Hearts for Autism Fund is committed to offering superior community trainings provided at no cost to families and at a low cost for all community members.  In the last several years, Hearts for Autism has sponsored four nationally recognized speakers in the Las Cruces area. 

These trainings brought unique perspectives and comprehensive presentations for families, educators and professionals living and working in the field of autism.  By bringing high quality presenters to the Las Cruces area, Hearts for Autism Fund has provided over 460 training participants consisting of families and community members from across the state of New Mexico the opportunity to attend exceptional trainings, access to the top autism professionals, continuing educational credits for professionals and the most current information on autism.

FALL TRAINING 2022

This course is designed to teach professionals and parents the social learning frameworks, concepts, and strategies needed to guide others toward improved social processing and social competencies. Attendees will gain new insights into the power of their own social-emotional intelligence as they explore their social motivations and how they process and respond to social information. We will dissect hidden social rules, contemplate how social expectations change with age, and discuss how social problem solving is at the heart of social competencies and affects how students interpret and respond to social-academic information and assignments. Social Thinking has developed a large range of treatment strategies—and attendees will walk away with a number of them, including approaches for helping students avoid “the blurt,” cope with boring moments, and develop conversational language.

Much of the day will focus on the ILAUGH Model of Social Cognition. ILAUGH is an acronym for Initiating Communication, Listening with Eyes and Brain, Abstract and Inferential Thinking, Understanding Perspective, Getting the Big Picture, and Humor & Human Relatedness. The ILAUGH model demonstrates not only why people with social learning challenges have weaker social abilities but also how social interpretation is linked to academic tasks such as written expression, conversational language, reading comprehension, and organizational skills. As we wrap up the day, we will explore how to teach at the roots—and not through the leaves—of Social Thinking’s Social Learning Tree. We will then discuss how to write realistic IEP goals based on rubrics. Mainstream teachers find the information in this course applicable to all students as it pertains to social-emotional learning, and audiences around the world love that it furthers their own social-emotional insights!