Pennsylvania Association of Student Assistance Professionals (PASAP)

Northwest Region Workshop (South) 

Thursday, November 15, 2018
8:00 am – 3:00 pm
Midwestern IU 4
Rooms A and B
453 Maple Street
Grove City, PA 16127

Agenda

7:30 AM - 8:00 AM - Arrival and Registration

8:00 AM - 10:00 AM - "Response to Intervention and Instruction and District-wide SAP Services" with Michael McGaughey and Thomas Hancock

Workshop Description: The presentation will emphasize the practical approaches practiced by the Titusville Area School District to provide a blended Response to Intervention and Instruction and district wide Student Assistance Program for struggling students. Students who struggle behaviorally should not always be referred to special education without going through a collaborative process of district wide student assistance. The practical strategies and scenarios will be discussed and displayed.

10:15 AM - 12:15 PM - "Family Engagement" with Guy Diamond

Workshop Description: This training will discuss the importance of engaging families when working with depressed and or suicidal adolescents, as well as methods to do so. Barriers to engaging families in treatment will be discussed as well as ways to help motivate parents to get their adolescents into treatment. Various forms of adolescent resistance and methods to work through this resistance will be reviewed. Connections will be made to the Student Assistance Program process.

12:15 PM - 1:00 PM - Lunch Provided

1:00 - 3:00 PM - "Student Mental Health and the Law"  with Erin Gilsbach

Workshop Description: Student mental health is increasingly a concern in today’s schools, and a proper understanding of student mental health issues is vital for the safety of schools and the well-being of any student population. This session is designed to provide school personnel, particularly SAP team members, with vital and necessary information and tools that they need to be able to identify and handle student mental health needs in an effective and legally-defensible manner.

Registration Costs:

PASAP Member Rate: $25.00 (must log in to get the member rate)
PASAP Non-Member Rate: $75.00
All registrations must be submitted via www.pasap.org

Continuing Education Credits   

PASAP is an Act 48 Approved Provider. Participants can earn up to 6 hours of Act 48 credit (full workshop attendance). Morning Session only: 3 hours.  Afternoon session only: 3 hours. Participants must provide their Professional Personnel ID (PPID) number when registering and must be present at each session in its entirety to receive credit.  Additionally, 6 hours of social work credits will be offered through the University of Pittsburgh.  A $10 fee for the social work credits will be added at the time of registration.

Speaker Bios

Mike McGaughey is the Director of Special Education for the Titusville Area School District. He began his career in 1990 teaching in Talbot and Prince George’s County Public Schools in Maryland. He taught a middle level Disruptive Youth Program and middle school support programs. He also worked with various non-traditional college students at Chesapeake College on the Eastern Shore. In 1992, Mike returned to Pennsylvania and began working at the Sarah A. Reed Children’s Center. At Sarah Reed, Mike was a residential therapist, teacher, school based mental health therapist, and eventually an administrator of various elementary through high school Alternative Education and Emotional Support Campus School Programs. Mike also worked as a therapeutic support staff, mobile therapist, and behavior specialist at Sarah Reed. In 1996 Mike returned to the public school at the Titusville Area School District and began teaching and coordinating their middle and high school alternative education programs. In 2002, Mike became an assistant principal at Titusville High School and the coordinator of the district’s Alternative Education Programs. In 2005 Mike became the principal of Titusville Middle School and coordinated the district’s Alternative Education Programs. Mike continued to be the principal of Titusville Middle School until 2014 when he became the Director of Special Education for the school district. During this time Mike continues to work with our Alternative Education Program and also continues since 1997 to serve as the Pennsylvania Department of Education Region 8 Coordinator for Alternative Education for Disruptive Youth.

Thomas Hancock has been part of the Titusville community since 1992 and has worked as a School Psychologist in the Titusville Area School District (TASD) since 1993. Mr. Hancock was born and raised in Batavia, New York and earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology from Allegheny College. He then received his Master’s Degree in School Psychology from Alfred University in 1993. His current duties are to provide an array of psychological services to students at the TMS/THS.

In addition to his academic duties, Mr. Hancock has been a strong proponent of student extracurricular involvement. Mr. Hancock has coached football, wrestling, and/or both at all levels for the better part of two decades and currently serves as the Head Football Coach. He is a member of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), Titusville Education Association (TEA), and the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA). Additionally, he is a member of the Crawford County Suicide Task Force (CCSTF) and the Crawford County Educational Subcommittee (CCES). He and his wife Sandy live in Pleasantville with their three sons.

Guy Diamond, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Associate Professor at Drexel University in the College of Nursing and Health Profession, with over 75 publications on psychotherapy outcome, process and dissemination research.  At Drexel, he is the Director of the Center for Family Intervention Science (CFIS).  CFIS was founded in 1996 and has received funding from NIMH, SAMSHA, CDC, CSAT and several private foundations. At CFIS, Dr. Diamond developed, tested, and disseminated Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) for depressed and suicidal youth. Based on this work, ABFT now enjoys the distinction of being an empirically supported treatment on SAMHSA’s NREPP web site. Based on this work, Dr. Diamond recently received the distinguished research career award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Dr. Diamond is also the lead developer of the Behavioral Health Screening tool, a comprehensive yet brief, web based tool for early identification of youth struggling with suicide and other behavioral health problems.  Dr. Diamond recently became the Director of the Ph.D. Program for Couple and Family Therapy at Drexel University. The new program aims to develop the next generation of family intervention scientists who can help bring more empirical support to family therapy and help disseminate it in the broader health care environment.

Erin D. Gilsbach, Esq., is the founder and Executive Director of EdLaw Interactive, which specializes in legal training for educators and school administrators.  An experienced speaker both nationally and in her home state of Pennsylvania, Erin currently serves on the Board of Directors of NSBA’s Council of School Attorneys and is President of the PSBA Solicitors Association.  She provides legal consulting and training services to schools, education-related organizations in the areas of special education; development of legally-defensible policies and procedures; trending legal issues regarding technology and education; nursing and school health services; truancy prevention; child abuse prevention and mandated reporting; educator evaluation and discipline; and many other school law topics.

Elected by her peers as a "Rising Star Attorney" for 5 consecutive years, Erin began her career as a public high school English teacher, and she served for several years at the PA Department of Education’s Office of Chief Counsel.  In 2017, she served as the legal consultant for the desk reference "Legal Issues in School Health Services,” and she is the author of a handbook on health-related special education issues for LRP Publications, which is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2018.