Camelot Profile: Katie Schweizer
Katie Schweizer is Camelot’s head Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) for our eight therapeutic Day Schools in Illinois.
Katie received her bachelor’s degree in Rehabilitation Services and her master’s degree in Applied Behavior Analysis Therapy from Southern Illinois University Carbondale before passing her state certification exam in 2010. She worked in a clinical setting, providing Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) services to children and adolescents with autism at schools and in homes as needed, before joining Camelot in August 2014. Her specialty is teaching children more appropriate behaviors when negative behaviors are being seen.
Please describe your responsibilities at Camelot.
If there are students within the school setting who need additional help or ABA services I perform different observations to see how the child is responding. I work closely with the social workers, teachers, paraprofessionals, speech pathologists and occupational therapists at each school. I sit within the classroom, I’ll go into speech therapy sessions or go into the OT room if they’re doing occupational therapy and just kind of see how the student is behaving and what’s going on in the environment. And then I provide different recommendations of what we can implement to help the child behave more appropriately. For example, if the child is impulsive and doesn’t raise his hand to ask questions and just blurts things out we teach him how to appropriately raise his hand and wait for the teacher to call on him.
The TDS’s have a broad range of students. How do you go about developing solutions for the various types of afflictions?
The great thing about Camelot’s approach is we look at each student individually. How do they respond to this? What is working for them? What isn’t working for them? I think taking that very individualized approach is helpful. And with me being the outside eyes I can focus on exactly what the student is doing and how he or she is behaving in different situations and get a better feel of what we could implement. For some of the students we need to do things like visual schedules, where we have pictures to represent an activity they’re doing. Some students need social stories where you are writing the appropriate behaviors; this is how we need to act in school; this is why we need to act that way. They should also write about the consequences of what happens if we aren’t appropriately behaving, if it could hurt another student, or if it could make your teacher or someone feel sad. So the point is to make sure that the recommendations are very individualized for that student. It means looking at different ways we can help reinforce them and exactly what they need and how they respond. Is it someone who can respond to just verbal instructions or do we need to have pictures or do we need to write things out? It really just depends on the student’s needs.
How do you go about rewarding students for changing their behavior?
Some students just need a little extra reinforcement. They need to hear that verbal praise of, “you’re doing a great job,” or “I love how nice you’re sitting waiting for me to call on you.” Sometimes they just need a little extra reward, maybe a little piece of candy or maybe they get to pick a little toy from a treasure box. Some campuses offer “Camelot Cash,” so when a teacher or staff member observes a student being good they can earn this money to spend at the Camelot store or cart and they can purchase reinforcers and rewards with their Camelot Cash.
Camelot has experts and professionals at every campus. Why has Camelot gone this extra step to have its own BCBA specialists to work with the teams already in place?
Sometimes having that extra eye, one from outside the classroom who’s not always there on a day to day basis, can be a big help. Camelot does have a lot of outstanding teachers and paraprofessionals who have implemented different things, be it in the classroom or doing one on one support with students. I know the OT’s develop a lot of sensory diets for the students and then we have the speech pathologists that help if the child needs a different form of communication like the output devices. But I think having behavior analysts being able to come in and focus on the exact behaviors can help. Throughout the observations we’re trying to identify what functions are maintaining the different maladaptive behaviors. There are four different functions that maintain behavior. There’s escape/avoidance, in which the child acts in a certain way to get out of doing something that he doesn’t want to do. There’s attention-seeking where the student will act out in a certain way to get attention from teachers or staff, other students, and there’s also seeking access to materials so the student is behaving because they’re not getting something that they want or something that they want is being taken away from them. And there’s also sensory stimulation so the student might just be behaving in a way because it feels good to them. They’re getting a sensory need met through however they’re behaving. By looking at those four different functions of behavior and watching what the student is doing I can get a better idea of what’s maintaining the behavior and then offer different suggestions or recommendations for them to try. Throughout that process it’s been very productive working with the team because they’re great to collaborate with and it’s nice to see things that they’ve already done or what we can add on to it. Being with someone day after day you don’t always see the little things that could be affecting a child or how they might be responding to it differently, but if you add in a new idea it can change how some things are working.
What motivates you to do this kind of work?
It’s great to see when a student is now being more appropriate and the teachers are reporting that he’s doing so much better and that he is now listening and he is able to sit and complete his work tasks. So just hearing the success of the student makes you want to keep doing what you’re doing. I enjoy working with kids, being in a school setting, and just having the interaction with the students as well as the staff.
This is your first year with Camelot but in this short time have you had a chance to see improvement in any of the students you have worked with?
Yes, one of the students I was working with early on was making very disrespectful and inappropriate comments and was refusing to do work. Now he is behaving appropriately, completing his work, and earning reinforcers. Staff is reporting that he is having great days, smiling, and enjoying being at class. Once he got back from winter break his mom reported that he had been crying because he missed being at school and the teachers, staff, and peers. So it’s fulfilling to see things like that where he’s now completing his work, he’s not being disrespectful and he wants to be at school.
