Dentist Saga Update #2

We have been following with great interest the saga of Callan and the dentist. This 3-year old was terrified of going to the dentist and his mother Sara did not want to use force. She discovered TAGteach and began the stepwise process of teaching Callan to overcome his fears. They started by touching photos of the dentist's office and equipment, interacting with a Playdoh dentist and with mouth opening games. Then they moved on to visiting the dentist's office and touching the door, eventually going in to the waiting room and even sitting in the dentist chair. One one of these visits Callan actually caught a glimpse of the dentist himself!

Sara has videotaped much of this process and we are grateful to her for sharing this journey so that we can all learn from it. We know how much effort it takes to get video, let alone deal with a fearful child, tagger and treats all at the same time!

Here is the first video in the series of actual visits to the dentist's office:



Here is the ninth video in the series in which Callan actually sits in the dentist's chair, laughs while the dentist looks at his teeth and chats happily with the dentist.



To see the other videos in the series, visit Sara's YouTube channel.

TAGteach and Autism - Skill and Faith

There are two things that a TAGteacher needs to be successful. These are skill in applying the technology and faith in the technology. The skill comes from having a good understanding of the principles underlying the science of behaviour, having a good understanding of the principles of TAGteach and lots of tagging practice. The faith comes from experience and seeing it work again and again and just knowing that it works.

Denise Blackman posted a story to our TAGteach Yahoo group that gives a perfect illustration of the combination of skill and faith resulting in a successful outcome.

Here is Denise's post (reposted with permission):

I don't normally post, but I had a fun experience today and want to share it.

I work as a consultant to a preschool program for children with autism. Yesterday we were discussing one of the kids, "Robert", an almost 4-year-old boy who does not currently speak, make eye contact, imitate, play with others, or follow most directions.

One of the many things "Robert" is working on is writing. His writing goal is to draw a vertical line. Unfortunately he wasn't making any progress on the goal. Rather than trying to copy the line, he just scribbled on the paper. We decided to try TAGteach with him.

To prepare I made a stencil of a vertical line. The opening for the pen was big enough for two swipes with a thick marker. The stencil material was slightly thicker than a file folder. It was just thick enough to give a bit of direction to the tip of a marker but not much. I covered all but the opening of the stencil with laminating plastic so I could clean off stray ink marks. The idea was to use the stencil over white construction paper in order to provide good contrast between the stencil, the pen marks, and the paper.

My plan was to tag Robert for 1) touching the marker, 2) holding the marker, 3) holding the marker in a writing position, 4) touching the tip of the marker anywhere within the opening of the stencil, 5) moving the tip of the marker within the stencil, and then (hopefully, eventually), drawing a line within the stencil. Progression from there would involve fading the stencil. I was hoping to get to a pen touch within the stencil for the first session but would have been happy with less than that.

Today did not seem like a great day to give the procedure a try. Robert was not in a good mood. He kept crying and throwing things, and it wasn't clear what he was upset about. But I decided to try anyway. At one point he tried to take a juice container from the counter so I knew I had access to something he wanted.

So: I gave Robert a sip of juice and tagged him. Then I showed him the marker which he took and threw across the room. I tagged him as soon as he touched it, ignored the throw, and gave him a sip of juice. I offered the marker again, tagged a slight touch, and reinforced again. This first bit (reinforcing for any touch, ignoring tantrums) probably lasted less than a minute but it felt long. Then he took the marker by himself and held it in a writing position. Tag! Then he scribbled on the paper and stencil: I tagged when the tip of the marker landed inside the stencil.

After 2-3 tags for inadvertent touches inside the stencil Robert started deliberately marking inside the stencil. Tag! Then he made a deliberate line inside the stencil. Tag! After 2-3 tags for that, he took the stencil from me, moved it to a clear place on the page, and drew a full length line inside the stencil. Tag! And he did it again. Tag! And again. At that point we stopped the lesson. The entire session took less than five minutes. It was extremely, extremely cool to get that much progress so fast.

I can't predict where Robert's learning will go from here, but we sure found a teaching technique that works for him. I'm feeling excited about it and wanted to share.

Denise showed skill in the way she broke the skill down into manageable pieces, set up the learner for success and tagged and reinforced appropriately. The faith came into play when things did not go as expected at first and the child displayed undesirable behaviour after being tagged. Denise just carried on, ignoring the undesirbale behaviour, sticking to her teaching plan and tagging the successes.

Thanks Denise, for sharing this terrific story!

TAGteach and Dog Bite Victim Rehab

Teresa Lewin (cofounder of Doggone Safe and dog behaviour specialist) has developed some interesting ways of using TAGteach to help dog bite victims overcome fear of dogs. Here is a series of three videos showing Teresa's approach.

The first shows Paige identifying characteristics of dogs in photos from the Doggone Crazy! board game and the Be a Tree teacher kit (available from Doggone Crazy!). She receives a tag for providing the correct answer. This helps her in two ways: 1) she is learning about canine body language and becoming empowered with the knowledge that lets her judge what kind of mood a dog might be in; 2) she is becoming desensitized to the presence of dogs without any risk.

The second two videos show Paige being tagged in the presence of a dog and then being tagged for actually working with the dog. The tag points relate to physical signs of relaxation produced by Paige.

Explain TAGteach to Your Sports Parents

If you are a coach using TAGteach and you want to explain what you are doing to the parents of your athletes - we have just the thing! You can download these cool pamphlets created by Michelle Ma and Maya Rankupalli. One is generic and one is specifically for skating. These are PDF files. If you want to add your own contact information you can do this by importing the file into Adobe Photo Shop or similar program and making changes. We are unable to help with this.

Click here to get the generic pamphlet

Click here to get the skating pamphlet

Not only are these available in print, but TAGteach is also explained in ASL in this wonderful video created by Bonnie Gibson-Brydon and her beautiful daughters Sissy and Nicole.

Click here to download the video as a Quicktime file



Thanks to Lynn Loar, Libby Coleman and Judy Johns for mentoring and facilitating the production of these materials.

TAGteacher Spotlight - Keri Gorman

Keri Gorman is a Certified Level 3 TAGteacher, Senior TAGteach Instructor and Education and Behavior Consultant. She was formerly an animal trainer at Sea World, California where she worked with a variety of animal species including birds of prey, river otters and parrots and performed in daily shows. It was there that she began using marker-based teaching methods and it carried over into her work at the Humane Society for Southwest Washington where she worked as the Director of Education and Behavior. While at the Humane Society Keri developed Project Click, an award winning at-risk youth program whose foundation is based on the TAGteach methodology and clicker training. Keri is currently implementing TAGteach into the Juvenile Justice system and also uses it in the fields of rock climbing and horseback riding. She also owns an equine behavior consulting business where she employs clicker training as a way to help people develop positive relationships with their horses and solve behavior problems. She works with a variety of clients conducting seminars, presentations and private consulting.

Visit Keri's website for more information

Basics Article #5: Incorporating TAGteach into Daily Routines

TAGteach is not just for lessons or teaching physical skills, it can also be very useful for reinforcing daily routines during class and at home.

Behavior Management

Sometimes to promote conditions for optimal learning children need to sit quietly in their seats and pay attention to the teacher, wait their turn or cooperate in group activities. You can tag a learner who is being attentive, standing quietly, using an inside voice or any other behavior that you would like to have continue or be repeated. It is tempting to think that the children “should” do these good behaviors and so it is unnecessary or even wrong to reward them. In fact if you use the power of positive reinforcement and tag the behavior you like and ignore the behavior you don’t like you will quickly find that there is more and more good behavior and less and less disruptive behavior and this becomes reinforcing on its own for everyone involved. At first the learners may specifically “try” to do the behaviors that earn them the tags, but eventually these will become the norm and you won’t need to reinforce with a tag as often.

Defining Tag Points

Tag points for behavior management can be very specific and described to the learners. For example you could say, “today while I am talking, the tag point is eyes on me ”. A more general tag point could be, “today the tag point is use caring words with the family”. Alternatively you can just tag anything that is within the realm of acceptable behavior and not specify exactly what you are looking for. Let them try to figure out what earns them a tag.

Involve the Learners

Involve your learners in selecting tag points and allow them to tag each other. For example they could tag another person every time that person smiles at them or does something helpful. If there is animosity between learners, they could just tag if the other person is ignoring them or staying in their own space. This may seem contrived and artificial and maybe a bit silly at first, but soon the good behavior will start to creep in and become the norm and the tag frequency will drop as the tags become unnecessary for the maintenance of the behavior.

Use Other Markers

It is not necessary to use the click sound tag for everything. Sometimes it works well to use the TAGteach philosophy (reinforce the desirable and ignore the undesirable behavior) and use something other than the click sound as a marker. For example, you could put tickets in a jar, beads in a cup, tally marks on a white board or use other ways to mark and track incidents of desirable behavior.

Next time we will talk about using TAGteach to create and maintain focus even for the most inattentive of learner.

We invite you to join the TAGteacher discussion group at www.tagteach.com to meet others who are implementing TAGteach in various disciplines and to see the list of upcoming TAGteach seminars.

TAGteach Certification Seminar in IA in Feb

TAGteach comes to Iowa! TAGteach is featured in Karen Pryor's new book "Reaching the Animal Mind" and is now being applied around the globe. TAGteach uses the same positive reinforcement platform applied in clicker training and incorporates professional coaching skills to provide an inspiring teaching and learning technology! Persons involved in education, therapy, training and managing will come away with the ability to:speed learning and increase retention, acquire the full attention of students or staff, and reduce frustration (both leader and learner). This seminar uses interactive video, lecture, special guests and lots of hands on practice to insure attendees gain the foundation skills needed to bring TAGteach back to their individual fields and begin using it.
	Facility:	Canine Craze Performance Center
	Location:	3101 104th Street, Suite 3 Urbandale, IA
	How to register:	Register Online at Urbandale, Iowa
	Registration fee:	375.00Earlybird or $425.00Std
	Website:	http://www.tagteach.com/events