Guest speaker Maria Wheeler presents
Deciphering the Secret Code of Social Language Success for 2e Children

Most social skills are multi-element skills that require our children to engage simultaneously in several different and distinct tasks.  Unfortunately our 2e children struggles with these important social skills and in return may feel left out with their peers.  

Ms. Wheeler will help us understand why our children struggles and more importantly will explore solutions for our complex learners.  Social skill savvy is often like a multi-course meal where each temperature, texture, and presentation is well thought out far ahead of time and carefully executed by an accomplished chef.  For many learners whose brains work remarkably well for academic tasks, this social skill expertise is simply not on the menu.  Navigating a minefield of different perspectives, cultures, and needs that others bring to the social experience can create so much anxiety that this metaphorical "meal" can unfortunately end with our kids feeling like they have endured a bad case of food poisoning!  We will discuss the current body of research and information from both the medical and educational fields that can help make you an expert in addressing social skills acquisition successfully with your learner.

Maria Wheeler earned her master's degree in education/speech-language pathology from Valdosta State University (Georgia) in 1998.  Maria has 22 years of experience evaluating and treating students ages 3-21 with communication disorders and providing various training and staff development for colleagues that enables students to benefit from research-based techniques to improve communication and behavior.  Pragmatic (social) language skills is a specialty area for Ms. Wheeler as well as Alternative and Augmentative Communication.  Maria's philosophy is that when we help our kids improve their language skills, we help them improve their worlds.