, it was the criminal justice system, it was the teacher credentialing system, it was … there was all kinds of parts of the system that broke down that allowed this to happen. And a lot of it goes to the bureaucracy and the lack of communication. And if all of these agencies were actually interconnected in a wide area network, enterprise-class computing environment, the way that, like Walmart, or Sanyo, or UPS Freight, or any of these big global organizations that have these huge computing environments … they overcame these obstacles decades ago, but we don’t have the same consistency of flow of information. And because of that, we’ve got consumers having to go to 15 different agencies and applying for 15 different types of service, you know, and maybe you’re talking about somebody in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank, who has to go trucking around all over the place, instead of the money following the consumer, the consumer has to go chasing after the money. And so we’ve got a lot of organizational defects, you know, when you start looking at … you talk to … start talking about a plan and looking at a behavior plan versus a plan for the operation of an entity, it really isn’t that remarkably different. And does this plan actually support the functions of the behaviors that you know … do these behaviors support the function of the organization? Are we rewarding …
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
… are we reinforcing the right behaviors in this organization? And so for me, I think that there’s also a carryover of what you do into the organizational structure of, you know, in the organizational cultures. I know that ABA is used very much in an industrial sense, by private industry, but to create …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… you know, positive workplace environments. And do you see a value of your profession and people in your profession, you know … crossover between both, really … of going in and doing professional development and positive culture building and in help healing the cultures of some of these environments where people are not invested in their constituents?
Rose Griffin
You know, yeah! There’s a whole branch of ABA called OBM. Organizational Behavior Management, I think it’s what it’s called.
Anne Zachry
Yep.
Rose Griffin
I don’t have any experience with that. But I think it makes a lot of sense to use the science and there are people that specialize in just doing that. And they’re doing … going into organizations helping with the culture, helping streamline workflows, and I think that is definitely something that’s positive. There’s so many different things that you can do with the science of applied behavioral analysis …
Anne Zachry
Oh, I know!
Rose Griffin
… autism is just one very small area. So …
Anne Zachry
That’s what I tell people!
Rose Griffin
People make mistakes about that, as well.
Anne Zachry
I tell people that. I’m, like, look! ABA is a science; it is not an autism service.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm!
Anne Zachry
It’s the science behind certain autism services that address behavior, but it is not an autism service, per se. And a lot of people don’t realize that I’m like, no ABA applies to crustaceans and computer code …
Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, yeah!
Anne Zachry
… you can analyze anything that behaves and there’s always a cause for everything, you know, and everything serves a function, and so that’s something that I think that there needs to be more discussion around and more research done into of how that organizational aspect of ABA can be used as part of the healing process of all of these things that we’re dealing with in our culture right now. I mean, all of the conflicts and the dividedness, and the fights and, you know, it just I think that ABA sort of takes the temperature down because you’re doing nothing but black and white neutral statements of fact …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and only things that are objectively observable, like this is what we know to be true. And I think that bringing the conversation back to … I mean … getting away from the hysteria and coming back to the rule of law and back to scientific method, both of which are evidence-based, you know … you have to use logic statements … they are very similar in to how you execute both … that calmer heads can sit there and do that kind of black and white analysis and like, “Okay, let’s get to the to the bottom line of what is, and then we can decide how we’re going to emotionally react to it.” But right now …
Rose Griffin
Hmm! Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… we’ve got everybody reacting to the data rather than to the outcome of the analysis.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… that, you know, people are pre-judging what a piece of data might actually mean rather than putting it all together and reaching a logical conclusion, “Okay, here’s the story is told by the evidence.” And I think that we do our young people a huge disservice by not teaching them to think that way, as just simply part of curriculum. I think that there’s a huge value in teaching people about ABA as part of like a high school psychology class, I think that it’s a skill that is …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… all it is, is the ability to see what is without cluttering it up with a bunch of other superfluous details. It’s about how to prioritize your data and focus on what’s the most important thing …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and engage in that neutral fact-based decision-making. And I think that if that were taught as a skill just in, in general, for all kids, I think that would help develop them, especially in high school, when that prefrontal cortex is starting to come online, and they’re starting to think more abstractly, and they’re looking for that kind of structure to structure their thoughts. I think that that’s something that we need to start really thinking about, as we we try to … to develop tomorrow’s leaders and problem solvers. That ABA, just as a skill, as a science …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… is valuable, just as much as it is to learn about the law of gravity.
Rose Griffin
Heh, he, um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
You know, I think that we focus on the physical aspects, and we consider the hard sciences more legit than the soft sciences. And I’m like, I don’t see how you think that ABA is not hard science …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
And so I’m, I mean, what are your thoughts about making the science just more part of a mainstream part of the human experience and making it more part of the … of just common knowledge? How valuable do you think that is?
Rose Griffin
Yeah, I mean, you know, with my business at ABA Speech, I disseminate information daily. And I don’t always even say that it’s ABA. But I just talk about the way that I use the science of applied behavior analysis is by helping autistic learners find their voice and increase their communication skills. And so everybody that is a BCBA definitely has the opportunity to disseminate and to share how they’re using the science to help support students or whatever facet, they are included in. So I think that being able to share that is important. And that’s what I do through my online business. So it’s important to me to share that.
Anne Zachry
Yeah, I think the more that the folks I work with understand the science that is being applied to their kids, the more comfortable they are with it, and it logically makes sense to them. And I have moms who will … are like Goddesses at coming up with goals and how to track the data …
Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha!
Anne Zachry
…. and how you know which method, you know, “I’m gonna do DRI or a DRA.” And I’m like, “Okay.”
Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha!
Anne Zachry
And they’re like, you know, honorary BCBAs after a while, and I …
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
… it’s because all it really does is measure what already is.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
It’s not like you made up something new. you’re just trying … it’s a way of documenting what’s happening in the environment, and then what to make of that data once you’ve collected it. So it’s not like you’re making something new out of what is or, you know, inventing a new chemical or something. It’s looking at, “Okay, here’s what’s going on in this actual real world environment,” you know, and then to the degree that language plays into it, which is always, you know, usually part of it.
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
And so to circle back around to the school and the speech and language and the ABA overlaps, do you find that it is more efficient for you to be able to wear both of those hats? Or do you find that it can be equally effective to have a team where you’ve got a BCBA and a speech-language pathologist working together? I mean, what do you … how do you see, you know, all the different ways to still come up with the same information that a team might need with respect to behavior and communication?
Rose Griffin
Yeah, in a school setting, you’re typically going to have one person that’s a speech therapist, and one person that’s the BCBA, and they can work collaboratively together with the students, the family, the teacher. Even though I’m dually certified, my role on the team in this particular job setting was as a speech-language pathologist …
Anne Zachry
Got it.
Rose Griffin
… so we actually had an outside consultant that we would work with. And it’s so much easier for me to work with outside consultants, because I’m a BCBA, so I understand all the different things that they’re talking about. So is it easier for me to work with consultants, and to make that a cohesive team? It absolutely is. But you know, being dually certified, allows me to work with ABA providers that want to offer speech therapy or offer consultations, or I help different ABA providers with professional development about communication. And so being dually certified is a very special niche area. And I can help businesses and families and individuals in a very specific way. But if you have a team and you have a few therapists, and you have a BCBA, and they’re able to collaborate, that’s just as impactful.
Anne Zachry
Yeah, it does … I mean, it’s sort of like, well, you have all your eggs in one basket on the one hand …
Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha.
Anne Zachry
… but at the same time, you’re also got a more efficient a … you know, a faster machine and in a manner of speaking, because you’re not having to do the … everybody on the team coming together and collaborating. It’s all in one brain and they can just, “Blech, there it is.”
Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha.
Anne Zachry
So, I mean, I, you know, and I totally get that. And I mean, I’m in a similar situation in that I’m in the nexus between the legal side of it as a paralegal and a lay advocate …
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
… but also coming from the scientific side of it with my master’s in educational psychology and all the work that I’ve done in that regard …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and so I’m straddling that nexus between where normally you would have to have an attorney who brings in an expert to tell them …
Rose Griffin
Right.
Anne Zachry
… the science part of it. So you’ve got the expert who knows the science, and you’ve got the lawyer who knows the law, but sometimes there’s things they miss, because they’re talking apples and oranges. And they don’t, you know … and it’s not quite the same, because I think the connection between speech and language pathology and behavior is like way closer. I mean, it’s really just, you know, two sides of the same coin.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
Whereas, what I’m doing, I’m really having to straddle two different universes and trying to get these people to understand each other’s professional lingo, because, you know …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm. Yeah!
Anne Zachry
… you know the educators have their their jargon. And, the lawyers have their jargon. And, a lawyer may be able to identify that, you know, a timeline was violated, or, you know, “Well, this kid’s nonverbal and you didn’t do a speech and language assessment at all. How is this possibly a comprehensive triennial evaluation?” You know, it’s like … when it’s really over the top egregious stuff like that, a lawyer will recognize the failure.
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
But, when you’re talking about, “Well, this child has the potential to make X amount of growth in reading ability over the next year, but you’re not targeting an outcome that’s that aggressive; you’re low-balling this kid on his IEP goals,” a lawyer is not going to look at an IEP and be able to recognize that.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
You’ve got to have somebody who’s an expert in the data and the assessment stuff to be able to look at, “Okay, well, what did the assessment data say about this child’s capacity to learn? And how …” you know, “… and where their baselines were at the time everything was written, and how aggressive is this goal relative to their baselines based on what we know about their capacity to learn?” So you’ve got a scientific analysis that has to happen that a lawyer is not going to be able to do, but then you have educators who come into it and don’t know the legal side of it. And so they’ll see that discrepancy, but they don’t know how to advocate for the right thing. And a lot of times, if they’re going to a school district administrator who doesn’t know that, either, they’ll just “Oh, I guess that’s just the way it is.” It doesn’t occur to them that there’s something that can be done, or that the law requires more …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and they … and it comes down to professional development. It’s not because anybody has ill intent. It’s not because somebody is trying to hurt a kid. More often than not, what I run into, when I run into the challenges that I run into, it’s not because somebody’s mean and they want to hurt somebody. It’s because they don’t know …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and they don’t have the resources, and nobody told them. You know, I think it’s exciting for me to hear from professionals who come from schools where that’s not so much the case. That you’re … you’re in a situation where you’ve got a really progressive team. And I’ve talked to other educators who come from really progressive public schools and school districts where, you know, everything is evidence-based, and you’ve got a really amazing people who are pushing forward, really progressive and collaborative types of projects that include the families and don’t vilify them. But, you still got some really weird, old, cronyistic, “Boss Hogg/Roscoe P. Coltrane” kind of stuff going on out there, too.
Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha.
Anne Zachry
And so it’s a mix, you know? Iit’s a mixed bag. And I think that where you are has a lot to do with it. So it’s exciting to hear. And you said, you’re in Ohio.
Rose Griffin
Yes, I’m in Ohio. So yeah, I’ve had really positive experiences. It’s been … it’s been really wonderful. I was sad to step away from the schools after 20 years, but I just … my business has grown so much at ABA Speech that, you know, it’s just what I needed to do. So …
Anne Zachry
That’s exciting to hear too. Because you know, all growth is just part of life. You have to grow and evolve into something else.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
And whatever skills you acquire in one situation, and the benefit you serve to people while you were there just equips you to serve other people in a different kind of way better, stronger, you know. And so it sounds like that’s what you’re doing. So with your practice, now, you’re mostly working with private families, and then consulting with organizations?
Rose Griffin
Yeah, so I divide my time. My podcast, Autism Outreach, is a big part of what I do. Yesterday, I batched three episodes. And so we have monetized my podcast. And so we offer it for continuing education units for … geared towards speech-language pathologists.
Anne Zachry
Nice!
Rose Griffin
And then I do some therapy. I see a couple clients privately, and then I do some telehealth. I’m actually licensed in Washington State.
Anne Zachry
Nice!
Rose Griffin
And so I act in the capacity of helping ABA centers sometimes provide speech therapy. And then sometimes I just do consultations for complex communication cases. And I do a lot of presenting. I do a lot of speaking about working on autism and communication and how to help students at various levels along their communication journey. And we offer courses. That’s the biggest thing that we do is we offer courses about autism that are geared towards professionals and parents that are a little familiar with the science of applied behavior analysis, would probably be the best way to describe it. And we’ve just had a great chance and opportunity to be able to reach people through our courses. That’s been really something that’s been very rewarding.
Anne Zachry
That speaks to the concern I was having before about, you know, just how difficult it is to get the science pushed into the schools.
Rose Griffin
Really?
Anne Zachry
So, people who are doing the kind of work that you’re doing …
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
… and be able to reach through to them through the internet and nonetheless get the information out to these people. So they have access, I think that is so incredibly important. And that’s going to be such a huge part of what makes things better is people like you doing the kind of work that you’re doing, because you found a workaround.
Rose Griffin
Right!
Anne Zachry
It’s like, “Okay, well, maybe I’m not gonna go down to the local school district and hold a workshop today. But I don’t have to,” you know? “I can do it myself …
Rose Griffin
Right!
Anne Zachry
… and put it out there, and people can get their continuing ed units.” And then, you know, Bob’s your uncle, there it is.
Rose Griffin
Yeah! Yeah!
Anne Zachry
And so I think that that’s very encouraging,
Rose Griffin
Because our courses are offered for speech language-pathologists for their CEUs. Also, for board certified behavior analysts, they’re called ACEUs. And then also, we do general certificates for teachers and parents. And that’s been really great. So it’s really just a mix of I do live presentations. But then I also have these courses that are usually on Evergreen. And we have a new course coming out in September, that is called The Advanced Language Learner. And that is going to be about students who are using two to three words on their own, and how to help them go beyond basic communication skills. So I’m very, very excited and have been working diligently on that launch. So that will happen mid-September.
Anne Zachry
That sounds really exciting! All of that sounds amazing and wonderful. So, well, I’m excited to be able to share that with our audience, because I know there’s gonna be a lot of families out there who will benefit from it. I mean, by no means are our entire caseload, you know, kids with autism. That’s some, you know … a good fair percentage of our caseload.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm. Yeah.
Anne Zachry
But, you know, and that’s … they’re not the only kids who would benefit from something like that either. And then I have lots of kids with other types of issues …
Rose Griffin
Yep. Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… that that would really speak to their needs as well, and that knowledge being out there for the professionals in their lives, as well as their parents. The parent education piece is really important. And I … so here’s a thought …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm?
Anne Zachry
The implementing regulations of the IDEA include in its description of all the different things that can be related services … like speech and language, or transportation, or OT, or whatever …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… parent training and counseling is also listed. And …
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
… and so some … and the purpose of that being as a related service is so that parents can understand their children’s disability better and be more effective participants in the IEP process and understand the IEP process … because they have federally protected rights to informed consent and meaningful parent participation in the IEP process, and they can’t participate meaningfully if they don’t understand.
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
So, the parent counseling and training component is to help the parents get up to speed on what’s going on with their kid based on what the assessment … help them understand the disability, and also, you know, how to support and be part of the IEP team.
Rose Griffin
Right.
Anne Zachry
And, be able to be a collaborative member of the whole process …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and have that meaningful parent participation where they’re not in there, just you know, having hysterical fits, because they don’t understand and nobody can get anything done, you know? Because that can happen. And so, I’m wondering how easy it would be for a parent to be able to get the cost of doing training through your program covered as an IEP cost?
Rose Griffin
Yeah, you know, I actually did have somebody reached out from California …
Anne Zachry
Where I’m at.
Rose Griffin
… where they wanted to sign their parent up for this parent training. That they wanted to know if I was a provider, which I think is something that’s very specific to California and the region.
Anne Zachry
Right, you have to be …
Rose Griffin
I have a friend that is an SLP.
Anne Zachry
Um-hmm. Yeah.
Rose Griffin
And I was, like, “Oh, I’m not covered on that.” So, I mean, if there’s any way that I could be covered on things like with that, she said that I would have to have a physical location in California …
Anne Zachry
No, no, no, no!
Rose Griffin
… which I’m not going to do from Ohio.
Anne Zachry
Here’s what you do. You do it as a reimbursement model. The parent pays you directly …
Rose Griffin
Oh!
Anne Zachry
… and the parents simply gets reimbursed.
Rose Griffin
Yeah!
Anne Zachry
That’s how you work around that requirement.
Rose Griffin
Okay!
Anne Zachry
Because, what you’re talking about is in California, in order for an agency to contract with the school district to provide anything special ed-related …
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
… they have to be a non-public school or a non-public agency. There’s a license you have to get from the California Department of Education.
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
And you have to have all this, like, this behemoth of a red tape process. It’s almost not even worth it for a lot of people …
Rose Griffin
Okay. Right.
Anne Zachry
… and which is why it’s so hard to find people to do it.
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
The workaround is if you have someone in private practice, and the parent simply pays and then gets reimbursed. If they have the means to do that, then a reimbursement model is the workaround for those kinds of things in special ed and that’s … you can write it into the IEP that way, or sometimes it will come up as part of a settlement agreement. And …
Rose Griffin
Okay, because I’ve had some people reach out to me that way, from California, but I’m just I’m not there. I’m not licensed in California. And …
Anne Zachry
You could do it remotely. And yeah, I mean, there’s your answer. So, if that helps you, you know, serve families in my state, that would be great! Ha, ha, ha!
Rose Griffin
Okay, good to know.
Anne Zachry
Yeah, no! There’s absolutely a work-around.
Rose Griffin
We definitely have courses that parents really, you know, enjoy, so … and just helps them feel like they have a better understanding of what’s going on in therapy, even if they’re not going to be the therapy provider themselves …
Anne Zachry
Right.
Rose Griffin
It just gives them more of an overall …
Anne Zachry
Well, yeah. That’s the whole point of understanding what’s really going on and why these things are important …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and why it’s important for them to …
Rose Griffin
Yeah.
Anne Zachry
… you know, facilitate it and, you know, be part of the team to make it happen. You know, I would say to any parents who may have already paid for your services, especially if it’s been within the last year or two, you know, and a lot of people coming off the pandemic have had to go out and privately fund a lot of stuff that they wouldn’t have otherwise expected to have to do …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… that, they might want to save those receipts and their proofs of payment. And if they are …
Rose Griffin
Right.
Anne Zachry
… in any kind of dispute with their school districts trying to get services that they’ve otherwise had to get from you, that …
Rose Griffin
Right.
Anne Zachry
… if they were out of pocket for that, that that could be a reimbursable expense. And if they are going down that route, they do have an attorney or someone helping them with that process to have that person to look at the situation, the facts of their case, and how much they’ve had to spend on that, to see if it’s recoverable. Because you know, in very … a lot of instances, I would think that not just the speech and language or the ABA or any of this … that stuff you’re doing, but also the parent training could be a recoverable expense, because of that provision under the IDEA a that provides for parent training and counseling. So, just something to keep in mind. It could get get written into a kid’s IEP, and then, you know …
Rose Griffin
Right.
Anne Zachry
… if it’s not California, the district could potentially contract with you directly. Yeah, because we’re regulated …
Rose Griffin
Right.
Anne Zachry
… we’re so regulated. And you know, it offers a lot of good protections that the federal law doesn’t offer. But it sometimes …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… also creates additional bureaucracy. It’s like “Really?” Yeah, in other states, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case. And you could actually get your product and your services written directly into a kid’s IEP …
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
… and get funded by the district for that. Another …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… thing that I’ve seen with people doing similar kinds of programs like yours is that sometimes they will be able to get a contract with a school district to use the product, like on a licensed basis, where …
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
… you train the speech and language pathologist
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… to replicate your content in their setting.
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
And, you know, any therapies or anything that you’ve developed or any strategies you develop that are branded to you then becomes …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… it’s like … it makes me think of, for pragmatic language assessments you have was Michelle Winner-Garcia, Michelle Garcia-Winner, I never can remember …
Rose Griffin
We really don’t use her that much anymore. I mean, I think …
Anne Zachry
Yeah, but back in the day, I remember that was…
Rose Griffin
… the test for pragmatic language is the CASL. Yeah.
Anne Zachry
Well, but the CASL is a standardized measure. So a …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… norm-reference test is not …
Rose Griffin
… not observation …
Anne Zachry
going to get you …Yeah, it’s not going to give you the exact same kind of a thing as an …
Rose Griffin
Right, right.
Anne Zachry
… in vivo, authentic language sample.
Rose Griffin
We always do an observation.
Anne Zachry
Yeah.
Rose Griffin
Make sure that we’re observing in the natural environment. Yeah.
Anne Zachry
You want the language sample and … But her … the thing that I liked that she did was the “Double Interview.”
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm! In one of our podcast episodes, with Lisa Chattler. She’s actually a speech therapist. She lives in Orange County …
Anne Zachry
Oh, right on!
Rose Griffin
… and she talked about the double interview and asking questions. And, yes.
Anne Zachry
I think that’s really important, too. I mean, I think that there’s value in norm referenced standardized tests, but to us … especially when you’re talking about school psychology, because that’s more my domain, you could be a psychometrician and paint by numbers, and not understand what any of those tests do. You can go through the motions of administering and scoring that test, and that doesn’t mean that you appreciate what the data means. I actually had a case a few years ago, where we had an audiologist supposedly doing an assessment for an auditory processing disorder.
Rose Griffin
Hmm!
Anne Zachry
She was with … the district had the choice of who was going to do it. They didn’t have an audiologist on staff. And so they outsourced it to a non-public agency. And the young woman who was the licensed audiologist who administered the test, none of it made any sense. And she had transposed percentile rankings and standard scores on her scoring charts and whatnot. And I was like, I don’t think she understands what these numbers mean.
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
And her report made no sense. And so we asked for a second opinion at public expense, an IEE … for the district to fund an outside second opinion. And they said, “No.” And so we had to go to due process to argue over whether or not they had done a good job, and we needed a second opinion. And she gets on the witness stand, and we asked her, “Well, what’s the difference between a standard score and a percentile ranking?” And she was like, I don’t know. I’m not a statis-, statis-” (she couldn’t say “statistician”). She goes, “I’m not a statistics person.”
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
And I could just feel the attorney for the school district die inside right next to me …
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
…. because this was his case. You know, he was the one arguing that she knew what she was doing. He was a lawyer. He had no way of knowing that she didn’t know what those things were because he didn’t know what those things were.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
So, he was just … she would say, “Well, of course I know what I’m doing!” So, he had her back. And, then we get in front of the judge and she just tanks! She couldn’t explain any of her data. And, then we had our own audiologist who came and testified who was an expert witness on how it should have been done, and, it was just night and day. And so, there are people out there who are going through the motions, who can administer and score a standardized assessment, but they don’t necessarily understand how to interpret the data. And they may not have even chosen the right test. In this particular case, she just used a boilerplate list of assessments that the owner of the company she worked for, who was also an audiologist, said, “This is what you do when you test for this.” And, so everybody was getting identical measures. None of it was individualized. And … I mean, for a large part, for that kind of testing, there’s only so many things you can do, but still. And so, she was just going through this list of tests that her boss had said, “This is what you do,” and listing the scores, but not explaining what any of it meant, and, in fact, she had her scores were all transposed and she had them jumbled up, and it didn’t mean anything. It made no sense whatsoever. And, so how can you trust that she even administered and scored them correctly? That does happen. For people who are thinking, “Oh, well standardized measures for pragmatic language …” If you know what you’re doing, you can go do an authentic language sample and the CASL, and that’s going to get you there. But, for people who are paint-by-numbers folks who really don’t understand, thinking they can do pragmatic language in a paint-by-numbers manner, you have to be able to engage in the act of pragmatic language of reading the person yourself in order to take the data necessary to read whether that person has intact pragmatic language skills. And, if you don’t know how to do that type of analysis, then you’re going to have … what I see is people falling more and more back on the standardized norm-referenced stuff and getting away from the observations … getting away from things like the double-interview, where they have to actually use judgment and there’s a professional level of skill that … and understanding and higher-level thinking and critical thinking skills that are required, that a paint-by-numbers, “Let’s just do a norm-referenced test and it will tell us what’s going on” … Up to a point, yes. But, that shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all. I think there’s a lot of value in some of these other, maybe standardized but not norm-referenced, maybe more criterion-referenced kinds of measures. One of the tools that I’ve seen used out here is called the Southern California Ordinal Scales of Development …
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
… and, it’s broken into a cognition, a communication, an adaptive behavior, a motor skills, and one other that I’m not remembering, but all these different aspects of development that you have these subtests in.
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
And, it’s based on a Piagetian model …
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
… where you’re trying to figure out what stage of Piagetian development the individual is in each of the different domains. Because, when you’re talking about someone with a developmental disability, in particular, there’s going to be scatter. That, they may be higher in cognition but lower in communication, if they have apraxia. They may be higher in cognition and communication, but lower in adaptive skills. It’s just, everybody’s different, right? And so, what it looks at, is it’s criterion-referenced, not norm-referenced, and you’re coming at, “Can this person do this thing in any kind of way, yes or no?” And, so, like, when you’re testing for whether they’ve mastered the concept of conservation, the idea that mass doesn’t change even if the way that the mass is arranged is different. So, like, if you have … or volume. So, if you pour water … a cup of water … you’re talking about, like, if you have a tall skinny beaker or a short fat beaker, and you pour a cup of water into each, and you ask the kid, “Which has more?” Well, neither, because it’s both a cup of water.
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
But, a kid who has not mastered conservation is gonna say the tall skinny one has more water because it goes up higher, and the short fat beaker has less because it’s shorter, relatively. And so, they’re only looking at it from one dimension. And someone who has mastered conservation knows it’s still the same amount of water. Or, you take a ball of clay and roll it out into a snake and you say, “Is it still the same amount of clay, or is it more or less?” And, a kid who hasn’t mastered conservation will say it’s more because it’s longer, but the kid who has will say, “It’s the same amount; I just changed the shape.” And so …
Rose Griffin
Hmm.
Anne Zachry
… when you’re doing things like that, sometimes what can happen is … when you’re talking about doing those kinds of things … sometimes, the example in the test … in the Ordinal Scales … will say, “Here are some ways you can test for this,” but it doesn’t obligate you to do it exactly that way, the way a norm-referenced test would … where you’ve got to administer and score it exactly the same way for everybody … well, the scoring is the same, but the administration is not the same on a criterion-referenced … because you’re trying to whether a kid has a skill or not, not how they display it. So, if you have to do something different, like if the ball of clay doesn’t work but the beakers of water gets you there, and they can still demonstrate they have at least, you know, emerging conservation skills. But, you only do one thing with the ball of clay and that’s where you leave it, and you don’t experiment with it, it’s like when you’re testing your hypotheses when you’re doing ABA. You’ve got to fool around with it to see if you’re actually … your hypothesis is right. So, for that kind of measure, what are the various different types of measures do you think are really the most reliable for giving you the broad, full picture of how someone … someone’s communication and behavior plays into each other?
Rose Griffin
Yeah, I think what’s most important is to … whatever you’re doing, it’s going to be dependent on your work setting. So if you’re in a public school, there might be a certain expectation of what type of evaluation tests you’re going to use versus being in a practice that is either private pay or is insurance led. Every work setting is going to have an expectation of what is going to be an assessment. But I think what’s most important with an assessment is to make sure that you talk to the student, you talk to the family, and that you observe the student in different settings. So observing the student in a classroom lesson; observing the student in a less structured environment, like gym or recess or lunch, to try to get a snapshot of the student’s skills. But I really think assessment is an ongoing process and that every time that you see a student, and you work with a student, you’re going to be assessing, “How is the student doing?”, “Are they generalizing their skills?”, and “How can I help support my students?
Anne Zachry
And that makes a lot of sense. I agree with you. I think … that’s music to my ears, because I think that that’s something that’s really important is the observation of students across various different settings, because you’re going to see different presentations …
Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.
Anne Zachry
… based on different environmental stimuli, and different social demands. So I think that that’s hugely important. I think that’s where a lot of the pragmatic stuff really comes out. I think that you coming at it from the perspective of both a BCBA and a speech and language pathologist … that your ability to see the function of the behavior and a moment where pragmatics are not working for someone has to be so much more informed and enlightened than, you know, different brains having to come together to piece together the same story. So I really, truly appreciate, you know, what you’re bringing to the table and your insights into this. This whole realm of how to, you know, help people who are struggling with these kinds of issues and all the different ways that can be done. And I’m excited to share your information with our audience as well so they can go to your site and your podcast and …
Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha! Well, it was really nice to connect. And yes, definitely feel free to reach out to me during the podcast, my free resources, and also the courses that I discussed today.
Anne Zachry
Absolutely! And I’ll be sure to include links to everything because a lot of my families are in, like, parents support groups and stuff they’ll benefit from it.
Rose Griffin
Yeah! That’s awesome! Yeah. so it was great to connect today. Thanks for having me on.
Anne Zachry
Thank you for listening to the podcast version of interview of Rose Griffin, SLP and BCBA. KPS4Parents reminds its listeners that Knowledge Powers Solutions for Parents, and all eligible children, regardless of disability are entitled to a free and appropriate public education. If you are a parent, education professional or concerned taxpayer, and have questions or comments about special education-related matters, please email us at info@kps4parents.org or post a comment to our blog. That’s “info” at “K” as in “knowledge,” “P” as in “Powers,” “S” as in “Solutions,” the number “4,” “Parents,” (“p,” “a,” “r,” “e,” “n,” “t,” “s,”) dot, “o,” “r,” “g.” We hope you found our information useful and look forward to bringing more useful information to you. Subscribe to our feed to make sure that you receive the latest information from making special education actually work, an online publication of KPS4Parents. Find us online at KPS4Parents.org. KPS4Parents is a nonprofit lay advocacy organization. The information provided by KPS4Parents in Making Special Education Actually Work is based on the professional experiences and opinions of KPS4Parents’ lay advocates, and should not be construed as formal legal advice. If you require formal legal advice, please seek the counsel of a qualified attorney. All the content here is copyrighted by KPS4Parents, which reserves all rights.
Pragmatic Language & YouTube Reaction Videos
I’m not a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP), so I’m not pretending to be an expert in the field of language processing. However, I rely on data from SLPs to inform my understanding of the communicative aspects of individual learners’ respective abilities to process information and put it to constructive use.
I’m familiar enough with the concepts of language processing to have some informed questions about things I see in the world, every now and again. One of those things that just dawned on me most recently is the question of the relationship between pragmatic language processing and the popularity of reaction videos on YouTube.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with reaction videos, they are videos made by YouTubers in which they react to videos that have become popular on YouTube, as evidenced by their respective number of views. So, to be clear, it’s videos of people watching videos, usually for the first time, so that other people can watch their reactions.
The pay-off of watching reaction videos is to connect with the reactor’s emotions through the reactor’s body language, facial expression, word choice, and tone of voice. Of those four elements of language watched for by the audience in a reactor during a reaction video, three of them are pragmatic language.
Here is my hypothesis, but I need the SLPs in our audience to weigh in on this, too: You know how when you see something cool, your first impulse is to share it with somebody else and see how they react to it? It’s like we only get one first time of experiencing something, but we want to relive it and the only way we can is to watch someone else experiencing it for the first time.
We ride the emotional roller coaster with each new first-timer we expose to the cool thing, relating to that other person’s emotional response based on our own memories of enjoying our first time with whatever the cool thing is. It sounds like a weaker version of the behavior we otherwise refer to as addiction. The first time is always the best time and the experience can never be fully recaptured, but it can be approximated. It goes to show that all behaviors occur on a spectrum, including those we typically regard as extreme.
Art is the manipulation of media in order to convey emotion. It is often non-linguistic. Light, color, sound, shape, space, and a host of other things can be manipulated according to the laws of physics to evoke feelings and tell stories without words. Other forms are art use words as one more medium to enrich their creations, whether written, spoken, and/or sung.
One of the most popular forms of reaction videos on YouTube is devoted to music, specifically individual music videos. This involves the manipulation of visual and auditory information, only, as the other three senses cannot be actively engaged. The exception could be bone conduction of vibrations from the music in reactors wearing headphones or near loud speakers, creating proprioceptive input that goes to the sense of touch.
There are dozens of reaction videos apiece to a great many songs on YouTube. The number of people reacting times the number of songs to which reactions can be given creates exponential exposure for the artist of each original performance video. Reactors increase their own exposure on YouTube by riding on the coattails of artists who have millions of views of their content because of the quality of their art.
When people search YouTube for an original artist’s work, all of the videos of people reacting to that artist’s work will also come up in the search results. It’s only natural that once one has viewed the original video to want to see it again through the eyes of someone else who has not seen it before and determine if they reached similar conclusions. People are not just looking to relive the experience, but also to be emotionally validated for feeling the ways they felt experiencing the original video for the first time.
Which then begs the questions, “Why do people get so sucked into these videos that are so heavily based on pragmatic language?” and “What are the implications of those facts for individuals who struggle with pragmatic language disorder or autism spectrum disorders that compromise their abilities to accurately read the facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice of others, and express themselves appropriately that way, themselves?”
This boils down to the research question of, “Can reaction videos be used to teach pragmatic language skills through video modeling to individuals who struggle with pragmatic language?” Only scientific research can tell. I’m all about encouraging such research, because now my inquiring mind wants to know.
One of the most powerful examples I can think of is the song, “My Mind,” performed live by Yebba at Sofar New York a few years ago. I have never heard anybody take people on such a hypnotic journey through sound in my life. Watching the reactors getting sucked into the song and becoming mesmerized is something to witness unto itself.
The impact of the reactions to her videos led to a compilation video of several reaction videos, that was basically the YouTube version of a meta-analysis, in which all of the reactors’ reactions were displayed simultaneously, allowing viewers to see which parts of the song triggered the strongest reactions from the most reactors at once, like a living performance graph. Me analyzing that now is like the reflection, within the reflection, within the reflection … like, a metaphorical nautilus of analysis.
Another mesmerizing performance is “SOS” by Dimash Qudaibergan at the Slavic Bazaar, also from just a few years ago. Watching people who have never heard of him before reacting to Dimash singing “SOS” is something to behold. The first time you watch it yourself, you’re immediate reaction is, “No! That can’t be real. He’s not human!” Then you watch it again in the reaction videos and see other people having their responses and you think, “Okay, it’s not just me.”
Another one that requires additional inquiry is Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey,” which doesn’t even have a video. It’s just the song with a still image of the album cover throughout, and yet it has over 500 million views on YouTube as of the time of this post. Watching people who have grown up on rap and hip-hop reacting to this song with surprise is a joy. They are the ones that give animated visual life to what is otherwise a largely auditory experience.
Anyone watching the Kodi Lee AGT audition reactions can see a handful of egocentric attention- and click-seekers suddenly reduced to puddles of humility over and over again. In an instant, Kodi’s performance puts things into perspective and they get it. The clicks to watch the reaction become earned because it isn’t a trick; these people are legitimately shook by what they see and that’s what engages viewers of reaction videos.
In all of the above-referenced original videos, surprise is always a key element. In every reaction video that gets any kind of traction on YouTube, the reactors are shocked by what they are watching for the first time, and become emotionally engaged with the song and performer to which they are reacting. In all the instances cited above, there is an emotional story being told with which listeners can identify.
The reason the views of the original videos are so high in the first place is because the content is so emotionally engaging. People reacting to them for the clicks suddenly forget about the clicks, find themselves transported, and start talking about things that actually matter in the world. What often started out as an exercise in narcissism for pay can become a transformative experience that snaps a selfishly motivated YouTuber right out of it and puts things into proper perspective.
The sounds of the originally performed songs conform with their respective story lines in a way that takes the listener along for the emotional ride of each. With the exception of the Chris Stapleton example, above, reactors also have the benefit of watching the performance, which adds the benefit of facial expression and body language to the communication. Each song conveys a different emotional experience, but one must have intact pragmatic language skills to appreciate what makes each song so uniquely impactful that it inspires so many views and, thus, so many reaction videos.
And, I want to be clear that, even if the reactors are initially reacting to these specific videos only for their own marketing purposes, the ones that get the most traffic are the ones in which the reactors are caught off guard and have authentic responses, like crying or, in the case of Yebba, getting moved by the Holy Spirit in the middle of a song that is not about religion in any kind of way. The value in watching these reaction videos is seeing real people moved for real in the moment without the opportunity to fake it.
There’s no way to conceal authentic surprise and awe, and those are the feelings viewers seem to be trying to experience by watching these reaction videos. What is it about the human psyche, then, that causes us to seek experiences that make us feel surprise and awe? Why do we want to witness miracles so badly? Why are the outliers who receive the most favorable public attention usually artists rather than scientists? Why do we tend to think data is boring and seek emotionally extreme experiences when data is practically useful and emotions often are not?
I don’t have the answers. I just think this is a line of inquiry worth exploring. I’m curious to see if the evidence in support of video modeling as an instructional strategy could be applied to using reaction videos to teach pragmatic language skills to those who struggle with this area of language processing. Are there any communication researchers out there who might want to conduct some studies so inquiring minds can know?
California SLPs Sometimes Confuse Legal Requirements
Today’s posting will hopefully lay to rest a misunderstanding that seems to plague special education in California. I can only presume that, like many other “urban myths” that root themselves in special education lore, at some point in time, somebody somewhere in California conducted a training seminar on speech-language assessment and services within special education and miscommunicated something that has now led to speech-language specialists throughout the state making improper conclusions to the detriment of some children in need of speech-language services.
The problem is this: the distinction between who is found eligible for special education on the basis of a speech-language impairment (“SLI”) and who qualifies for speech-language services as a student already eligible for special education under any other category. Eligibility for special education as SLI is not required in order for a child otherwise eligible for special education to receive speech-language services in order to benefit from his/her IEP.
The critical piece of legislation, which gets erroneously cited in speech-language assessment reports all the time, is 5 CCR 3030(c). Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations Section 3030 describes all of the criteria for each of the eligibility categories under which a student may qualify for special education and related services. These categories include Specific Learning Disability (“SLD”), Other Health Impaired (“OHI”), Emotionally Disturbed (“ED”), and many others, including SLI. The critical thing to understand here is that the 3030s describe who can receive special education and on what basis, not what services they will get.
What ends up happening, though, is a child will be assessed for special education purposes and a speech-language assessment will be conducted. In the course of the overall assessment, even though the child is found eligible under some category other than SLI, because he did not score below the 7th percentile on two or more speech-language assessments, the speech-language specialist will determine that he doesn’t qualify for speech-language services according to 5 CCR 3030(c). It is a complete and utter misapplication of this Code, which deals strictly with eligibility under SLI and not what services an otherwise eligible child should receive.
A typical example of this would be a child who is eligible for special education pursuant to 5 CCR 3030(g) for autistic-like behaviors (in special education in California, a medical or psychological diagnosis cannot be made by the school psychologist, so this section of the code provides alternative language and defines the criteria by which a special education eligibility category can be identified for a child exhibiting the symptoms of autism), but who is relatively verbal. While his scores may hover just above the 7th percentile on the speech-language tests he was administered, they are still very low and his low language functioning compounds his other problems arising from the other needs arising from his handicapping condition.
In this example, anyone in their right mind can see that the child needs pragmatic (social) language intervention and help with idiomatic and figurative (non-literal) language. He doesn’t have any friends, he doesn’t get jokes, and he doesn’t understand clichs and colorful sayings, such as “Clear as mud.” This makes it difficult for him to participate in group projects with peers and understand the writings of Mark Twain. He needs goals that address these areas of need and speech-language services in order to benefit from his IEP.
No subsection of 5 CCR 3030 drives the selection of services that any child gets, only whether or not a particular child is eligible and, if so, under what category. The IDEA mandates that children who are eligible for special education, regardless of what category they qualify under, receive whatever supports and services are necessary in order to afford them a FAPE.
Specifically, the federal regulations found at 34 CFR 300.320(a)(2) state that IEPs must include for each child measurable annual goals, including academic and functional goals designed to meet the child’s needs that result from the child’s disability to enable the child to be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum and meet each of the child’s other educational needs that results from the child’s disability.
An eligible child is a child who requires, as a result of one or more handicapping conditions, special education and related services in order to receive educational benefit. 34 CFR 300.39 “Related services” is described at 34 CFR 300.34. In none of this is there anything that suggests that the only way that an otherwise eligible child can receive speech-language services is if he is also found eligible as SLI.
In fact, 34 CFR 300.304(c)(6) states that, when evaluations are conducted for special education purposes, they must be “sufficiently comprehensive to identify all of the child’s special education and related services needs, whether or not commonly linked to the disability category in which the child has been classified.” Congress understood when it crafted the IDEA that you don’t individualize a child’s program by resorting to “cookie-cutter” strategies that are based on a kid’s eligibility category.
The IDEA is the skeleton of special education law. It establishes the basic framework and minimal standards. It is left to the states, if they want any federal special education dollars, to add the flesh to the bones by creating their own state-level legislation that explains how each state will implement the requirements of the IDEA. While states are free to add more obligations to their schools than what the IDEA requires, they are prohibited from reducing the protections offered to students and parents under the IDEA lest they sacrifice their funding.
What this means for speech-language services to special education students in California is that the IDEA basically says each eligible child must get whatever he/she needs in order to receive educational benefit, regardless of what type of services are required and regardless of the applicable eligibility categories. That’s the whole concept of individualizing a child’s education plan based on his/her unique educational needs.
There is nothing at the state-level that reduces this federal mandate, nor could there be unless California were to choose to go it alone to cover its special education costs and we all already know that California can’t pay its bills even with the federal funding it receives. It absolutely cannot afford to give up its federal special education funding.
We’re curious to know if there are any other state-level debacles involving misinterpretations of the law happening elsewhere. Readers are encouraged to post comments to this posting about such misinterpretations that may be occurring where they live.
Why Placement Isn’t Where You Start: Understanding the IEP Process
I can’t count the number of parents who have approached me to accomplish a specific placement for their child. Usually it’s because the child of someone else the parent knows has been placed in a particular setting and is doing really well, so the parent presumes his/her child would also do well in that setting. As another example, a child may only be receiving 20 minutes of individual speech-language services a week, which the parents contend is reprehensibly paltry for their language-impaired child.
These parents come to KPS4Parents looking to change their children’s placements or increase the number of related service hours in a specific setting because they think the placements they already have are inadequate. But, most of the time they’re totally missing the point.
It’s not that something isn’t wrong. If nothing was wrong, their children would be making a reasonable degree of progress and they wouldn’t be coming to us for help. But, because they are lay people and they don’t understand the process, they target what is the most observable thing to be targeted – the placement – without understanding all of the more abstract underpinnings of what makes any placement appropriate or not.
This can lead to a lot of pointless arguments and disputes. Some of these parents will go out and hire lawyers to press the issue only to be dismayed if they don’t prevail. The problem is not always with the placement or services, per se. It’s very often with the present levels of performance data and the goals. Parents rarely understand just how critically important these foundational pieces are to their children’s success in any placement.
You will note that our last few postings have followed a progression. We started out talking about – child find – and then moved on to the initial assessment process, understanding assessment data, and eligibility.
Special education follows a very linear process. Actually, it’s pretty formulaic. Parents aren’t expected to automatically know this. But, I’ve attended countless IEP meetings where school site staff didn’t seem to know it, either.
The process begins with assessment. Assessment determines whether a disability is present and, if so, fleshes out enough details about what is going on so that the IEP team can determine the child’s present levels of performance. Present levels of performance statements indicate what a child can and cannot do.
Once the present levels are known, measurable annual goals are written to target deficits in skills and knowledge. The intent is to describe what the desired outcomes of one year’s worth of special education will be.
Once the desired outcomes have been described, services are selected that are necessary to see the goals achieved.Placement is driven by what will see the goals achieved, taking into consideration the services that are necessary to meet them, in the least restrictive environment (“LRE”). LRE means that, to the maximum extent possible, based on the unique needs of the child, the child is to be educated with his/her non-disabled peers and preferably at the same school he/she would attend if he/she did not have a disability.
The LRE requirement is a huge consideration and is relative to the unique needs of each child. What is least restrictive for one child may not be least restrictive for another. The most important consideration is “What is the LRE in which a specific child’s goals can be met?
Because special education calls for an Individualized Education Plan (“IEP”), you can’t compare one child’s performance in a particular setting against the performance of another child. The child’s performance has to be measured against the child’s capabilities and the unique challenges he/she faces. Just because two kids have autism, that doesn’t mean they will both benefit from the same program.
And, it isn’t just parents who can be guilty of putting the cart before the horse. I’ve gone into more IEP meetings than I can count where the education agency has already pre-determined the placement and then proceeds to propose pre-written goals that fit the placement rather than the child.
In fact, I had a meeting just like this earlier this school year (2008-09) and I want to share an out-take from the audio recording of the IEP meeting just to illustrate this point. To give you some context to the recording, the IEP team had just gone over the District’s assessment of the student and the conversation you hear in the recording is what immediately followed the presentation of the present levels of performance.
NOTE: There is no identifying information disclosed that could be used to compromise the child or family’s confidentiality and the family in question has given their consent for us to use this brief segment.? (Please forgive the hum of the air conditioner in the background.)
Those of you who know better, now having listened to this little snippet, are probably dying on the inside right now. This child has a whole host of claims against his school district and we’re working with the District’s administration right now to achieve remedy to this child’s situation.
Those of you who are advocates for children already know, and parents should take heed, that there are times when it becomes apparent that sanity and logic have gone right out the window and the only thing you can do is sit back with the audio recorder running, ask probing questions, and just collect evidence. This was one of those situations, which is why I sound less than enthusiastic in the recording.
I much prefer to facilitate resolutions that lead to immediate benefit for students than collect evidence of school district personnel ricocheting off of each other like Keystone Cops.? School site staff, including this student’s teacher, didn’t even know what grade this student was in.
At any rate, my point is this: placement comes at the end of the line after everything else has been discussed. Everything else builds up to the placement decision. It’s the very last thing you decide.
Going into an IEP meeting with a specific placement pre-determined is sheer folly. You’re operating on preconceived notions and you’re not letting the legally prescribed and entirely logical process occur. I’ve seen parents and school personnel alike go in so dead-set on what placement they think a child should have that they don’t listen to a word of the data about what the child’s needs actually are and what is reasonable to expect in terms of desired outcomes.
The other thing that trips up parents and leads to disputes over the wrong issues is a lack of understanding about various different service delivery models. I’ve seen children with profound language impairments receive very little individual language services, not much more group services, but a whole lot of imbedded language programming in the classroom.
Here’s the thing with teaching skills to children, regardless of their cognitive level: children learn an awful lot by copying whoever they are around. If you put a bunch of kids with speech and language disorders in the same room all day long, they’re all going to start picking up each other’s speech impediments. Language-impaired children need to hear properly spoken language all day long and have their language intervention built into their regular day-to-day activities. Real life is where the language is needed, not the artificial setting of the speech room.
Some parents seem convinced that if their child receives more individualized language services in the speech room, that’s automatically going to improve their child’s language. But, that’s often not the case. In my experience, the benefit of individualized speech-language sessions is to pre-teach certain skills and rehearse them before attempting them in real-life, natural settings with other people. Group language instruction can be helpful to rehearse before trying to use skills in the classroom and on the playground, as well.
The issue here isn’t whether the language programming can be successfully imbedded into the day-to-day classroom routine, but rather whether it’s really being done and how the fidelity of that implementation model can be monitored and maintained. This takes us right back to the measureable annual goals.
In order for progress towards the goals to be measured, data has to be collected. We’ll talk more about goals and measurability in an upcoming posting, but I want to make the point here that so long as you have sufficient data collection taking place, you’re going to be able to track whether things are being done properly and whether or not they are working.
You also have to consider that programming embedded in the classroom is less restrictive than pulling the child out of the classroom for services.If the language services are embedded in the classroom, for example, the child can be simultaneously learning the curriculum and improving his/her language skills. If the child is pulled out, he/she loses instruction time in exchange for related service time.
The same scenario can be used for a variety of related services and types of specialized instruction.? Parents need to understand what is actually being offered and focus more on goal attainment, measurability, data collection, and the LRE than anything else.? Once the goals are written in an appropriate manner and in all areas of need, you will find that the amount of service hours needed to pull them off starts to add up.? And, this is where I think the light bulb finally comes on for parents.??
When parents come to me upset about inadequate service hours, I look at the goals. If, for example, the child only has one goal for mastering the /r/ and /l/ sounds, then fifteen minutes a week of speech-language services sounds about right. But if the same child also has huge deficits in grammar and syntax, as well as significant pragmatic (social) language deficits, when the parents are saying “My kid needs more speech-language services,” what they’re really saying is that their child needs help in more areas of speech-language than what his/her goals actually address.
The next step is to add more speech-language goals in those areas where needs are not being addressed to the child’s IEP. Once those goals have been written, then we can ask the question “Is fifteen minutes of speech-language service per week enough time to see all of the speech-language goals met?|” and the answer is most likely going to be “no.” At that point, the number of speech-language hours can justifiably be increased.
I hope this helps make more sense of things for you. Please do comment to this and our other postings. We appreciate the number of visitors we’re getting to the blog and the emails we’re getting from people, but your comments will really help make this the collaborative tool we want it to become.
Emotions Part 2 – School Site Staff
Parents are not the only ones who have emotional reactions to things that happen in the special education process. Special education is a very complex undertaking that involves a lot of people, each with his/her own perspective.
Teachers and related service providers (speech-language specialists, occupational therapists, etc.), being in the trenches as it were, are the people most in a position to see the educational impact of a child’s special needs first-hand. What they don’t know can hurt a child.
Parents who jump to blaming teachers and providers without considering all of the factors that these professionals have to deal with, however, don’t help the situation. That isn’t to say that teachers and providers are without responsibility and shouldn’t be held accountable. But, things have to be done the right way.
There’s usually a whole lot more going on behind the scenes beyond the control of the teachers and related service providers that parents don’t know about or understand. Many parents may look at teaching and professional staff, as well as school site administrators, as having a lot of say in how things go down, but the truth is that their effectiveness is also influenced by internal agency politics that start at the top of the agency’s administrative hierarchy and trickle down into the classroom through bureaucratic channels.
What teachers and related service providers are prevented from doing by the internal politics of the agencies they work for can also hurt a child, and most teachers and providers who find themselves in these kinds of circumstances are sickened by them. I’ve spoken to many people over the years who left the teaching profession because they were unsupported by their administrations, were denied the tools they needed to teach all of their students (particularly those with unique learning needs), and were told not to say anything to parents or make waves lest they find themselves unemployed. This is entirely unacceptable on a variety of levels, not to mention unlawful.
In many of the difficult instances I’ve seen, teachers and related service providers have not been properly trained on what to do and/or have had critical resources withheld from them by the powers that be. When parents understand that teachers and service providers are usually jumping nervewracking hurdles within their agencies behind the scenes, a more constructive and collaborative way of working together can be developed and the professionals can come to regard the parents as resources rather than additional obstacles.
Teachers and related service providers, like parents, need to check their emotions at the door when it comes time for meetings with parents and co-workers. I once attended an IEP meeting for a little girl who was being raised by her single dad and the little girl’s teacher, as it turns out, had a mad crush on the dad. This same teacher was actually a pretty decent special education teacher in terms of her caring for her students and how effectively she communicated with them. But, the school district she worked for had trained its special education staff incorrectly on how to write IEP goals, resulting in IEPs filled with nonsensical gibberish.
The exasperated father kept going back to her asking for clarification, which she was more than willing to oblige, and calling new IEP meetings to better describe the goals without really getting anywhere productive. As a professional person, he knew what kind of standards he was held to when it came to goal-setting and he just couldn’t fathom his daughter’s IEP goals.
I wrote a letter to the district explaining why the goals were completely unacceptable and an IEP meeting was again called to address the goals. He and I went to the IEP meeting where this teacher, who had tried so hard to please this frustrated parent using the knowledge and information she had, bawled uncontrollably throughout the IEP meeting.
The teacher took the parent’s hiring of advocates to address the goals she had written as a personal attack, despite the fact that the real failing was in the way the district had trained her to write the goals and not something that we’d ever blamed her for specifically. Her sense of rejection was only further amplified by the fact that part of her motivation in working so hard with this parent was because she was attracted to him and, clearly, if he had hired a quasi-legal representative to respond to her efforts, her affections were not?being returned. It was one of the most uncomfortable IEP meetings I’ve ever attended.
That certainly doesn’t happen to me every day. But, I’ve gone to a number of meetings where teachers or service providers were defensive, rude, condescending, and inappropriate because they were bad people doing bad things. I went to a meeting once where a mean and nasty speech-language pathologist had produced a very poor assessment report on behalf of the district that failed to include any subtest scores, making it impossible to see whether the child had demonstrated subtest scatter (subtest scores that are not close together, indicating relative strengths in some areas and deficits in others, as opposed to the subtest scores more or less being about the same regardless of the areas tested). When I asked for the subtest scores, she sneeringly advised that she couldn’t provide them because she had shredded the assessment protocols (the booklets in which the student’s actual answers and scores are recorded). Shredded them!!!
In California, unlike many other states, assessment protocols are considered part of a student’s records and, therefore, must be maintained as such (meaning that parents have the right to copies of them). Here, the assessor had destroyed a protected student record and for what She couldn’t prove that she had properly administered and scored the assessments in addition to the fact that she couldn’t really show how the child had performed on them.
On behalf of the parents, I immediately disputed her results and asked for an independent educational evaluation (“IEE”), which is basically a second opinion by an outside assessor not employed by the education agency, at public expense.? The only way the district could have turned down the request would have been to take the family to hearing to assert the appropriateness of its assessments, which it couldn’t do because the speech-language pathologist had shredded the evidence. The district sensibly agreed to the IEE.
The thing I hope you take from this posting is that teachers and service providers are people too. Parents and administrators need to understand this but nonetheless expect the utmost ethical conduct from teachers and providers as well as a legitimate interest in learning whatever they can to make sure their students receive meaningful educational benefit.
Teachers and providers need to understand that protections are in place (see our first posting of November 11, 2008) to prevent them from being retaliated against by their employers for doing what they think is right by their students with disabilities. Administrators need to be sensitive to the feelings of pressure they may be inadvertently placing on teachers and providers to say and do things that betray their moral judgment. This is the kind of thing that leads to teacher burn-out and prompts service providers to leave public education and go into private practice.
Teachers and providers need to have confidence in their own voices and insist that they be provided with the training and supports they need to do their jobs well. Disenfranchisement is the usurper of success and depriving our children of success is an unacceptable outcome for us all.