Essential for Living in Action: Building Meaningful Skills Through Everyday Events | Session 334 with Kristina Montgomery and Emily Beal Wilkinson

Many behavior analysts have experienced the frustration of teaching a skill successfully in one setting only to discover that it doesn't transfer to the situations where it actually matters. In this episode, I sit down with Kristina Montgomery and Emily Beal Wilkinson of Victory Academy to discuss how Essential for Living (EFL) and event-based teaching can help bridge that gap.

Kristina and Emily share their professional journeys into behavior analysis and describe how discovering Dr. Patrick McGreevy's Essential for Living framework reshaped their approach to supporting learners with limited skill repertoires. Rather than focusing on isolated skill acquisition, EFL prioritizes the development of functional, meaningful skills that improve quality of life and increase independence.

A major focus of our conversation is event-based teaching, an instructional approach that embeds learning opportunities within naturally occurring and highly meaningful activities. From gardening and cooking to operating school cafés and participating in role-playing activities, Kristina and Emily explain how these experiences allow practitioners to teach multiple skills simultaneously while creating natural sources of reinforcement.

We also discuss:

• How Kristina and Emily first discovered Essential for Living and why it resonated with their clinical experiences.
• Why traditional skill-building approaches sometimes fail to produce meaningful generalization.
• The concept of "stacking" activities to address multiple goals through a single event.
• Examples of event-based teaching activities including gardening, cooking, cafés, and community-based experiences.
• A detailed case study illustrating the transition from VB-MAPP-style programming to contextual, event-based instruction.
• How literacy, communication, social, and adaptive skills can be embedded within meaningful activities.
• The role of natural reinforcement in improving learner engagement.
• Their innovative health and wellness program designed to teach tolerance for medical and dental procedures.
• How desensitization training can reduce the need for sedation, restraint, and other restrictive practices.
• The collateral benefits these programs create for families and healthcare providers.
• Research questions related to contextual instruction, assessment, staff satisfaction, and BCBA training.
• Advice for newly certified behavior analysts on professional development and values-based practice.

This episode will be especially valuable for behavior analysts, special educators, and anyone supporting individuals with significant support needs who are looking for practical ways to make instruction more meaningful, functional, and socially significant.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Essential for Living
• Dr. Patrick McGreevy (see Pat's previous BOP episodes here!)
• Victory Academy
• Katy Bowman and the concept of activity stacking
• Session 218 with Troy Fry
• Event Based Teaching course (save with code BOP20)
• Essential for Living course (save with code BOP20)

Sponsor Shoutouts

• CEUs from Behavioral Observations. Learn from your favorite podcast guests while you're commuting, walking the dog, or whatever else you do while listening to podcasts. New events are being added all the time, so check them out here.
• The BOP Patreon. Do you want to get the show ad-free and before everyone else? Click here to learn how!
• Safety-Care is a crisis prevention and de-escalation training program designed for professionals who support individuals with challenging behavior. More than 300,000 professionals have been trained in Safety-Care's evidence-based approach to recognizing early warning signs and responding with confidence. To learn more, visit QBS.com/podcast.
• The Behavioral Toolbox International. Check out our courses for school-based and other behavioral professionals, including our newest one, Motivational Interviewing: Getting Educator Buy-In.

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