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:
Hello Luca,
In thinking over our conversation today, I realized that I forgot to introduce the primary concept that (for me) made TAGteach a fabulous method. That is the concept that we are “capturing” a behavior first, and then “shaping” it into a more complex behavior. I always think of being the “hunter” and searching for that one tiny flash in the wilderness that can be “captured” and built up into something bigger and better. This is a great method for learners who can’t talk or understand words.
So, first we hunt. Then we capture that tiny flash by reinforcing it. Then we capture and reinforce more often (because the behavior is happening more often). Then we “shape” it into another behavior by reinforcing a slight variation in the behavior. The first part, hunting, is hard work. You have to look and maybe wait a long time to find that one little thing that could be the basis of something bigger and better.
In the future, I would like to suggest that we draw a strong contrast between “hunting/capturing/shaping” and “teaching” which is a more formal process. Your conversation next month with Dr. Levy will show the complete opposite use of TAGteach because he has very intelligent and highly verbal learners! With those learners you can use all the great Focus Funnel and TAGteach script procedures; you can teach.
So, in the future, it might be interesting to talk first about traditional teaching (talking and demonstrating), which is great for skilled learners, but was useless for my learner. With learners who have low (or no) verbal skills, the other approach of hunting, capturing, and shaping works great. What do you think?
More random thoughts!
Thanks again, Luca!
Martha is talking about the shaping process that you can use in TAGteach with non verbal learners. But, on a second thought, I think that every TAGteacher is a hunter for a “tiny flash” that could be turned into a tag point.
Watch the Full Interview
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