ETSU “Make A Difference” Project
Providing Help to Children with Disabilities and Challenging Behaviors

    For the past seven years, the ETSU “Make A Difference” (MAD) Project has provided technical assistance to local preschools and educational agencies, assisting them in serving the needs of young children and school-aged students with disabilities and behavior challenges. The project has provided both technical assistance (functional behavior assessment and behavior intervention consultation) as well as in-service training in functional assessment for teams of teachers, assistants, and other related service personnel. More recently, the MAD Project has increased the focus on in-service training. Periodic workshops include such topics as:

• Increasing Child Engagement in Learning Activities
• How to Assess Child Learning and Behavior Progress to Guide Instruction and Learning Activities
• Social Skills Development
• How to Use Alternative Learning and Teaching Strategies for Children With Learning Differences
• Implementation of Positive Behavior Supports for Young Children and School-Aged Students With Special Needs

    Training empowers preschools and schools to more effectively address the learning and behavior needs of children and meet IDEA requirements. In addition to providing training, consultation, and sharing data that has been collected from our project, the MAD project regularly conducts presentations on topics at local, state, regional, national, and international professional conferences concerning functional behavior assessment.

    The Director of the MAD Project is Dr. James Fox. Staff includes: Leia Blevins, Project Coordinator; and Scott Lamie, Michele Frye, Sarah Camp, and Neeti Mishra, Graduate Assistants. For more information or to request technical assistance or training please contact Leia Blevins by phone at 423-439-7547 or by e-mail at blevinsl@mail.etsu.edu . You may also access the MAD web site at makeadifference.etsu.edu to view some workshops and presentations or contact the MAD Project e-mail address at MADProject@excite.com