I think it’s safe to say that the majority of us were pretty glad to see the back of 2020, which was a rather unforgettable year! This time last year we had no idea what an enormous impact the COVID-19 pandemic would have on us all. I don’t imagine that many of us thought we would end up locked down with schools and education providers being forced to close their doors.

Online workshops – are you sure?

Despite the difficulties that the pandemic presented us with, it also gave us opportunities. Opportunities to change, to learn and to grow. If you had told me this time last year that we would be moving all of our training workshops to an online format I would have laughed in your face. If you have ever attended one of our workshops then you will know that they are highly practical, with plenty of live demonstration, discussion, practice and feedback sessions. How on earth would we even begin to make plans to present it via an online platform?

woman works at laptop

One crazy weekend in early March we brainstormed, learned how to use Zoom, ordered new webcams, recorded some demonstration videos for each of the phases of PECS and practised alternative ways of presenting the workshop content. We shall be eternally grateful to our friends and families who endured many trial sessions during those two days and gave us constructive criticism and feedback. We ran our first ever online PECS workshop the following Monday, with 11 willing delegates, one presenter, a spare presenter on standby and one very nervous Operational Director! Since then, we have trained 2,011 more delegates across 83 online workshops.

Over time we have honed our online presenting skills and made some changes to the way we do things. Delegates now receive a bag full of PECS tools including a PECS® Communication Book page, sentence strip, prelaminated PECS symbols, an ‘I Am Working For’ Board and some reinforcers, including the ever popular bendy man! This goody bag is used during the workshop for practising all the phases of PECS. Showing videos was also an issue with delegates and presenters having varying internet upload and download speeds, so we now host them on a secure third-party server so delegates can access them directly, providing a much smoother experience.

PECS delegate practise bag

Taking the workshops online allowed us to be much more flexible with days and timings. We now regularly run weekend and evening training workshops, meaning that training doesn’t have to take time away from the classroom or therapy room. Weekends and evenings are also useful for parents who, as ever, are more than welcome on any of our workshops. Online workshops have also enabled us to train people in far flung locations who would usually have to travel to the UK from places such as Iceland, Finland, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, India, the Netherlands and more. We hope at some point this year to get back to holding face to face PECS® Level 1 workshops; our sights were set on starting this month but unfortunately that’s not to be. We shall try again in March.

e-learning

For those that wanted to train at their own pace, we launched our new website Pyramid Online Learning. Here you can find pre-recorded e-workshops that can be taken over several weeks. Currently available are The Language of Emotions, Ethical Collaboration in Augmentative Alternative Communication and Teaching Critical Communication Skills.

We introduced some new workshops and talks to our offering, such as the 1-day PECS Refresher and Back to School Behaviours. We also held some very popular free webinars. Louise Maggs, our Clinical Director, wrote and presented a 90 minute talk titled ‘Reinforcers and Their Role in Teaching Communication’, she also presented a PECS Overview. We received 1,800 emails requesting a place on the PECS Overview which is way more than Zoom can handle, so we streamed it through our Facebook page instead. Within 24 hours the presentation received over 7,000 views! Coming up, we have a new two-part free talk ‘The Buddha-Ful Eightfold Path and Behaviour Analysis’.

telehealth and home schooling

We knew that for many, implementing PECS face to face wouldn’t be possible for some time. Andy Bondy, co-founder of PECS and The Pyramid Approach to Education and Catherine Horton, PECS USA Clinical Director wrote and co-presented a talk called the ‘Pyramid Approach to Teleservices: Enhancing Learning and PECS at Home’. We also knew that for many parents ‘home schooling’ was going to be particularly stressful so put together a mini workshop called The Pyramid Approach: A Simple Guide to Teaching at Home.

Halloween cookie

We also introduced a new page on our website called Support at Home, which eventually ended up with so much content it had to become a section of its own, rather than just a page. The Support at Home hub is full of demonstration videos, lesson plans and PECS symbol sheets which are all available to download for free. It’s also where you will find our COVID-19 Visual Story for PECS Users plus a social distancing story and lesson plan.

Another welcome addition to our website was the Funding Resources page. This page lists charities and organisations that may be able to provide funding to help professionals and parents to access training and consultation. You can read a case study about Rhiannon Jones, a teaching assistant from south Wales, who was able to access PECS Level 1 online training at no cost to her or her employer- instead, her place was paid for through funding provided by her union, Unison.

even more research

With greatly reduced travel for our consultants, lockdown gave us the time to revamp the research page on our website, making it more user friendly. Now, you can find some of the latest research on PECS, cementing its status as an evidence-based practice. One of the latest additions is an article written by Andy Bondy, Lori Frost and Catherine Horton on Promoting Functional Communication in the Home, a key topic for everyone during the pandemic.

As Operational Director for the UK, I can’t express how proud I am of the team for their unwavering enthusiasm and commitment to providing vital services during the last 12 months, despite the many challenges that we’ve faced. As a worldwide group of companies, we’ve responded to these challenges, adapting, evolving and growing into a more flexible service provider. 2020 is a year that we’ll never forget, and despite its many hardships, we’re stronger because of it.

Exhibition registration desk2021 and beyond

Hopefully as the vaccine is rolled out we can start to look forward again. We hope to welcome you onto one of our workshops this year, see you on our social media and maybe even meet you in person at the Tes SEN Show in October (stand 109) if all goes to plan!

By Louise Hotchkiss

© Pyramid Educational Consultants UK Ltd, 2021