ABA Unfiltered
ABA Unfiltered
ABA Unfiltered Season 5 Episode 11 - Speech Therapy & ABA
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The new episode of ABA Unfiltered is now live 🎙️🎉 Amanda Fullbright is joined by Speech-Language Pathologist and Board Certified Behavior Analyst, Rosemarie Griffin. Rosemarie joins the podcast to discuss the use of Speech-Language Pathologists in the world of ABA. Join us on our journey to learn more about the field of ABA.
🤩 Here's a little bonus for our listeners: Use the exclusive promo code mentioned in the podcast to get a $5 discount on any CEU in our catalog! 📚✨ Grab this special offer now at https://bcbaceu.bluesprigautism.com/. Don't miss out!
1. Rose's website, ABA Speech.
Hello everyone, this is Andrew Blumstrom along with Amanda Colbright, and you are listening to ABA Unfiltered, where each episode we interview guests from around the world of ABA. Whether you're a BCBA, RBT, or just interested in ABA, you are sure to pick up some actionable advice you can utilize on your journey.
SPEAKER_02Hi, Rose. Thank you so much for joining us today, or me today. I'm solo today. I'm missing Andrew. Um, but thank you so much for being on the podcast. Why don't we start by you introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about yourself?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to connect today. So I am a speech language pathologist and a board certified behavior analyst. I have been a speech therapist for 20 years. So I'm calling myself Seasoned these days. And I have been duly certified for 12 of those years, which is something I'm very proud of. There are less than 515 people in the entire world that are both speech therapists and BCBAs. So it's a small little uh group. We have deemed ourselves the unicorns, and it's always fun to connect with a fellow unicorn. If anybody's listening, give me a shout on Instagram. And um I, you know, I started my career path as a speech language pathologist. My mom gave me a career test. It said I should be a speech therapist. So I shout out a family friend. I was like, wow, you get to be around people all day and it's science related, but there's not a lot of math. I was like sold. Um and I worked in the schools and non-public programs for 20 years. And then I started my own business called ABA Speech about six years ago because I had the idea for a therapy product called the Action Builder Cards. And it just, just like with anything, it continued to grow. I created another product called the Double Up Game. I created a blog. Then I was like, oh no, I need a website. And I started my own podcast called Autism Outreach almost two years ago. And our biggest generator of revenue and what takes up all my time and what I really love and enjoy and what I did earlier this morning are training. So we're an Asha approved CE training uh provider, which is a really hard application process. It was about a 250-page application process. And we're also an ACE uh provider, which was a little easier, one page. And then so we pride ourselves in being uh, well, you know that. I'm sure you're intimately involved with all the CEU things. Um, and so uh my days are made up of trainings. And um, last year I retired, is what we called it from the from the public schools. I had a little retirement party with my friends. And um this past year I focused just on my family because I have three kids. We were talking ahead of time and on ABA speech, which has really just been um just my absolute joy to be able to talk day in and day out about how to help all autistic learners find their voice.
SPEAKER_02That is awesome. So you answered my first question, which is were you an SLP or BCBA first? So SLP first. What led you down the path to say, oh, I think I'm also going to become a BCBA?
SPEAKER_01You know, in my coursework, my uh second year of graduate school, I worked with a really great school-based clinician. She wasn't doing ABA. We didn't really talk about, we weren't talking about ABA so much back then, but she was very structured and in her approach. And I really loved working with the autistic learners that I was meeting. And then my second year as a speech therapist, I took a position at the Cleveland Clinic, used to be called Autism Center. Now we call it the Learner School. And that is really where I learned about helping students who were traditionally extremely hard to reach. So it was a non-public program for students, and this was their least restrictive environment. I always call it my autism boot camp. I have lifelong friends, people that are in my wedding that I'm friends with to this day. From there, you really just bond with people in those environments. But what I saw there was applied behavior analysis and speech therapy helping students who were younger, but also helping a student who I was on my caseload who was 18 and had no way to communicate and seeing him use a device for the first time. And I just remember sitting in the speech therapy office telling my colleagues, I'm gonna go places and I'm gonna tell people about ABA. And I said that 20 years ago, and it's still so exciting because it's absolutely transforming lives when you put speech therapy and ABA together. So that is where I learned about ABA. And then I took my coursework um when I lived in Austin, Texas, and Kelly Rich, um, who has started the Verbal Behavior Conference, was actually my supervisor. So um, she is a mentor of mine, and it was really neat to be able to um work alongside her and have her mentorship.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. I I've had the privilege of touring the Cleveland Clitic program, and it's and it's an amazing program. About 2018 or so. So I'm sure that they've even done more great things since then. So that's awesome. So you have this like SLP side of your brain and this BCBA side of your brain. Does one of them take over, or do they always just work together? Like powerful.
SPEAKER_01I really do they really do work together. I used to say, you know, when I'm in a room of speech therapists, I feel like I'm not speech therapy enough. And when I'm in a room full of BCBAs, I feel like I'm not BCBA enough. But I really I don't know how to describe it. I can't tease out which one is which. I do definitely focus on communication. So as a BCBA, I, you know, I definitely focus on communication. That's my niche area. I'm not writing um FBAs for students that are engaging in unsafe problem behavior. That's never been kind of my focus. Um, it's always been that communication piece. And I feel like over time I feel real comfortable that that's my my niche. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_02And I've I've heard other people that are duly credentialed, duly licensed saying that before. Um, my boss is a psychologist, BCBA. She's like, I always feel like I'm not psych enough or grown up. And I'm like, oh, that's sad. You're enough. This is me. This is me.
SPEAKER_01I'm a I disseminate a lot on social media, so everybody has an opinion. But the more you've I've had an online business six years, I'm like, this is it. Love it or leave it, you know. So that's a good place to be.
SPEAKER_02That's that's a healthy place to be. Yes. I have so enjoyed working with SLPs in the past and consulting on you know past clients and just soaking up all of the awesome knowledge that SLPs have that we don't have as behavior analysts. And I'm I'm curious, what are some of the things that you wish were included in BCBA coursework or experience, you know, field work or anything like that that you think that would help BCBAs?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I think that's a great question. And I think the number one thing is a course on speech and language development. We don't often take a course like that as BCBAs, but yet we're tasked with creating intervention plans for kids who are emerging communicators. So I think that is very important. We offer an ACE course that's a speech and language milestones refresher. I include videos of my own kids at different ages. It's easier to get that video released versus clients. And um, the other thing that I just talked about, and something that's been really popular with ABA clinics, is a talk that I have called The Power of Join Attention. And I just think that focus on join attention, from a more of a behavioral sense, we might hear it um, you know, naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions or NDBI. Um I have the book right here on my desk. My my life plan is to read that book and create a larger course based on that. And really, in essence, what it is is working on communication in a way that's structured but is more naturalistic. And I just don't think that we have a focus on those different types of things in our coursework. And what's so hard as BCBAs is we may have that power. We may be able to go into a first session and be able to play with a child and to be able to naturally facilitate communication. But we are really, in essence, tasked with training staff members to do that. And it's very, very nuanced. And I think it's very, very hard to teach those skills, but I do think that it's something that we need to realize in our field, and it's something we need to put on our to-do list for our training for every ABA clinic uh that's listening today.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. I actually have uh my next kind of question that I have for you on my my list is is talking about that joint attention course. I I personally went out and accessed it yesterday. I haven't dove all the way into it, but I was like, this is really cool. And I think that it's a really important and as you said, nuanced. But I'm wondering if you could just talk to us and our listeners a little bit about the power of working on joint attention, not just as behavior analysts, but how do we teach our techs how to do this? That's a great question. Yes, that's a great question.
SPEAKER_01And I do have a free uh course that's 30 minutes that's about joint attention. I could always share the link with you as well that's meant to be more for parent and staff training. But the idea of joint attention is really a foundational skill, how we're working on social engagement. And we often do need to embed that into our learner's sessions in more naturalistic ways, which I think can be harder for staff. Because when I was working in ABA Center, the programs that always got run for me were more at the table, discrete trial, because it's easier for people, it's not as nuanced. I would have a vocation program and the kid would go all around the building and do all these different things and it was it was never run, right? Because it was harder. And the same thing with joint attention. The way that I talk about joint attention, and thanks for signing up for the course, is that I talk about it in a three-part framework. So we could use books, we can use music, and we can use play. And when I'm working with a younger learner, I always embed it could be at the beginning of the session, middle, or end. And I'm thinking from a speech therapy standpoint, right? Not a four-hour session for a young learner doing ABA, but I think to myself, okay, we need to work on these things because this is how our student is going to be motivated to communicate and motivated to learn. And this is how we build that foundation. So I would just urge you to maybe take the course and to think about you doing shared activities. So it's not always about direct eye contact. It's more about I'm in the activity, you're in the activity, oh, we're enjoying this. Sometimes they talk about it as being a fun activity together. And how can you take data on that? It's going to be different for every single student, but just starting to have that dialogue. And often these programs do take place away from the table in more of a natural setting. So just, you know, using that behavioral skills training to work on training that for our technicians. And it is a harder skill. I was, I was in a Facebook group last week and somebody said it was an ABA Skillshare, which is a very large Facebook group if you're not in it. And somebody said, Does anybody have any videos or trainings on how to teach RBTs to play with clients? And I don't think that is a ridiculous question because I think back to myself before I had my own children. I just, I mean, I hope my personality comes over as fun and energetic. But before I had my own kids, I wasn't operating from this place of being silly and kind of going with the flow. I was more regimented in how I was doing things. And oh, this is what I work on and this is how I do it. And so I do think we have to think about how we can take these nuanced things like joint attention. And you could always tie it in with that naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions and throw in some good research there. There's a lot out there. Um, as part of our training for new staff.
SPEAKER_02Do you think that that's a part of a like brand new new hire skill, or is that more of an advanced skill?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, if somebody's already been through the 40 hour, if somebody is an RBT, I don't know if it's really advanced. I think we just talk about it, we introduce it at the beginning, and then it's maybe a module or something that we that we focus on. Um, you know, because I've had people who have an established SLP practice and they're going to start offering ABA services. And they may even be a BCBA themselves. And they were so confused when the RBT just didn't know how to pair and build rapport with the child. But I would be nervous with somebody saying, like, here, just here's all the toys, and here's a kid who's not talking yet and has never been away from their mother. Uh, here you go. You know, have a good time. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. You know, it's just, it's, it's a skill that needs to be broken down and it needs to be taught behaviorally to staff. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. We've definitely had a look at the TAS lists for RBTs and and then said to ourselves, what else? Like, we don't need to marry ourselves, you know, or be beholden just to this. Of course, you have to do that. Um, but that plus what?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And I think I do that too. Every time I do an ace talk, uh, and it's probably just because I'm callous. I always feel like somebody's gonna say, like, this isn't ADA enough, or but I always have a slide that says, this is the task list item that I am going. This is how I as a provider am going beyond the task list. So for example, the speech and language milestones refresher, I always say, you know what, this is the task list that we're going through where we need to have these correct interventions. But what we're doing is we're taking a step back and we're looking at human development. And taking that step back is gonna let us have this transformative step forward so that we can use our, you know, VB map or our vineland, whatever we're using for intake, and we can use human development and use all of that together to really set goals that are gonna really help our students find a voice.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, beautiful. Well said. Thanks. You were talking about play and and talking about new uh people that are not really you know experienced with hanging out with kids and playing, and but even those that are like I grew up with younger siblings and babysitting and working in after school programs. And sure that helped uh me become a therapist when at the time, but uh it doesn't really prepare you for the fact that that's not always reciprocal with uh children with autism. And so our behavior can be, you know, subject to ratio strain. And because these kids are not going to maybe respond in the way that your younger siblings did or or the kids you babysit do. And you know, you kind of have to work through that and it's different. Have you experienced that as well or or talked about that in any of your trainings as well?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And I can't remember what research it is, but when I was really researching for the joint attention course in my larger start communicating today course about helping toddlers and preschool age students, I read research that said, just like you're saying, you know, if we're trying to work on joint attention and we're doing these shared activities and maybe the student isn't reciprocating in the way that we would expect, and that sometimes parents from a parent viewpoint don't do those activities as much because they think, oh, well, my child doesn't like that, or they're not interested in that. And that really may not be the case. And we really just don't know because most of the times the students that I tend to talk about are students who are not yet speaking. So we're really just looking at how they're engaging. And um, we're not gonna be sure if they enjoy it, if they like it, if they and I that's why I use that framework of books, music, and play, because I may have a book that I love, like Pete the Cat and something really amazing. Well, maybe my student doesn't like that, and that's okay. Then the next session we do chicka chicka boom boom or something like that. Um, but I think this idea of just that play is important, you know, I was doing a training for um an ABA center a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking about uh play and different toys, and I asked a pretty large group, what is a favorite toy that you like to use in therapy? And it was radio silent. No one said anything. And I don't think that it was like a shy group. Um part of me thinks that maybe they're just not incorporating any type of play or any type of natural environment teaching into their intervention. And so I think we just have to look at those ratios. Obviously, it's gonna look different therapy for a two and a half year old versus somebody who is getting ready to go into kindergarten and needing to have those um, okay, this is morning meeting, this is how we sit in a chair. I mean, those things are important for our learners. Um, but I was kind of that kind of made me a little nervous about why there was no, because if you ask a group of speech therapists, what is your favorite toy to use in therapy? It's like, you know, the chat is blowing up and there's a lot out there. So I would just say if you're not incorporating play or anything more naturalistic, just to um to to start and see how that works for your client.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's you talked about developmental milestones with communication and speech, but I would say even broader that developmental milestones of all behavior is probably pretty important. There's been so many times that I've seen folks working on um sitting at a table or group time with two and a half year olds, three-year-olds. And I'm like, they're not really doing, shouldn't really be doing that yet. Um, oh, well, we're getting them ready for school, but they're three. Um even my own children at you know, preschool, I'm like, why are they? This isn't terribly developmentally appropriate, you know, that you're having them sit in this group for this long. What's your experience been with that if you've been consulting with someone that that might be doing something that's not developmentally appropriate?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I see that often. And I used to always say, when I worked in Austin, Texas, I worked in Leander ISD, amazing district. There were about 35 to 40 speech therapists. I would give a training every week and then go out to their campuses. But one of the things that was always, I was always called out for was morning meeting, morning circle time for autistic learners. I mean, of course, when I would come out, then the kids were, you know, sitting perfectly and engaging in every activity. But it's just such a hard time for our kids. It is because sometimes the kids need visuals and there's there's no visual. Maybe they don't have any way to communicate yet and they don't have a device, or they're not, there's no way for them to participate. So they're just having to sit there. So just thinking about the environment. Um, that's why I always go back to the books, music, and play as well. And that's why I was saying on the training I did this morning for an ABA center is you know, these are important things to work on because your students are probably most likely, either at an ABA center or a typical preschool, are going to experience wheels on the bus. They are going to hear old McDonald. I know for certain they will hear brown bear, brown bear. And if we introduce them in a therapeutic way, then they're going to feel more comfortable and they're going to have practice with participating in these activities. But I always say that morning meeting can just be such a hard time for kids because oftentimes they just have to sit, like you said. And sometimes it is appropriate for students that are older. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be teaching those school readiness skills. But like you said, for a two and a half or three-year-old, you know, go to your local library and look at story time and see how that goes for kids that are typical language learners. It's chaos. It's chaos.
SPEAKER_02That's a really good point. I've I've been asked before, how do you, when you don't have, you know, children of your own, children in your family, you know, friends that have small kids, like, how do you even know what is typical outside of reading that? Like you can read it, but you can see it, and it's a totally different story. And and, you know, I have suggested like don't be creepy, but go to the park. Um the library, you know, but those are um that parks are unstructured, right? But the library story time is a great suggestion because it's yeah, somewhat structured or tries to be.
SPEAKER_01It does, it tries to be. It's nice, but you can see how kids are just, you know, they sit for a while and they get up or they need redirected by their parents. So I think sometimes just like what you're saying is we're trying to hold our kids to a higher expectation um that might not be developmentally appropriate.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Definitely.
SPEAKER_02So shift gears, um, for a minute, I was um looking at your social posts and things, you know, kind of prepping for this uh talk and all that. Um and I saw something, I believe we just posted it yesterday about does the AAC device belong to the SLP or does it belong to the BCBA? And that is a conversation that we have had internally. And I just was wanting you to kind of unpack your opinion on that and and talk us through that because it's it's a com it's a question that I've not heard come up often in my circles, you know, but it has recently popped up.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. So I had Barb Weber, who is a fellow SLP BCBA on my podcast, and that's kind of where I got the idea for that graphic. And I've been including it at all my um trainings. I actually had the chance to present at the Ohio ABA conference about SLP BCBA collaboration, and Dr. Heward was in my was in my training. I was so excited, but he was definitely excited about those slides. And that's something that always pops up in my world. And I think the most important thing to think about is not putting the parent in the middle. I feel like sometimes parents are put in the middle of that uh response form. Like, how are we going to uh work on this? I mean, you'll need some, just because somebody's a speech therapist doesn't Mean they're well versed in AAC. And just because somebody is a BCBA doesn't mean that they are. But if you look at somebody like Dr. Cindy Gavarter, who I think is out of New Mexico, she did a talk for us called Motivation Matters in Our Membership. And that's her line of research. That's what she presents on, what she does research. I believe she has a lab and she's a BCBA and she's extremely knowledgeable. And I'm sure that all the people that she's working with are learning that from a BCBA. I just think that we have to have that collaborative piece and we have to decide. For me, when I was more of a treating clinician, it was really not about who does it belong to. It was more about who's going to do the programming for this device. Who is going to program it? If there's a school-based SLP, a private SLP, the kid goes to a clinic, maybe there's a BCBA consultant coming into the school. I've been on teams where all those people were present. I think that adults do really well with knowing what their role is and having a dialogue about that. And maybe there's somebody on the team who's a speech therapist that's like, you know what, I don't really know much about AAC. If the BCBA wants to program it, that's great. But there's a lot of speech therapists who are number one, very anti-ABA. There's a very anti-ABA sentiment. And number two, they feel like BCBAs are encroaching on our profession. Obviously, I don't feel that way because I'm duly certified. But from a financial standpoint, sometimes I can see that where some parents may say, okay, we've qualified for insurance-based ABA, maybe 20 hours a week, or we could do one hour of speech therapy. We have to choose. And parents will oftentimes choose more services. So I don't believe in the encroachment, but I do see how somebody who's not well versed in the power of ABA and how it can help transform lives may feel that way. So, and it's hard because sometimes when you're trying to be collaborative, um some people are not always doing their part to be collaborative. But I really think in real life, I've really never met a speech therapist that was so put off by the fact that I'm a BCBA that they wouldn't collaborate. Those things usually just happen to me over on Instagram.
SPEAKER_02Oh, social media. Oh, social media. With let's say that you're working with a family that does not have speech services and for whatever reason, maybe the reason you described maybe any other reason, but they're they don't have a speech um program in place at all. And the BCBA thinks some sort of picture exchange or AAC device would be appropriate. What's your thought process around you know, scope of practice and you know, us recommending different devices or or et cetera, when we're not specifically maybe trained in those things, we've just had a lot of experience.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know. Well, I think that here in Cleveland, where I live, in my neck of the woods, we really are ABA centers, the ones that are, I don't want to say mom and pop, but the ones that are owned by um, you know, people who are individual businesses, they have speech therapists either on staff or working one day a week or on as a consultant basis. More that I've been working through ABA speech and doing more contract and consultant work with larger ABA providers that are more nationwide companies. I am seeing a lack of any type of speech therapist present. Um, but I would really urge people to consult with a speech language pathologist and just have somebody that you can ask all those questions. People utilize my platform because I talk about all these things. So people will send me messages and send me messages on Instagram. And that's kind of why I started this membership, the ABA speech connection, because once a month I do a monthly QA call. So then I can field some of those questions and I can talk to people face to face because it's hard. If you're an employee of a very large company and they don't have the budget for that or they don't see the importance of having that, but you know ethically that you need to consult with somebody, I think that's really important. And we're, I teach the ethics class here at Kent State, which starts in just two weeks. Um, and so we're ethically called to collaborate, right? And that idea of what is our scope of practice versus what is our competence is gonna be different for every single BCBA out there based on your work experience. And have you ever worked with students with AAC? Or maybe you had Andy Bondi come in and Lori Frost and they did a big PEX training. Everybody's gonna have different life experiences. So I think you have to just analyze what is the best route for you.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. If I were a treating um clinician today, like AAC, there's been leaps and bounds um technology advances since I was, and I'm I don't know how to work this thing. I don't know how that's it's definitely outside of my scope of competence. You want to go old school PECs? Right.
SPEAKER_01Right. And but you know what, even in the district that I worked in, with all the experience that I have from the Cleveland Clinic and ABA centers that I've worked at, we had a very contentious situation, which was nice for me because our AAC consultant for our county, Cuyahoga County, would come out to my building every single month. And so she would do things like program a device or talk with the parent. Um, and we just antecedently had to have her in place. And so it was like nice to have that person. So you might want to think that too. If you work for an educational service center or some type of consortium, you may have an AAC specialist that is really trained in that. And if you have access to that person to utilize them, the other thing I've been telling BCBAs is that all of the technology companies like Pranky Romic and Dynavox, they do have salespeople that are designated for the different states. And so something that I did at one of the ABA centers that I worked at is I called up all the reps and I had them come in and then the staff, we could look at some of the different devices and we got some loner devices. And so that's just kind of like an advanced tip. Um, but if you just look up the companies, there will be somebody, and usually that person is usually a speech language pathologist.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that is a hot tip. And you know, I've I've done that before and had people come out to the center to train um to make us more comfortable with, you know, a device that we'd never seen before. Right. Absolutely. It's always changing. Yeah, definitely. That's a really good tip. Awesome. So you've mentioned your trainings. You you briefly mentioned your podcast. I I read that it's you're over a hundred episodes now. Yeah, almost at 150. We're planning it. So very exciting. That's really awesome. Um share with our listeners like where they can find you, like what are your upcoming things that might be um of interest uh to our listeners.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. We're launching a membership in the fall in September called the ABA Speech Connection. And so it will be a new live Ash and Ace course every single month, and also a CEU library and a time to meet together with myself and the group for a monthly QA. So, what I've been finding out is that people might be the only BCBA in their district or at their place of work, and people just feel lonely in the important work that we're doing. So I don't want anybody to feel that way. So we're putting in that level of support. Um, and I'm very excited about that. So we're launching that very soon, and that will be on my website, abaspeech.org. Um, and I'm ABA speech everywhere. So if Instagram's your thing, TikTok, I'm over there. Come find me.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. And would you say that um this is more for SLPs, BCBAs, duly certified, or or there's a little bit for everything. Everyone. There's everyone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's for both. So we're an Asha provider and an ACE provider. So some of the things that we've covered this past summer are matrix training. So in my mind, we have two different pathways. We have somebody who's newer to the science of ABA, and then we have something that's more advanced. So we have had talked about matrix training, we talked about actionable tips and strategies for behavioral skills training. Last week, I did, or actually last night, I did a talk on navigating, ethically navigating IEP meetings with confidence. And so most of our talks are both ASHA approved and ACE courses as well. In some months, we we might do something different. Like in September, I'm gonna talk about group therapy, and Dr. Jennifer Posey is gonna do a talk, um, a journal article review. So a little something for everybody.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Jennifer's gonna speak at our clinical conference here in September. She's great. Yeah, she's awesome. Awesome, very cool. Well, every week we or every episode rather, we like to play question of the week. And are you are you game to play? I would love to. Awesome, awesome. All right. First question for you is if you had an extra hour today, not every day, just today. What would you what would you do? What would you fill that hour with?
SPEAKER_01I would probably want to do a Pilates class. Today was a busy day, so I didn't get to work out yet. And I really love here in my hometown, we have a reformer Pilates studio, and it's it's pretty amazing. So I would probably want to do some Pilates.
SPEAKER_02That's really cool. I've never used the reformers have only done regular Pilates class. So that's cool. Very cool. You uh seem to be a lifelong learner, like like I. Um, so tell me about something that you've been learning about recently.
SPEAKER_01Something that I've been learning about recently, probably I have this book about NDBI, naturalistic behavioral development interventions. I uh really want to offer more courses and training on that. So, from that part of my life, my professional life, I've definitely been um reading articles about that, having people that talk about that on my podcast. Um, and my life goal is to read that book. That's like a textbook. So awesome.
SPEAKER_02How far have you gotten? Uh chapter three. All right. Making progress. I'm getting there.
SPEAKER_01I'm getting there.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. All right. So now we like to play um spin the wheel mystery question. So if you will give me just a moment. Uh without Andrew here, I'm feeling a little fumbly. We will power through this. Okay. All right, we've landed on question number seven. Tell me about your very first job. Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_01Okay. My very first job was as a tennis instructor. So I grew up taking tennis lessons at my local tennis courts with an Arthur Ash program. I grew up in Akron, Ohio, where LeBron James is from. And I I love that. That was my very first job. I, I don't know, I think I was paid like $5 an hour or something, but it was very, very uh fun. I made a lot of friends that summer.
SPEAKER_02Awesome.
SPEAKER_01Did you do you still play? I do sometimes, but I like a lot of people my age have transitioned to pickleball. But really next question. Yes, I love to play golf. I'm more of a golfer. I love to play golf. I grew up playing golf with my dad. So that's more my jam. I just feel like tennis is it's a lot of work.
SPEAKER_02I have never played a single game. Um so it looks very hard. It's a good workout. But um, I we have pickleball courts around um where I live in my town. And um I'm curious also.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Oh, it's fun. It is, yeah. You got to try it. It's very fun. It's hard, but it's good. It's easier than tennis, but it's fun.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. And I'm so um sad that Andrew missed this conversation too, because he also is from Ohio. Oh, Ohio talks. Oh gosh, yeah, absolutely. How fun. Well, I would love to include some links to your broadcast and your website. So we'll put those on the on the show notes so that people can go and check out all of the great things that you're doing and follow you on on all the social medias as well. You're you're everywhere. I try. Thank you so much for joining us today or joining me today for this conversation. I think that you're just an excellent resource for both SLPs and BCBAs. And I hope that people continue to connect with you and you continue to disseminate and help the field. Well, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. Okay, thank you.
SPEAKER_00If you or someone you know is looking for some CEUs, head over to BCBACEU.bluespringautism.com and use the promo code podcast to get five dollars off any CEU in the catalog. A link to the site can be found below in the description. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.