In many schools, students are pulled out of classrooms to receive additional support in speech and occupational therapy, special education, remediation in math or language arts, and other services. Sadly, this doesn’t serve students or their classroom teachers or create teams of learning support.

On this episode of the Education Evolution podcast, we’re talking to Julie Burgess-Dennis, a speech and language pathologist (SLP) who works as part of the team of consulting specialists at LEADPrep Academy in the Seattle area. She shares why a push-in model helps to build relationships between these “dream team” consultants and classroom teachers and why it helps children master their goals that much faster.

The whole-student perspective we get from this transdisciplinary model is vital in our students’ success and it’s something we rarely see in a traditional school model. Listen in to our conversation and think about how this smaller school setting, a micro-school, with embedded tiers of support can benefit the children in your community.

About Julie Burgess-Dennis

Julie provides speech, language, communication and social cognition services in the context of social interaction, play, and structured learning activities. Her professional training has focused on sensory motor processing, motor speech disorders, language processing, and social cognition. She is PROMPT© Level II trained, completed intensive training at the DIR© Institute and has attended many workshops focusing on Social Thinking© presented by Michelle Garcia Winner. Julie has also focused a great deal of professional development on sensory motor processing relating to sensory regulation, communication and language development.

Julie’s approach is family- and team-based, providing service in the home, school, and Under the Umbrella: A Therapy and Learning Collective. She values the collaborative process and enjoys working with all individuals participating in her clients’ social and academic learning. She offers evaluation, treatment and consultation services; all individualized to meet the unique needs of every client, family, and school.

Jump Through the Conversation

[2:21] Learning is social, must push-in support as much as possible
[3:40] Teaming to build systems and collaborative solutions
[4:22] How the push-in model has helped students and teachers
[5:18] How relationships and real-time moments are key
[6:30] Bring joy and relationships for fun and to add to the progress
[10:09] Autism: all learning is social driven. We need to help kids with autism engage and access their education
[10:31] We are focused on the behaviors we can see; we need to come back and look at the underlying factors that contribute to behavior and address these factors, not just the surface behavior
[13:43] Julie’s Magic Wand:

• Would take the “ginormous” schools and pare them down. Concept of a micro-school where everyone knows each other. Small communities forge relationships and trust
• Bureaucracy gets in the way and buries great leaders and teachers. Relook at the model. The system is segregated: change it and let specialists collaborate and become transdisciplinary; get away from medical model

[18:31] Maureen unpacks how specialist training and ongoing collaboration enhances student support and teacher understanding of learning profiles

Links and Resources:

• Julies’s contact info and website
• Under the Umbrella, naturalistic speech and social communication resource in Seattle
• Harmful Silos in the healthcare model
• Dr. Barry Prizant’s Autism resource book: Uniquely Human and book overview
• Behavioral perspective vs social learning approach
• Power of relationships in learning
• MTSS: Multi-Tiered Systems of Support. MTSS is an instructional framework that includes universal screening of all students and includes multiple tiers of instruction and support services.
• Email Maureen
• Facebook: Follow Education Evolution
• Twitter: Follow Education Evolution
• LinkedIn: Follow Education Evolution
• Maureen’s book: Creating Micro-Schools for Colorful Mismatched Kids

Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Android. If you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes and share what you liked about the show.