I thought that today’s workshop by Dr. Drabick on ”Disruptive Behavior Disorders: Diagnosis, Assessment and Intervention Strategies” was a great start to the FCP 2010/2011 professional workshop series. Her presentation was both professional and enjoyable. The three hours went by too quickly.
Sometimes, when I see a title of a workshop related to disruptive behavior of children and youth, I think “Oh no, not another one!”. I felt enlightened by Dr. Drabick’s discussion of tried and true social learning and behavior modification models and her presentation of new research that supports these concepts. (I admit, I am biased! I was trained in Gerald Patterson’s social-learning work and ideas from the Oregon Social Learning Center parent-training model over 30 years ago. I still use these techniques in my work with children and adolescents. I appreciated the affirmation for continued use of these techniques from Dr. Drabick’s workshop today)
This is the third year that FCP has been providing the “Blog” after each of the Professional Education Workshops. In the back of my mind, I rate each workshop on several categories:
1. “Edutainment Scale” (Does the presenter have a sense of humor, and can he/she provide professional and scientific information that is useful, meaningful ,and enjoyable for the audience?)
2. “Satisfactions Scale” (Does the audience appear satisfied with the presentation? Are questions limited and relevant to the topic, and is there a sense of conclusion at the end of the workshop?)
3. “What did I Learn Scale” (Did the workshop add new knowledge or new techniques that I can use in my practice?)
4. “What’s missing Scale” (Upon reflection after the workshop, what, if anything, was left out of the presentation? Were the Learning Objectives answered?)
5. “Anything Controversial Scale” (Did the presenter say anything that might inspire argument or disagreement in the audience?)
Applying these scales, I thought that Dr. Drabick’s presentation was excellent today. She presented research and practice information to a professional audience with humor. The audience was attentive (even the 3 month-old baby), and questions were appropriate. I thought her presentation was thorough, and unfortunately for me, she did not say anything controversial. For the most part, I felt satisfied by the workshop. I did feel a little “rushed” and would have liked more time spent on the intervention section.