Schedule Your Tour in Avon Today | We officially have opened our Avon center on Monday, February 1st! You can now call our center at (317)-622-8904 to schedule your official tour or fill out our form online. Be on the lookout for a virtual tour, coming soon to our Youtube channel! We are very excited for this new chapter in Cornerstone’s history. If you live around the Avon area, share your #WeHeartAvon statement with us by tagging us & giving us a shout out on a social media post explaining what you love about the town of Avon, Indiana.
Life Skills and Vocational Learning Opportunities
At our West Lafayette and Madison centers, our older clients have the opportunity to incorporate life skills and vocational skills into the therapy day. Life skills are the tasks in day-to-day routines that individuals need to be independent, such as vacuuming, cleaning or doing laundry. The vocational skills are career or community goals, ranging from counting money, making copies, delivering items to offices or discovering how places in the community operate, such as a grocery store. After working on these daily living and vocational skills, the clients receive reinforcement. Some popular choices are selecting a sticker from a prize box, playing a computer game or listening to music.
Thank you to these staff members for Maximizing Those Who Struggle, Embracing Those Who Love and Fulfilling Those Who Serve.
Emilee McCracken, Therapist In my free time, I enjoy going to new restaurants and spending time with friends and family.
I’m a huge foodie, so I love to try new and different foods while socializing with friends. My favorite healthy recipe to make is air fried salmon and asparagus. I love to make it in my Ninja Foodi, it’s quick and easy!
My favorite thing about working at Cornerstone Autism Center is seeing all of my past clients master goals and become closer and closer to graduating.
Morgan DeLarosa, Therapist I love doing all things crafty, but I particularly love sewing and learning how to make new things with my sewing machine.
My absolute favorite place in the world is Ireland. I went on a school trip in high school and fell in love with the green landscape and old cities. I loved it so much that I’ve been back twice since then and would be so happy to go again.
I enjoy watching my clients grow and learn new things every day. It’s such a special moment when you’ve been working on a skill with them, and then they get it independently!
Megan Kramer, Therapist In my free time, I enjoy taking time to translate popular songs into American Sign Language and performing them. I also like to play with my animals — I have two dogs and one cat. I will also often spend time playing strategy games with my friends and family.
It’s a joy to be able to use American Sign Language, my first language, within my work setting. Since coming to Cornerstone, I have accomplished my goal of guiding children with autism using American Sign Language to help them maximize their potential. I hope to be able to integrate my dance education in some way to enhance exceptional children’s life experience.
There have been so many wonderful moments since working at Cornerstone, but I have to say my favorite memory was being able to watch Gabe graduate and hold his diploma after working so hard. You can view his success story and graduation video on our website.
“All individuals living on the spectrum deserve access to the method of communication that best fits them. This has been one of Cornerstone’s guiding standards as the integration of American Sign Language (ASL) came into fruition officially within our center in 2013. Cornerstone has allowed its mission of, ‘maximize those who struggle, embrace those who love, and fulfill those who serve’, to drive its Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)-based treatment into uncharted territory with the integration of ASL for non-vocal hearing, Deaf, and hard of hearing clients.” Read the full blog titled Bridging the Gap by BCBA Stephanie Dille-Huggins on our website here.
ABA Terms & Meanings | Have you ever been confused by some of the acronyms or terms used in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis? Board Certified Behavior Analyst Victoria Oliver breaks down and explains many of the common vocabulary in ABA on our blog. Read more here.
Helpful Links Page | Did you know we have a “resources” tab with links to amazing online links and organizations? From the Association of Behavior Analysis International to the National Autism Association, we have information and links listed about each one! Learn more by going to our Helpful Links tab.
ABA 101 Quick Guides | We have a new section on our “resources” tab to PDFs, created by Board Certified Behavior Analyst Angie Robbins. These are great to print out and keep somewhere easily accessible at home for reference. View all 4 guides here.
One of our Board Certified Behavior Analysts, Victoria Oliver, has two app suggestions that you can try at home:
1. Camp Discovery for Autism:This app uses evidence based practices to help kids learn! It uses some similar techniques utilized in ABA to teach children about shapes, letters, people, and colors. “I recommended it to some of my families to help keep their kids learning even when at home,” said BCBA Victoria Oliver.
2. Injini: Injini is an app that features many games to facilitate learning, such as virtual alphabet puzzles, tracing letters, and more. The kids at Cornerstone especially love a game on Injini which revolves around animals. “The games are colorful and visually appealing,” said Oliver, “They also have a narrator who talks about what the kids are doing on the game.”
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