Coffee Chats with Brookes
Freshly brewed tips & advice from top experts—for free!
Looking for a new professional development opportunity? Take a coffee break with Brookes, and get tips and guidance from our authors on the topics you care about the most.
This page is your one-stop shop for topping up your professional knowledge with research-based wisdom and practical strategies—completely for free! Check out this season’s menu of upcoming chats, and sign up now to reserve your seat. Or explore our archive of more than 50 exclusive presentations from renowned experts on inclusive education, early childhood, and communication and language development.
Our coffee chat schedule is regularly updated, so bookmark this page and stop by often to see what’s new!
Upcoming Chats
Supporting Families to Resolve Challenging Behavior with Positive Behavior Support
Friday, May 13th at 2:00 PM ET
Presented by: Karen Elfner, M.A., & Sarah Fefer, Ph.D., BCBA
Age range: Preschoolers, early elementary (K-2), upper elementary (3-5), middle school, and high school
Who this chat is for: Parents and other family members, BCBAs, behavior support personnel, therapists, early childhood educators, child care providers.
Despite the discouragement that often develops when faced with ongoing challenging behavior, parents CAN positively impact their children’s behavior. Understanding and implementing the positive behavior support (PBS) process is a key part of resolving these challenging behaviors and building the skills to prevent them in the future. After gathering information to establish a clear understanding of their child’s behavior, parents can create an effective plan to prevent, replace, and respond to behaviors.
Attendees will Learn:
- The core principles of positive behavior support for families
- A process of assessment to help families understand their children’s behavior
- How to use that understanding to develop effective interventions with families
- Tools to assist families in each step of the process
Helping Your Family Thrive: A Practical Guide to Parenting with Positive Behavior Support
Monday May 16th at 2:00 PM ET
Presented by: Sarah Fefer Ph.D., BCBA, Shane Isley, M.S., BCBA, & Missy Sieders
Age range: Infants & toddlers, preschoolers, early elementary (K-2), upper elementary (3-5), middle school, and high school
Who this chat is for: Parents, behavioral health professionals, and anyone working with young children and their families
Join Sarah Fefer, Shane Isley, & Missy Sieders, co-authors of the new Helping Your Family Thrive: A Practical Guide to Parenting with Positive Behavior Support, for an introduction to positive behavior support (PBS)—the ideal way to prevent challenging behaviors before they occur and improve overall quality of life for whole families. Attendees will also explore five important steps to setting up families for success.
Attendees will Learn:
- The principles of positive behavior support for families
- The ins and outs of the family self-assessment process
- How to work together to create and teach clear family expectations
- How to arrange the family environment to promote success
- How to monitor progress and plan for what’s next
Language Screening of Pre-School Bilingual (Spanish-English) Children
Wednesday May 18th at 2:00 PM ET
Presented by: Aquiles Iglesias, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Jill De Villiers, Ph.D., Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D.
Age range: Preschoolers
Who this chat is for: Any professional interested in evaluating language skills of bilingual (Spanish/English) preschoolers.
How can you tell if young bilingual children are making age-appropriate language progress? The Quick Interactive Language Screener ™: English–Spanish (QUILS ™: ES) can help—and this free coffee chat will introduce you to this web-based, game-like screener. Developed for use with English–Spanish bilingual children from ages 3 to 5:11, QUILS: ES measures not only language products (what the child already knows in both languages) but also language processes (how the child learns new words and grammar structures). Presented by co-developers of QUILS: ES, this webinar is a must for professionals who work with bilingual preschoolers.
Participants will:
- Review why it’s important to screen bilingual children in two languages
- Discover the rationale for the development of QUILS: ES
- Learn why QUILS: ES measures both the product of learning and the process of learning
- Get an overview of the structure and scoring of QUILS:ES
