Rob Anderson

According to the PACER Center, children and teenagers with disabilities are two to three times more likely to be bullied than their peers. Bullying can affect a student’s self-esteem, confidence, social life, relationships, mental health, and overall well-being. As a special education teacher with over 20 years of classroom experience, October holds a special place in my heart as Bullying Prevention Month.

Students deserve to feel confident and empowered both in and out of the classroom regardless of their abilities, which is exactly where our Healthy Relationships Curriculum can help teach students to feel more confident in who they are at the same time.

We understand that special education and life skills transcend what one might think of when it comes to traditional education. Healthy Relationships covers topics like hygiene, dating, using social media safely, privacy, and even the differences between friends, acquaintances, and bullies. Healthy Relationships is built around understanding the importance of using visuals and alternate means of learning, which is why it includes nearly 200 demonstration & role-play videos, over 60 scenario cards to help students practice real-life skills, and fun, interactive role-playing games to act out the lessons.

The overall purpose of special education is to teach students the critical life skills they need to succeed. For special educators, sometimes this can be a heavy lift, especially when teaching students with various needs. Luckily, this program not only has learning tools, but also built-in supports from other special educators ready to help you tackle many of the challenges you may face.

Some tools and features of the program include:

• Role Plays, Demonstrations, and Life-Skills Activity demonstrations allow students to practice the skills they learned during their lessons through real-life scenarios.
• Visuals to help teach complex topics.
• Online Progress Monitoring Tools to consistently measure, assess and compare skill levels.

In all my years in education, I’ve never encountered a program designed to support students and educators at the same time, but Healthy Relationships makes it possible and so much less stressful when it comes to finding the right curriculum for your students. Please review our sample lessons and request a free demonstration of the Healthy Relationships to learn more about how this program could benefit your students.

Author: Jen Falkowski, MEd — Supervisor of Special Education

 

Special Education teachers understand that students with various abilities face challenges when developing social skills. They know that these students need extra support to build these skills, understand why they are essential, and effectively use them daily. Often, special education teachers need additional support to find methods to teach these skills. That’s where our Healthy Relationships Curriculum can help.

Unlike other curriculums, our program was designed by special educators for special educators who know what you need to help your students succeed. They have worked together to create a curriculum that provides all the resources and tools you will need to help teach your students with varying abilities. Our program offers lessons on all aspects of social skills, from dating, maintaining personal space, and even hygiene and cleanliness.

We believe students learn best when they are having fun. No student wants to sit and listen to a teacher’s lecture all the time. After all, the best way to teach social skills is to have students learn them in a social setting. Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum uses fun, interactive methods to teach students social skills they can use in everyday life.

Our teaching methods vary, so students participate in new learning activities often. We have created nearly 200 videos to show students how to develop and strengthen their social skills. Our Curriculum also features role-playing scenarios, scenario cards, and opportunities to practice skills outside the classroom so students perform these skills in real-world situations.

I feel very passionately about Healthy Relationships. I believe it is the best resource available for special education teachers to properly teach critical social and life skills to students. I’m sure you will too. That’s why I encourage you to look at our welcome video, which will show what is involved in our curriculum, and schedule a free demonstration with me to learn more about the Healthy Relationships Curriculum.

Author: Melissa Ringold, MEd — Curriculum/Instruction Coach

Happy Summer Vacation! Between enjoying the lovely, long days and spending time with family and friends, many teachers of students with various needs take a well-deserved break. That’s because they spend a great deal of time preparing for what to teach their students year after year. This can lead to hours of researching online for new teaching methods or spending your summer collecting materials and reviewing data. After all this, you still may not find the correct information or not enough activities and lessons to teach your students.

Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum can help special educators spend their summer days enjoying the weather instead of being stuck researching at a computer and help them feel assured their students will receive the information they need to succeed next school year.

With Healthy Relationships, there is no need to spend hours researching for materials to teach anymore. This program includes a curriculum manual with almost 40 ready-to-use lessons and a plethora of materials and activities to help students learn. These lessons can be taught by following the scope and sequence of our curriculum, which helps educators teach their students in a fashion where each lesson builds on the one before it to increase the student’s knowledge of critical skills.

Also included in Healthy Relationships Curriculum are various materials to help make learning fun for your students with various needs. These include role-playing activities, interactive scenario cards, and nearly 200 video.

These materials will help teachers save time by not having to create materials for their students to use in the classroom. Every handout and activity needed to help students succeed are included with our resource so teachers can spend their energy teaching instead of making materials.

Many educators of students with various needs also can rest easy during the summer, knowing that Healthy Relationships Curriculum has tools built into it to monitor and track student progress across grade levels. These tools help to yield fast, immediate results, which are helpful when adjusting information for students’ needs.

Students’ progress can be tracked in real-time using our Participant Tracking Tools and Skills Evaluation. These allow educators and parents of students to update students’ progress in real-time and uses data to show specific skills students may need more reinforcement on. This means teachers will spend less time worrying about if students understand the materials presented to them and more time helping them build their skills.

Healthy Relationships Curriculum understands the materials special educators need to maximize their time and impact with students effectively. Healthy Relationships is a one-stop shop for all teacher’s needs. If you think your students could benefit from this curriculum, I encourage you to review our overview video and request a free demonstration of Healthy Relationships! And most importantly, enjoy your summer vacation!

Author: Jen Falkowski, MEd — Supervisor of Special Education

At the beginning of May, schools around the country will celebrate teacher appreciation week. As a former special teacher, I can relate to the dedication and commitment of special educators to help their students succeed. Often, special educators will put in extra hours outside of the classroom, working to find lesson plans that work for their students or finding new ways to teach information that students are not grasping. Our Healthy Relationships Team appreciates all your work and is here to help you every step of the way.

The Healthy Relationships Team realizes that all special educators need a little help sometimes, and that’s why it features ongoing consultations and support. We understand that the best way to appreciate special educators is to partner with them and offer our expertise to the challenges you face. Special educators can always ask us questions about lessons and ways to help their students with various needs learn.

What helps make our Healthy Relationships Curriculum easy to use and reliable is the work of the special educators who helped design it. These special educators have been in your shoes and understand and value the hard work you do every single day. That is why they developed our curriculum with strategies and lessons that work.

Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum also features a variety of ways to make teaching your students fun, including role-playing scenarios and interactive instructions—all designed to build practical social skills and activities for students.  Our curriculum features easy ways to connect with parents and encourages caregiver involvement and home reinforcement so that students can practice their skills in real-world settings.

To make it easier and less time-consuming, our Healthy Relationships Curriculum also features digital monitoring tools so you can track students’ progress and find areas where they need support.

I spent more than 20 years as a special education teacher & now a supervisor and have never come across a program that simultaneously supports educators and students. I would encourage you to look at our sample lessons and request a free demonstration of our Healthy Relationships Curriculum! I also encourage you to schedule a meeting with our team and discuss our curriculum. We are always happy to answer your questions!

Author: Jen Falkowski, MEd — Supervisor of Special Education

Springtime is here, and so is the fun that comes with this time of year. The warmer weather and fun activities mean you might need help keeping students motivated. Students with varying needs may even need extra support in staying motivated to succeed in the classroom Luckily, our Healthy Relationships Curriculum provides many fun learning outcomes to help engage your students during the home stretch of the school year.

Part of what helps keep students motivated during the final months of the school year is helping them remember that learning can be fun. Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum provides fun opportunities for our students to learn. Instead of using the same repetitive teaching methods, Healthy Relationships provides students with a variety of fun ways to learn. These ways to learn include:

• Role Plays, Demonstrations, and Life-Skills Activities: The best way to teach life skills is by having students use them. Our role-playing demonstrations allow students to practice the skills they learned during their lessons.
• Over 60 Scenario Cards: These scenario cards turn the lessons into real-life situations to help them better understand the lessons.
• Lesson Activities & Games: Our games are designed to actively teach lessons in a fun, active way to help keep students motivated. These pre-made games were by our team of educators & counselors.
• Fun activities and videos for parents to help students with various needs practice the skills they learned out of the classroom settings
• And much more!

However, students aren’t the only ones who need to find ways to stay motivated; teachers do as well. Sometimes, planning lessons that are fun for students can be time-consuming. We understand this and offer consultations and development opportunities for our teachers so they can help students thrive in and out of the classroom.

I believe our Healthy Relationships Curriculum features the perfect blend of fun activities and support mechanisms to help students succeed in and out of the classroom, especially during the final weeks of the school year. But don’t just take my word for it. If you want to help your students stay motivated to succeed, I encourage you to watch this informational video about our Healthy Relationships Curriculum. After that, request a free demo of our curriculum so you can get started teaching it!

Author: Melissa Ringold, MEd — Curriculum/Instruction Coach

During March, we celebrated Employee Appreciation Day. This day is meant to serve as a thank you to employees for all their hard work. One group that deserves additional notice and “thank yous” are teachers- specifically special education teachers. Special Education teachers work hard to ensure students with varying needs succeed in and out of the classroom. I worked for 20+ years as a special education teacher and know how much work planning lessons for a variety of student needs can be. It takes extra time and effort to develop these lessons. Often, special education teachers’ work goes unnoticed. However, our Healthy Relationships Curriculum strives to help and appreciate teachers every step of the way.

Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum provides special educators the help and support they need when they need it. Whether you are planning lessons or just have a question, we are always ready to assist. We understand that there is only so much time in a day, and you would rather be helping your students succeed than planning lessons or spending hours trying to find answers to a question.

Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum comes with a variety of benefits for instructors so they can spend less time frustrated and more time helping students succeed.

These include:

• Comprehensive Professional Development: We know that teaching special education can be challenging and offer real-life experiences, so you can confidently teach our curriculum.
• Tips & Suggestions For Teaching Lesson Content: We ensure teachers feel appreciated and valued by taking their suggestions seriously and incorporating them into lessons.
• Ongoing Consultation: We want to be your partner and help you through complex topics and challenges during the year.
• Built in measurement tools to easily gauge students learning outcomes.

Additionally, our Healthy Relationships Curriculum is designed to fit seamlessly with IEP requirements and can be worked into lessons you may have already developed.

Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum understands special education teachers’ needs, supports them, and appreciates their work. I wish a program like this had existed when I started teaching to add more guidance to my work and help my students succeed. If you think you could benefit from our curriculum, I encourage you to look at our overview video and request a free demonstration of our Healthy Relationships Curriculum! You can also contact us anytime by reaching out through the chat function on the website. We are always happy to answer educators’ questions!

Every special education instructor knows that the skills taught in the classroom must be reinforced outside of school to help students foster and develop those skills further. Feedback and progress tracking are essential, as they show where students excel and where deficiencies may arise. That’s why our Healthy Relationships Curriculum includes digital monitoring tools to help your track student’s progress.

Our digital monitoring Skills Evaluation in our myHRC Online Participant tracking tools allows educators to see how students use the skills they learned in the classroom in a real-world setting. This tool enables parents/caregivers to update students’ progress at home so that instructors can see what skills are being used in real-time. Our Skills Evaluation allows everyone involved in the student’s education to collect data on the student’s progress, view progress, and praise the students when they use skills taught in the classroom.

Our Participant Tracking tools also assist in allowing educators to know which lessons students with various needs are not grasping and may need additional support. Because of this, educators can make changes to their lessons in real-time to reinforce the skills the students may need extra help with and provide lessons to demonstrate outside the classroom.

Some of the other features of our Skills Evaluation include the ability to:

• Measure IEP/Treatment Goals
• Show what goals are understood and demonstrated by the participant
• Capture participant data from the beginning to the end of courses
• Visually show progress using color-coded graphs
• And much more!

During my 20 years as a special education teacher, I can attest that digital monitoring tools provide needed insights in the classroom. They help educators know what skills are being used at home and allow us to adjust our lessons to help students make progress quickly. Through this program, parents and educators can feel confident that their children/students will make progress. If you want more information about our digital monitoring features and our curriculum, please reach out via the contact us page on our website. Here, you can meet with our team and request sample lessons to see if our Healthy Relationships Curriculum is right for you!

Author: Jen Falkowski, MEd — Supervisor of Special Education

Happy New Year! A new year means new adventures and new challenges. It also means that students return to the classroom after a hopefully restful winter break. It also means that students have not been adhering to their daily routines because they weren’t in the classroom every day. Getting students back into an established routine can prove challenging. Luckily, our Healthy Relationships Curriculum can help. 

 

Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum knows the importance of routines. Special educators know their students best, and our team works with them to help find the ways our adaptable curriculum can serve their students and routines more efficiently and effectively. 

 

Our curriculum provides many opportunities for educators to build routines for their students. We understand that no two students learn the same way, which is why our curriculum features a variety of ways to teach students. Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum offers easy-to-use lessons to guide you in delivering challenging lessons. These lessons cover every topic, from basic hygiene to making friends to dating for our older students. 

 

Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum also understands the importance of using visuals and alternate means of learning. That’s why our program includes over nearly 200 role-play & demonstration videos, over 60 scenario cards to help students practice real-life skills, and fun, interactive role-playing games to act out the lessons.

 

However, we understand that routines must also be created at home, on weekends, and over any prolonged break from school. To make this as easy as possible for students, our Healthy Relationships Curriculum encourages special education teachers to work with students’ parents and encourage involvement. We provide the resources they need to work with their child at home to continue their education with easy-to-understand reinforcement activities and methods to keep them engaged in practicing the skills they learned in the classroom.

 

I spent more than 20 years as a special education teacher and have never come across a program that simultaneously supports educators and students. They can feel comfort in knowing that our program will adapt to the needs and routines of their students. Please review our sample lessons and request a free demonstration of our Healthy Relationships Curriculum! You can also use the chat function on our website to contact us. We are always happy to take questions from educators in live time. 

Author: Melissa Ringold, MEd — Curriculum/Instruction Coach

Each year, those in the special education community reflect on the importance of Dec. 2.  On this day in 1975, President Ford signed the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which ensured special education programs were available in all public schools and allowed students with varying needs to receive the help they needed. Since then, Dec. 2 has been celebrated as National Special Education Day. On this day, we strive to bring awareness to the special education community and honor educators that work in this field

Special education is essential to ensure students with various needs develop the life skills they need to succeed. Our Healthy Relationships Curriculum is designed to help students with these needs gain skills and form meaningful relationships. When teaching students with varying needs, it is crucial to have a curriculum that can easily adapt to their needs. Our curriculum features a variety of resources, including in-person role-playing activities, 180+ videos, scenario cards to help discuss the skills learned, and games to reinforce skills.

We also want to thank all special education teachers for their work. Filled with compassion, these teachers care so much about their students and want to see them succeed.  Those who teach our Healthy Relationships Curriculum know how much we care about them and their students. We provide these instructors with professional development to effectively teach lessons and adapt to their students’ needs. I’ve seen firsthand in talking with our teachers that they are always looking for new ways to help every one of their students excel and find the proper ways to teach their lessons. Special education teachers go above and beyond what is required of them and make an impact on so many lives.

Thank you to all special education teachers out there. And, if you are not using our Healthy Relationships Curriculum, you might want to click this link to schedule a demo.

Author: Jen Falkowski, MEd — Supervisor of Special Education

All teachers strive to relate to their students, especially teachers of students with various needs. Relating to students helps them pay attention in class and absorb the information they are learning. The students may also want to ask the teachers questions and feel empowered to do their best in the classroom. However, a language barrier can prevent the students and teachers from properly interacting in the school may occur.

That’s where our Healthy Relationships Curriculum can help. We understand language barriers make it more difficult for students with varying needs to learn the life skills their educators are trying to teach them. To help solve this problem, our resource is designed with home supplements and videos available in English and Spanish.

Our Spanish videos provide the same level of quality instruction as our English videos. They still cover our three essential modules for lifelong success: hygiene, human development, and forming relationships, but they are available in the first language the students speak. These videos feature Spanish-speaking students and take-home Spanish resources that encourage parent/caregiver involvement to reinforce these skills.

Additionally, our program also features an extensive library of videos that demonstrate examples of the student’s skills in the classroom, reinforce the importance of the skills, and show how to use these skills in real-life situations. Our library of videos is accessible not only in the classroom but also at home, making retention of lesson concepts easier with family encouragement and involvement.

Our lessons will help you relate to your students and allow them to access the materials when needed without someone there to translate for them. That’s what helps set our curriculum apart. We continually look for new ways to involve students who speak different languages – whether in the classroom or at home. We make it easy for educators to give the same level of attention and care to students who speak Spanish in their class and build lessons they will understand. We also can provide educators with ongoing consultation to help answer questions and make their lessons the best they can be!

As a  special education teacher for more than 20 years, I have yet to see a program with the level of detail that our lesson plans provide.  If you think our curriculum might be suitable for your students, please reach out and request a demo!

Author: Jen Falkowski, MEd — Supervisor of Special Education