#40 Incorporating Life Skills Elements into a Resource Room with Heather Cacioppo

As a special educator who primarily runs a resource room with my co-teacher and 7 paras, we do have students from time to time who have more needs than a typical resource room can provide. It might be that they are included within the general education setting for as much time as possible but they come to us for life skills.

We  use a task box system and try to incorporate as many life skills types of things as we can but I’m the type of person who is always looking for more effective ways...more efficient ways. So today’s guest is here to help me do just that...to give tips on how to merge the 2 services.

Heather Cacioppo is a life skills teacher who is in her 8th year of teaching but Heather does something that I really wish I would have been able to do after 8 years of teaching and that is to provide professional development to other special educators through her business Full Sped Ahead and has presented at many conferences including Educators 2 Educators, The Intentional IEP, Thriving in Sped, Teach It Special, and she is a Master IEP Coach. Heather also supported Don Johnston in a pilot program for the creation of Readtopia Curriculum and she is featured in their introductory video. Heather has a passion for teaching students and recently found a desire to support teachers that are struggling to stay afloat. Through product creation on Teachers Pay Teachers and her influence on social media, Heather strives to help make teachers feel like they are not alone!

On today's show Heather and I talk about

• The difference between a resource room and a life-skills classroom
• What are the must-haves?
• What should organization and set-up look like?
• What types of tasks should we be focusing on?
• How to train the paraprofessionals

Mentioned in the Show...
What's Your Special Educator Superpower Quiz
The Intentional IEP Summer PD Series

You can find Heather here
Facebook

Instagram

Pinterest

Website

Teachers Pay Teachers

Boom Learning

And you can get a free set of labels to use for work tasks to get you started on creating boxes or drawers HERE

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