Interview with the TAGteacher – Martha Gabler

February 1, 2023February 18, 2023 Joan Orr

By Luca Canever

On Jan 26, 2023 I had the honour of interviewing Martha Gabler. Martha is the author of the book: Chaos to Calm: Discovering solutions to the everyday problems of living with autism a book about her experiences teaching her non-verbal son using TAGteach. Martha has a deep, first hand experience of the ideas and insights she shares. Take this short video from the interview. This is what Martha told us right at the end:

After the interview I received from Martha the following email. I found it such an important message that I want to share with you:

Cutting Edge Training Used with Orthopedic Surgeons – That You Can Use Too!

October 15, 2022October 17, 2022 Joan Orr Leave a comment

Dr. Martin Levy is the Director, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Orthopaedic Residency Program at the prestigious Montefiore Medical Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Levy knows a thing or two about training surgeons and students vie for places to learn from him. He’s a visionary at the forefront of surgeon training who’s leading the way to modernize the field.

Along Came Penny

In his other world, Marty is a competitive frisbee dog participant and instructor. He learned from his dog Penny, that the best way to motivate and create an effective learning environment is to avoid reprimands (even at their most mild and unintentional), to create opportunities for success at every step of the learning process and most of all, to have fun and cultivate a mutually trusting relationship. He began to explore the world of postive reinforcement-based dog training and discovered an entire community dedicated to this excting and efficient way of training.

Teachers and Coaches, Listen up: This may be the most important tool in your toolkit!

September 25, 2022February 4, 2023 Joan Orr Leave a comment

By Irith Bloom CPDT-KSA, CBCC-KA, CDBC, KPA CTP, VSPDT, CBATI, Level 1 TAGteach

TAGteach is an amazing tool. Whether you are working with gymnasts, fisherman, medical students, golfers, or pet parents, TAGteach can help you do your job better. One reason TAGteach is so effective is that it helps us speak less, thanks to tools such as the focus funnel and tag points. But coming up with pithy ways to say what we mean is not the only important skill TAGteachers need to cultivate.

Changing habits

Sometimes, a TAGteacher’s job is to help people learn not just individual skills, but new habits. Habits are difficult to change, and replacing old habits with new habits takes time and repetition. In other words, while we can use TAGteach to help learners develop new skills, those skills won’t become habits without repeated practice. We need to find a way to get learners to practice new skills often enough that they become part of their routine.

Finding the right motivation

Every learner is different. Every person finds different things motivating. The only way we can discover what is motivating to the learner in front of us is to listen. By paying attention to both what learners are saying and how they are saying it, we can find out more about their needs and wants. That helps us create plans that work for the individual learner in front of us.

Building behaviors: Teach the pieces before you assemble them

August 17, 2022August 17, 2022 Joan Orr Leave a comment

By Mary Hunter M.Sc.

I’d like to share a quote with you from behavior analyst Dr. Beth Sulzer-Azaroff. (Editor’s note: Dr. Beth Sulzer-Azaroff was a pioneer in the field of behavior analysis who passed away in Feb 2022 at the age of 92).

I first came across Dr. Sulzer-Azaroff’s work a handful of years ago when I was redesigning an undergraduate class that I taught at that time. My mission, which was to learn as much as I could about mastery-based instruction and Dr. Fred Keller’s Personalized System of Instruction, led me to some of the articles and textbooks by Dr. Sulzer-Azaroff.

The Poisoned Cue and You

July 10, 2022July 10, 2022 Joan Orr Leave a comment

by Joan Orr M.Sc., TAGteach Cofounder

What is a Cue Anyway?

Before we talk about poisoned cues, we need to understand about healthy cues. A cue is a signal to a person or animal that lets them know it’s go time. It tells them that the behavior they perform after perceiving the cue will result in a win for them. For example the starting gun at the olympics tells the runners it’s time to explode off the starting blocks for the chance to run and win. A green light tells a driver it’s time to press on the accelerator and continue on their journey. If your dog comes running when they hear the rustle of the potato chip bag, they’ve learned that this sound is a cue to come to you in the hope that you’ll share. Cues become learned through repeated association with the positive consequence that follows the cue + behavior sequence.

In the world of TAGteach and positive reinforcement based training, the cues that we teach our learners are always intended to be these healthy types of cues. That is, a good thing always happens when the learner responds to the cue with the desired behavior. The cue is great news to the learner and they joyfully execute the behavior that is associated with the cue.

The cue is perceived as an opportunity to earn positive reinforcement.

A sure sign of a healthy cue is that the person or animal responds to the cue right away, with accuracy and enthusiasm.

The Three Try Rule – How to Make Sure Your Learners Stay in the Game

May 24, 2022July 10, 2022 Joan Orr 2 Comments

By Joan Orr M.Sc., TAGteach Cofounder

How do you feel when you try something and make mistakes over and over? How do you feel when it seems that you are disappointing the person trying to teach you? Do you feel energized and excited to be “learning from your mistakes” or do you feel frustrated and discouraged? Do repeated failure and “just one more”s make you anxious, frustrated and wanting to escape to do something less stressful?

Sometimes the result of too much pressure to try something too hard results in a full-on meltdown or a complete shut down of the learner. Once this happens, there is no more learning.

This is why we suggest the three try rule. If a learner fails three times (or fewer) to meet the specific learning goal (the tag point), go to a past point of success and move forward in smaller increments.

A point of success is something earlier in the learning process that you are 100% sure the learner can get right. By starting at a point of success and moving forward in small steps you build on existing success instead of searching blindly for a good starting point. Of course the ‘three try rule’ isn’t really a rule. The learner doesn’t HAVE to fail three times. If it is clear the learner will not likely achieve the tag point criterion after the first failure, or the learner is very sensitive to failure, jump right in and break the skill down further and change the tag point.

How I Used Burps, Farts and Fairytales to Teach Writing Skills

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022 Joan Orr Leave a comment

By Luca Canever, TAGteach Faculty

Everyone knows from their own experience that it’s not fun to do things badly. A certain amount of effort is required to gain enough skill with a new activity in order to get to the point that you start to see some progress and to enjoy the activity for it’s own sake. For some of us, for some activities, the motivation of future success is enough to get us past the initial frustration in the learning process where there is more failure than success. For others, especially kids who can’t understand why they need to learn something hard in school, there just seems no point in putting forth the effort to practice and get better. Here is my story about overcoming this problem of motivation and reinforcement with one student. I hope it helps you to discover how to instill joy in the learning process for your learners (or even yourself!).

Henry Learns to do Fun Stuff: A TAGteach Success Story

March 24, 2022March 24, 2022 Joan Orr Leave a comment

By Emma Wicks

My son Henry (now 11) was diagnosed with autism at the age of two and a half. Despite his complex needs and communication difficulties, TAGteach has been a simple yet effective tool for Henry and his family and tutors to help pinpoint the precise movements that enable him to get the most out of his hobbies, school, and day to day routines.

Happiness for Henry was Paramount

Like all parents, I wanted Henry to gain the skills needed to enjoy an independent, fulfilling, and happy life. With complex special educational needs (SEN), this throws up some challenges both for the child with SEN and the parent. I qualified as a Montessori teacher in 2013 and believed in the importance of following a child’s interests and allowing them time to discover, explore and just ‘be’.

New TAGteach Studies and Publications

March 18, 2022June 4, 2022 Joan Orr Leave a comment

There have been 17 items added to the TAGteach reference list, including 4 published studies, since the last time it was updated in Nov 2019. We’re super grateful to everyone who has made the effort to conduct a study on TAGteach and to write up their results!

The total number of references in our list in the various categories is:

Published studies: 24
Published Books that Have Significant References to TAGteach: 7
Published Review Articles that Mention TAGteach: 3
Graduate Theses: 30
Presentations and Unpublished Studies: 70

We’re very proud of the substantial research base on TAGteach!

Fluency and TAGteach: A Perfect Match

December 6, 2021June 4, 2022 Joan Orr Leave a comment

By Luca Canever – TAGteach Faculty

What is Fluency?

Behavioral fluency is the competence of performing a behavior quickly and accurately. Do you know Olympics athletes? Or great artists? Or all the other people you admire in every field for their craftsmanship, because they do things that others can’t? We say that these are gifted and talented people. Truth is: Talent does not exist in nature and no one is born gifted. What these people have in common is their fluency in the things they do: the seemingly effortless execution of very difficult (for us) performances. Fluency is achieved only with years of intense practice: whether you want to win the gold medal at the next Olympics, or whether you want to become the next Leonardo. The only way to be successful is to practice with passion. (Scientifically put, “passion” is positive reinforcement).