Michelle Garcia Winner Conference May 8 in Redwood City

This is a fundraiser for SEPTAR, the Special Education PTA that I helped found, as well as an opportunity to build real skills for interacting with people like my son:

SEPTAR and Belmont-Redwood Shores Special Ed PTA present:

Michelle Garcia Winner: Implementing Social Thinking Concepts and Vocabulary into our School and Home: A Day to Develop Team Creativity

Friday, May 8th, 9 AM - 4 PM
Community Activities Building (CAB)
1400 Roosevelt Ave.
Redwood City, CA 94061

NOTE: Tickets are discounted $85.00 through TODAY, April 15th; $100.00 after. Lunch and workshop materials are included in the ticket price. Participants will also have an opportunity to meet with local service providers.

Buy your tickets online:
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/57237

Michelle Garcia Winner, MA, CCC-SLP, specializes in the treatment of individuals with social cognitive deficits: those with diagnoses such as autism, Asperger Syndrome and nonverbal learning disorder. She began teaching social thinking in 1995 to brighter students when she went to work for a high school district as the districts speech language pathologist. Social Thinking was born out of necessity as a way to reach those bright but socially clueless students that needed more information than just what social skill to use. They needed to know why they should bother to use that skill.

Michelle entered into private practice in 1998 (part-time) and then full time in 1999 due to community demand. Both parents and school districts wanted her to work with their students.

Her clinical services continued to evolve and expand, Michelle Garcia Winners Center for Social Thinking, Inc saw over 250 children (preschool through adults) in 2008 from the Silicon Valley area of California for weekly therapy sessions. Over the years, to meet demand she has hired and trained a number of educational/speech and language professionals in the art and science of teaching social thinking. Simultaneously she also began a company called Think Social Publishing, Inc to handle the growing demands of speaking internationally as well as self-publishing her own and now others books.

In 2008, Michelle also co-founded with Dr. Pamela Crooke, a non-profit dedicated to social thinking for the Silicon Valley Region of California, called Teach SOCIAL Silicon Valley. The word SOCIAL is an acronym for Social and organizational concepts in individuals across a lifespan.

As Michelle has observed the concept of Social Thinking take off across the United States and other countries, she also found she had less and less time for clinic management. She realized she was serving both a local and a national/international community that was growing quickly.

Michelle decided to close her Michelle G Winners Center for Social Thinking, inc. in August of 2008 and give the option to her trained therapists to open a social thinking clinic that they manage within the non-profit, TSSV. 100% of her employees agreed they wanted to start this new clinic, which officially began in Sept, 2008.

While Michelle is not on the regulating board of TSSV (given it would be a conflict of interest), she will continue to offer trainings to the clinical staff of TSSV through monthly grand round meetings. She will also serve on the advisory board.

Thus, from September 2008 onward Michelle will work for Think Social Publishing, Inc. DBA, Social Thinking along with colleagues Stephanie Madrigal and Dr. Pamela Crooke. Social Thinking will run a small (no-growth) social thinking clinic. This will allow these therapists to continue to work with clients, while also serving as a training facility to professionals who come to learn how to apply the core concepts of social thinking from around the world.

In doing this, Silicon Valley will continue to have and expand an excellent clinic in their community to not only help clients and their families but to also train educators from local schools. This also allows Michelle to continue to focus on developing and sharing new treatment ideas as the concept of social thinking expands and matures for parents and professionals to apply world-wide.

The heart of Michelles work is illuminating the often elusive and intangible world of social thinking, and developing practical strategies that can be easily used by parents, educators and service providers, across different environments, to teach social thinking and social skills.

A pioneer and visionary in her field, her work is being applied not only to persons with autism and related disabilities, but also more broadly to students in mainstream classrooms and to adults in vocational and professional settings in the U.S. and abroad. Her goal is to raise awareness among administrators, educators and parents about the critical role that social thinking and social skills play in every students life, not only in achieving academic success, but also for success in adulthood and life in general.

Michelle is internationally recognized as a thoughtful and prolific writer in the area of social thinking/social skills. She travels around the world speaking on a multitude of topics relating to social thinking, and repeatedly receives accolades for her educational, energetic and enthusiastic workshop presentations. She has been invited to train psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, parents, educators and government policy makers on the importance of social thinking.

Michelle has written several books on social cognitive deficits and social thinking, and has released training videos/DVDs for educators and parents.

In 2008, she was presented with an Award of Special Congressional Recognition for her pioneering work.

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This course meets the qualifications for 6.0 hours of continuing professional development credit for Speech-Language Pathologists as required by the California Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Board. SLPs can record their own hours using the ASHA Verification of Attendance form towards their ASHA CEUs. This will provide the equivalent of .6 CEU (PDP54).