To teach... ... People - Jun 27, 2016

It's a funny thing being a behaviour analyst; I personally got into the field because I wanted to teach children, and wanted to shape upcoming generations of children, but slowly somewhere along the line, I started to realize that I could effect more than just this one child; I could effect a family; I could effect an organization; I could effect a community...

I went into this field thinking that kindergarten teaching was my calling. I wanted to work with tiny children just learning skills. However, the more time I spent in a classroom environment, the more I came to realize that even that it's quite teaching. It's a lot of management, child wrangling, snotty nose blowing, and general politics. It wasn't "teaching".

So when I began as an ABA therapist, I felt like I was teaching. I was in control of the methods, strategies and bits and pieces each child learned. When they labeled a banana, I knew it was because I had taught them that. Which was an incredible high!

I think when you're younger, you don't think about teaching adults, because you, yourself aren't or barely are an adult, but over time - I began to teach adults. Now I run a business where over half my clients are families, where I spend the majority of my time in the company of adults, and not in the company of children. I also supervise therapists, who are also adults, and do very little work 1:1 with children - except for the awesome opportunities to train through modeling.

Now, I think I would really love to teach adults - and that will be my focus going forward. I like to see them shape mnay lives, and hear from them that something I said, they passed onto someone else (although I make sure to remind them that my advice in based on individual circumstances and not to generalize it). It's amazing to see the results of all this indirect (of adults) teaching.

So in short, I went into this field thinking I wanted to teach children, and now think I want to teach adults - which is practically a complete 180 - but that's the joy of behaviour analysis!