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We are back with the second part of our conversation with Dr. Dennis. Our previous episode covered the escalating attendance crisis and how we can address it with new evaluations and data-collection tools. We are excited to dive deeper into this important subject through Dr. Dennis’ expertise and passion. Join us!
Dr. Dennis Lefevre recently served as the Executive Director of Student Support Services in a small, high-performing school district in southern CA. Before that role, he worked in various capacities in public, non-public, and private school settings with thousands of preschool, elementary, and secondary students. He had a front-row seat to the unfolding attendance crisis and became increasingly frustrated with the lack of ownership among schools, homes, and communities. He is now piloting a new kind of evaluation that is an intensive data collection process designed to lower the threshold enough to get students back on campus. As an educational psychologist in private practice, Dr. Dennis started an agency called Back at School, which offers consultations, advocacy, targeted data collection, interventions, workshops, and more to help the attendance crisis.
Show Highlights:
- A new approach based on revising the BIP (Behavior Intervention Plan): the AIP (Attendance Intervention Plan)
- Creative interventions for attendance challenges
- Differentiating between school refusal and truancy
- School refusal is typically an attempt to escape aversive stimuli, like bullying, tests, social phobias, and separation anxiety.
- Truancy is characterized by defiance, a pursuit of external rewards, and developmentally inappropriate rebellious behavior.
- Educators are trained to treat all students the same, which doesn’t allow for specialized needs.
- Why it’s important to ask, “Is this a performance deficit or a skills deficit?”
- Providing even a small amount of control or choice to the student can be very effective.
Resources:
Connect with Dr. Dennis Lefevre: Website
Contact us on social media or through our website for more information on the IEP Learning Center: www.inclusiveeducationproject.org.
Thank you for listening!
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