The Watson Institute strives to support students with disabilities throughout all areas of their lives: at our special education schools, in community settings, and in their home school districts.
Through the Training and Consultation program, Watson’s Educational Consultants share their insights and expertise with educators in area school districts. Because we fully tailor our services to meet the needs of the district, our partnerships with each school are unique and varied.
Some of the school districts Watson works with know exactly what they need in terms of consultation services. For others, the initial discovery period is important to help them identify what supports will be beneficial for their students and staff.
Watson Consultant, Abby Martello, M.Ed., has been working with the Sto-Rox School District in Pittsburgh for several years. Specifically, Abby’s work has been focused in the primary (K-3rd grade) and upper (4th-6th) elementary schools in the life skills support classrooms and working with art, music, and gym teachers to support students with disabilities.
Abby studied psychology and early childhood special education and completed coursework in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). She has extensive experience working with students with autism, providing behavioral support and implementing behavior management strategies in classrooms to support students. With her background, the Sto-Rox partnership was a perfect fit!
Consultation Support at Sto-Rox School District
Abby’s consultation work with Sto-Rox includes a combination of single-student and classroom-wide observations, hands-on demonstrations to educators of behavior management practices, and collaboration with classroom teams to create positive reinforcement systems to help manage challenging behaviors.
After observing the students and collecting data to analyze the challenging behaviors they were exhibiting, Abby has worked with the classroom team to teach and implement a number of behavior management strategies, which include:
- Independent work stations
- Errorless learning
- Structured tasks
- Reinforcement behaviors and reward systems
These strategies may not work the same for every child so Abby collaborates with educators at Sto-Rox to customize the approach for each individual student. She helps them better understand the underlying causes of the challenging behaviors and explains why some reinforcement strategies might work better than others given the circumstances.
Melanie Behr, a former Sto-Rox teacher that Abby worked with shared the aspects that were the most helpful for her:
“Having her guidance on behavior issues was the most helpful, especially in regards to collecting data. The observations were the most helpful because she could give me real-time feedback.”
Throughout her time at Sto-Rox, Abby has worked with dozens of students and educators, sharing her expertise through customized resources, hands-on demonstrations, and classroom consultation.
Check out some of the other ways Watson’s Educational Consultants support students and educators in their home school districts!