About the Author

The Researcher, Michael Ippolito, received his Bachelors degree in Adolescence French Inclusive Education at SUNY Brockport. The researcher is currently certified in French 5-12 and Students with Disabilities 7-12. The researcher will be seeking a K-12 certification in ESOL after the completion of his graduate degree in TESOL. The researcher initially was always interested in teaching the French language to high school students. The researcher decided to enroll in the TESOL Graduate Program at SUNY Fredonia in order to continue to learn various techniques to teach language. In October of 2015 the researcher received a full time job as a Special Education Teacher at BOCES LoGuidice Educational Center in Fredonia NY.

During the 2015-2016 school year he taught students with learning disabilities and emotional disturbances in a self-contained classroom. The researcher’s passion for Special Education grew immensely after starting in this position. Starting in the 2016-2017 school year he began teaching in a 6:1:1 classroom which is a self-contained classroom consisting of students with moderate to severe disabilities, many of them having Autism Spectrum Disorder. The researcher loved his change in position and is very passionate about helping these student populations learn and achieve. Many of these students struggle with coping with their emotions and as a result almost all of the students have a Behavioral Intervention Plan. A Behavioral Intervention Plan serves as a guide to manage challenging behaviors in the classroom, establishes consequences for unwanted behaviors and aims to teach the student replacement behaviors or alternative ways of coping with their emotions. The students participate in a life skills curriculum which consists of instruction in functional skills, social skills, functional math and reading, pre-vocational skills, etc. The researcher is very passionate about Special Education and was searching for an intervention to help students with disabilities specifically students with ASD. I have implemented Video Based Interventions in my classroom and the results have been fantastic. I am very happy to share the process of filming effective videos to help students with disabilities learn, acquire and generalize various skills.