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David Pitonyak

We recently had the pleasure of filming with yet another great thinker.

David Pitonyak has a way of understanding and communicating the needs of people with challenging behavior that is profoundly straightforward.

The largest part of Pitonyak’s work involves meeting people who are said to exhibit “difficult behaviors.” Most of these people exhibit difficult behaviors because they are misunderstood and/or because they are living lives that don’t make sense.  Often they are lonely, or powerless, or without job  Often they are devalued by others, or they lack the kinds of educational experience that most of us take for granted.  Too often their troubling behaviors are the result of an illness, or even a delayed response to traumatic events.  You might say their behaviors are “messages” which can tell us important things about their lives.  Learning to listen to the person’s difficult behaviors is the first step in helping the person to find a new (and healthier) story.

David also believes, to paraphrase Jean Clark, that a “person’s needs are best met by people whose needs are met.” Supporting a person with difficult behaviors also involves and honest assessment of and attention to the needs of a person’s supporters.

In recent years, Pitonyak has provided consultation and training for individuals, families, and professionals throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, England, and the Republic of Ireland.

 

We are really excited to start developing the footage we collected. Stay tuned for more information. In the meantime learn more about david here http://dimagine.com/

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Welcome Kathie Snow

We are pleased to welcome Kathie Snow to the Open Future Learning family.

Unique, inspiring, motivational, valuable, provocative, life-changing. These are some of the words used to describe Kathie Snow’s work. Snow challenges conventional wisdom and encourages others to adopt new ways of thinking about disability issues. She believes each person with a disability has strengths, gifts, and talents, and that when we focus on those-instead of the diagnosis-grea outcomes are possible!

Kathie Snow is the mother of Benjamin, a young man with disabilities. Snow has learned from Benjamin and other with disabilities, and now shares these extraordinary lessons.  Kathis believes we can generate better outcomes for children and adults with disabilities when we change our attitudes, words, and actions.  The inclusion of people with disabiliites can be be accomplished when they move from dependence on special services (client-hood) to the abundant supply of natural supports and generic service in their communities (citizenship).

Snow is enthusiastic, positive, and passionate about ensuring children and adults with disabilities live real lives, fully included at home, school, work and play.  The commonsense strategies she promotes can help turn this dream into reality.  Be ready for provocative questions, positive solutions, and innovative thinking, mixed with humor and real-life experiences.

 

Learn more about Kathie http://www.openfuturelearning.org/contributors.html#ksnow

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Making the Most of Open Future Learning

At Open Future Learning we want to help your organization make the most of our resource and all of its features. In this article we will demonstrate how our software and administrative functions, combined with a planned approach maximize your staff team’s learning experience.

Who Will Use This and How?

Your first and most critical step is to work out who will use the Open Future resource and what you want them to get from using it.

We believe that anyone that touches the lives of the people you support will benefit from our resource. You will want to review the breadth of the resource and pinpoint which modules your staff members will most benefit from.

Our administrator dashboard makes it easy for you to add users one at a time or as a large group. You can also allocate people into groups depending on for example, the department, house, or person they work with.

Set a Schedule

You may want to schedule your staff team’s access to the Open Future Learning program in the same way you do for traditional face-to-face training. Use the messaging feature embedded into the Open Future dashboard to communicate to individual staff members or to your groups.

 Clarify Your Expectations

As you assign new users to the resource you may want to explain your expectations so that learners understand how this learning opportunity may be of value to them. Specifically, it may be useful to reference particular people they support while also explaining that you will be blending their learning by following up with them in person as they complete the modules.

Monitoring Your Users Progress

 Our admin dashboard makes it easy to keep track of each employee’s progress through each of the modules. You can also review a user’s login history and upon completion of the module, any of their notes.

Plan Your Face-to-Face Time

The best training uses a blended approach. As you receive notification that the user has completed a module make plans to meet with them to review the learner’s notes and complete the reflective action plan. Now is the time to capitalize on the inspirational nature of the training and help the staff member to think about how they will use what they have learned to develop the way they work and the lives of the people they support.

Share Your Face-to-Face Time

For larger teams of staff consider coordinating user’s access so that all users can work independently on the same module and then on a pre-determined date arrange for all the staff to meet as a group to complete their reflective action plans together and share their learning as a team.

Follow-Up

Six months later use the second part of the reflective action plan to help learners to complete the circle of learning and document their 6 month review notes.