Need Some Will Power? There's an App for That!

By Stacy Braslau-Schneck

Reprinted with permission from http://stacy-wagntrain.livejournal.com/

Sometimes, the hardest animal for a behaviorist to train is one’s own self.  I’ve been experimenting with three programs that are supposed to help with that.

App #1: Funl

The first one I tried is a website called Funl, at www.goFunl.com.  In Funl, you set up any number of Habits and you give each one a dollar value or “financial incentive”, then you set up any number of Rewards, and you can decide which habits will feed into which rewards.  In other words, you can assign “Go to the gym” a dollar value of $5, say, and pick a reward of “Buy new shoes” which cost $90 (I’m making this up; I neither use the gym nor really buy shoes).

Of course, the money you’re dealing with is all yours – Funl is not actually paying you for your habits, but instead giving you a way to “monetize” your habits.  When you do spend your own money to splurge on your reward, you at least feel like you’ve earned it.  Funl’s creators are also hoping to reduce “the world's reliance on credit card debt…. [and] decrease impulse buying behaviour.”

Funl does not as yet have a dedicated smartphone app, but you can put a shortcut to their website on your home screen to take you there to easily check off the habits you’ve done that day – helpful for immediate reinforcement if you’re on-the-go and forgetful.

Set Attainable Goals

I started by setting a low value of $1 on one habit, Practicing Buugeng (Buugeng are s-shaped staffs that are spun around while dancing – see, for example, the master/inventor demonstrating here) and the goal of saving towards a big ticket item – in this case a $98 Laser Star Projector (that I’ve been coveting for a while but couldn’t justify spending my money on).  I figured that if I practiced daily, I could earn this toy in three months.  However, this was a dumb starting move – it was lumping, not splitting, setting a high criteria before reaching my reinforcement. Having a low-probability behavior (one that you’re not likely to do anyways) priced at a low value, combined with a high-value reward is a bad combination to start with.  I would recommend, going forward, starting with a behavior/goal combination that can result in a small reward with five or fewer repetitions.  If I were starting over, I’d probably say something like 5 repetitions of this habit would earn me a nice new purple Sharpie pen or something like that.  Nothing too extravagant, but I can easily afford it, I wouldn’t be buying it otherwise, and when I used the new pen I’d be reminded of how I earned it.

Group Only Similar Habits

Another option is to combine the habits – you can have more than one habit that can feed into the same Reward.  You could “earn” money towards your goal by any of the habits you might do, for example, practicing a dance, weighing yourself, drinking 8 glasses of water in a day, and replying to all your emails.  This would get you to your goal much faster.  However, I have a feeling that this would “dilute” the value of each practice.  With just one habit, you’d know that you’d earned your reward due to your diligence in that behavior.  With several habits feeding into one reward, you might think, I don’t need to do this one habit, because I’m still earning my Reward through all these other habits.  However, I can see combining various habits within a category, such as “dance practice”, “physical fitness”, “good business practices”, “family time” etc.

Habits Must Be Measurable

Funl doesn’t really give advice on what kinds of habits to use, so you have to have some awareness of what does and doesn’t work.  With any behavior, it’s important to quantify it.  You want to avoid vague behaviors like “eat less” or “exercise more”; you want something that you can say without question that you did it (or not), such as “eat less than 1500 calories a day” or “walk for 20 minutes”.  It’s OK if the habit that you write down is vague (like “Process Daily Folder” or “Practice Buugeng”) as long as you know what that means (going to each day’s “tickle file” folder, taking out all the paperwork that’s in it, and process them, refilling any pages that need it; or “practice spinning Buugeng for at least 10 minutes”).

Funl tells you your overall total for each habit; it does not tell you your frequency.  So if you’re doing your would-be daily habit only once a week, it will still add up (slowly) and you won’t really be shown the difference.

Identify Affordable Rewards

One of the problems with self-reinforcement is finding a reward you can afford – either financially, or in terms of time, or in terms of letting go of other priorities. After all, if it was something you could easily give yourself, you’d do it already.  On the other hand, if the reward matches the habit, it could work out.  For example, if the Habit is “stay under calorie goal each day”, and you have to do a week’s worth, and the reward is “reasonably-sized bowl of ice cream”, it might be a good rare reward, rather than being counter-productive.  If the goal is a financial stretch, habits that help you save money (packing a lunch instead of buying it, ordering water instead of drinks in a restaurant, planning a week’s purchases) might in fact earn you the reward. Of course you can put a dollar-value on an otherwise free indulgent experience, such as “take a bubble bath”, “take a day off of work and go to the beach”, or “watch a trashy TV show”.

Social Component

One disadvantage of Funl is that there does not seem to be a social component.  Although there’s an option for each habit to make it “public”, I didn’t see any way of accessing other users’ habits or giving them feedback.  This means there’s no one to hold you accountable if you haven’t practiced your habit in a while, and there’s no one to give you props when you do.   Social support can also be a vital component of non-financial rewards, such as someone agreeing to take your kids for a few hours so you can indulge in a bubble bath, or a circle of friends who offer to buy you lunch if you reach your goal.

App #2: Lift

This social aspect is the advantage of Lift.  Lift is a website and a smartphone app.  You can pick a habit that others have created and join in, or create your own.  Plenty of people have already put in things like “weigh daily”, “go to the gym”, “inbox zero”, and practices of various sports and musical instruments.  I added “Practice Buugeng” to this app, too, as well “Weight Daily”, “Process Daily Folder”, and “Go to sleep by midnight” (this last one should actually be more like “Be in bed with the lights off by midnight”, in my opinion, so that’s my description of it in my head.  I can’t actually control if I’m ASLEEP by then, only if I’ve made a good faith effort to get off the computer and put down the book).

Lift shows you an accumulation of what you’ve done, but it doesn’t have a way of showing that you’re approaching a goal the way Funl does.  Of course, you can still say “once I’ve done this 45 times, I can indulge in this particular reward because I’ll know I’ve earned it”.  In Lift, you can connect with friends and follow their progress, and anyone sharing the same “goal” (habit) can also give you feedback.  Lift itself will prompt you to do at least one of your habits daily, and will give you little R+ messages like “you’ve reached a mini milestone” and “Way to go!”.

App #3 MyFitnessPal

One other program I’ve been using for a over a year (with great results) is MyFitnessPal.  This is a website and smartphone app that tracks one thing: your calorie accounting for the day.  You can put in what you’ve eaten, and what exercise you’ve done.  It will give you several metrics, including whether you are over or under your goal, and how your intake breaks down in terms of protein, carbohydrates, fat, and even a few vitamins and minerals; it tracks your weight as you input it, and will announce when you’ve lost weight and how much you’ve lost overall. It will note how many days in a row you’ve completed your food/exercise diary (although if you skip a day it resets so you don’t get a cumulative count or a count per week, month, or year).

It is also a social app; you can connect with friends and they can see when you’ve completed your accounting for the day (and if you choose, you can even let them see what you listed that you ate), when you’ve logged for a milestone number of days, how much weight you’ve lost (but not gained!), and if you’ve been absent for a few days – presumably so that they can encourage you to get back to it.  While it’s sometimes tedious to write down everything you’ve eaten, a lot of brand name foods are already programmed in (chain restaurants, supermarket foods) and you can even scan the barcode of packaged foods.  It will also remember your frequent meals and what you’ve eaten recently, making the logging of leftovers or habitual meals very easy.

It’s easy enough to say to yourself, “When I reach X weight, I will reward myself with Y”, but it would be kind of nice if MyFitnessPal did this the way Funl does.

In short, I’d love an app or system that combines all three – the multiple behaviors of Funl and Lift, the social components of Lift and MyFitnessPal, and the counting towards a reward of Funl.

Then I’d have no excuse for not achieving all of my behavioral habit goals!

Visit Stacy's Website at http://www.wagntrain.com/

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Check List Epiphany

By Carly Champion Fleming

I want to share a realization that I had. Maybe it will help someone else, too. Check lists work very well with TAGteach, and I'm sure a lot of people already use them. I had tried so hard to use check lists to help me be more productive, but it never seemed to work. What I realized is this: I find writing lists rewarding, not checking off items. So essentially I was rewarded before I actually did anything. Not only that, but I felt like a failure when I got to the end of the day and there were still items that didn't get checked off.

What I have started doing instead is keeping a running tally of everything I do during the day. Now after each thing I accomplish, I get rewarded by adding that item to my list. At the end of the day I have a page full of things that I've done. My productivity has sky-rocketed. I actually seek out things to do just so I can add it to my list.

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TAGteacher Spotlight: Laura VanArendonk Baugh

Nearly ten years ago, Laura skipped a clicker training lecture to look in on an introduction to something she'd heard about called TAGteach -- and she's never looked back.

"Shaping human behavior incrementally just makes so much sense. We do it with the animals because it's easier for them and us both -- why not for human student and human teacher?"

Laura has incorporated TAGteach not only into her professional work, for training private clients with Canines In Action, Inc and as faculty with the Karen Pryor Academy, but into her personal life as well -- which finds her using TAG principles in organizing costume masquerades, in physical exercise form, in handling a firearm safely and shooting competitively, and in writing and editing. This fall she will tour the Indianapolis library system with Alena VanArendonk, teaching teenagers to dance THRILLER as part of a zombie-themed reading program and sneaking in TAGteach along the way. Check out Laura's video, The Thrill of Tag...

"TAGteach has really influenced how I view and approach challenges. I set more realistic goals -- measured by my actions, not anything out of my control -- and I'm much better about splitting big, daunting tasks into little ones I can actually do! I'm using self-tagging in so many ways. And don't tell, but my husband and I talk about ways to quietly implement tags in the project teams he manages, reducing stress and frustration under impossible deadlines and with workers on two continents. "

Laura's most recent self-tagging project was preparing to pitch to a literary agent, an experience made much simpler by good behavior preparation. She designed the popular ClickStats mobile app to track useful click or tag session data, making it easier to log rate of reinforcement and success ratios. Now she's working toward her Level 3 certification and is looking forward to introducing TAGteach to more learners and their instructors!

Laura is also an accomplished writer! You can get her book Kitsune-Tsuki on Amazon (winner of the 2012 Luminis prize). A bargain at only $0.99. Highly recommended!

For more information about Laura visit her website at Canines in Action

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What the Heck is a Tagulator Anyway?

A tagulator is a specially beaded string that allows you to keep track of your tags. You can see in this photo the tagulators hanging from the barre so that the dancers can keep track of their tags easily. Learners can also hang tagulators from their belt loops or back packs or at specific locations such as the bathroom rail, the coat hook or other location where they can earn a tag.

Some people use them for self-tagging. That is they give themselves a tag by pulling a bead when they succeed at a ask they have set for themselves. For example you might hang one on your fridge and anytime you make a conscious choice to have a snack (as opposed to snacking mindlessly), you pull down a bead. Theresa sometimes hangs one from her belt loop while lecturing and pulls a bead when she thinks about slowing down.

Others give tagulators to their learners so that they can keep track of tags. Some learners are motivated by completing a set of 10 beads and enjoy pulling down the beads, others need to earn something tangible when they have completed a string of beads. Here is a video that shows the introduction of a tagulator to a child who was previously receiving a Skittle (small candy) for each tag. The tagulator immediately increased the ratio of tags:candy from 1:1 to 10:1. This helps speed things up, makes the candy last longer and reduces the reliance on the candy.

You can make your own tagulators or buy them from our store.

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TAGteacher Tale - A New Approach to Changing Behavior

by Leslie Catterall KPA-CTP


Reposted from http://chroniclesofaclickertrainer.blogspot.ca/ with permission

Since the early 80’s my work has involved working with people – teaching them, tutoring them, training them. Most of that work has been with children with a large chunk in the middle involving adults in the business environment. A theme that ran through nearly all my work was changing behavior – helping children with special needs fit into a classroom environment, working with people new to English acquire another language and engage with a different culture, assisting employees of a large retail organization to improve their performance, helping a large corporate organization get back on track with failing projects…the list goes on.

After 30 years of working with humans I made the switch to working with dogs. My primary reason for doing this was the new addition to our family – a traumatized miniature poodle named Blue. It was during my study with the Karen Pryor Academy last year that I first learned about TAGteach and since that first introduction I have been curious as to just how well it would work with humans in all the circumstances in which I have worked.

In May of this year, I certified as a Primary Level TAGteacher after completing online the comprehensive TAGteach IntroductoryCourse and keeping a journal throughout of my progress – both with the course itself and with TAGteaching. At the time I only had a few students and it seemed the right time to immerse myself in this new philosophy of learning and to really come to terms with all of its uses.

In any sort of training environment there are always doubters – whether it be the teachers of the students I tutored or their parents, a disgruntled manager considering that the training was a waste of time, or the students themselves believing that they’ve never been able to do this before so what makes this approach any different. In the past I have been used to dealing with this sort of response but it was not until I came in contact with dog trainers and owners that I experienced for myself how easily it is to question what you know to be true and revert to the “way everyone else does it”.

I found my students were so conditioned at focusing on what their dog did wrong and trying to correct that, that it was difficult to convince them that their dog’s behavior would change if they just focused on what it was they wanted the dog to do. I needed a new set of tools to deal with these situations so that I could demonstrate what I meant through the way I responded to my student. My normal approach of positive praise was not powerful enough – it lacked timing, accuracy and specificity – what exactly was it that they had done well? I found it increasingly difficult to answer this question when I came to write up my session notes. It occurred to me that I needed to change my approach and TAGteach seemed the most obvious choice to do that.

The TAG of TAGteach stands for Teaching with Acoustical Guidance and this approach is all about enhancing performance on any level in any situation by identifying what it is you want the subject to do, specifying it articulately and tagging (with an audible marker) every occurrence while ignoring everything else. It is clicker training for humans… and it works!

I tag everything now – my dogs, my husband, my clients and myself. I’m even starting to think in tag points and that has probably been the most beneficial aspect of this learning for me. What is it I want to achieve? Ah, yes…and the tag point is…

TAGteach has reaffirmed for me that there is always a way to get the behavior you want, you just need to be creative in your approach and engage the participants as much as possible. This is not just conditioning or behavior modification, though those are very much behind the science of this technique, rather it is more about clearly defining what it is that you are after in a behavior and expressing why.

The course required the completion of exercises at every stage and many of them required me to take a look at myself – at home, at work and at play. I was asked to look at things I wanted to change and to see them from a different perspective – how I want them to be. I learned to shift my focus from what was bugging me, to the much more positive – what would I like to see?

TAGteach in Action

Martin - my TAG partner

One of the many success stories I’ve had since completing the course was in the enhancing of domestic bliss. One of the issues I have in my home is that my kitchen is not large enough to accommodate me and my mode of cooking let alone play host to all the empties we seem to accumulate during the week. Ever since we’ve lived here I’ve nagged my husband to “Please put the empties in the recycle”, every morning there they are, neatly stacked on the corner of the bench and it is left to a rather disgruntled me to move them into the recycle box in the hallway.

One of the TAGteach mottos is “tag, don’t nag” and it is so true. Rather than continue to nag Martin about the bottle dump, I decided instead to engage him in the process. I explained my situation and my understanding of his. He told me that there was no malicious intent in his forgetting to recycle; he’d simply got into the habit of leaving the bottles there, a behavior that was hard to change when he was tired and focused on other things.

What an eye-opener that was to me. And since then I am seeing more and more how much of the behavior with which we are dissatisfied stems from patterns of repetition that are hard to break simply through being told. I invited him to engage in an experiment with me.

I’d learned all about the focus funnel in my course and while I could see how it would work in a teaching or coaching environment, I was curious as to how it would work in changing patterns of behavior between mutually agreeable participants.  The focus funnel literally draws together all the bits of information you want to get across and pulls them into a tightly constructed TAG point. I wanted to try this with our situation and Martin, the champ that he is, was willing to go along with it.

It became clear as we discussed options that there were several behaviors in need of modification: glass bottles, jars, and cans needed to be rinsed, plastic bottles needed to be crushed and recapped, and all needed to be put into the recycle.

TAGteach is all about focusing on one behavior at a time and as the ultimate behavior was to have a clear benchtop, I decided to back-chain the behaviors. Get the items into the recycle bin first, then work on the rinsing and the crushing at a later date. We came up with three tag points, one for each behavior.

Using the protocol for forming a tag point, we articulated them thus:

• The tag point is… empties in recycle.
• The tag point is… rinse non-plastics.
• The tag point is… crush’n’cap plastics.

My job was now simple, all I needed to do was state (or create a sign) that articulated the tag point for that day, tag whenever I was present and leave it to Martin to do the rest.

Promoting behavior change is all about reward and reinforcement, whether it be intrinsic – the satisfaction of achievement, or extrinsic – getting paid for a job well done.  TAGteach International know this well and have devised an ingenious means of tracking tags received and trading them in for something more tangible – the tagulator. I have dozens of them that I made for my clients (they earn them with tags) and I gave several of these to Martin.

Simply put, the role of a tagulator is to record a tag whenever it occurs – Martin’s hang in the hallway, opposite the recycle bin and a tagger (clicker) on the shelf. Bottle goes in bin “tag”, slide a bead on tagulator.  The process has been going since our meeting on June 2^nd, and in that time Martin has accumulated 67 tags. The top tagulator records every tag, and the second tracks the number of times he fills up the first tagulator – when the bottom tagulator is full, it’ll be time to cash in on any one of a number of “treats”.

Besides reflecting on the number of empties we go through in a month, it’s a very visual way of recognizing the effort that has gone into changing the behavior. I haven’t been involved much in the process since we set it up, other than to notice in passing the number of tags being accumulated. When I asked Martin why he still continues to do it he said, "it’s about presence of mind, committing to the whole process breaks the habitual behavior”. When pressed further he put it this way: “even though I’m the only one recognizing it, it gives me a nice feeling that I am being recognized for doing it.”

Is he convinced that TAGteach works? Absolutely, to the degree that we are now devising ways for Martin to incorporate TAGteach at his work.  

Am I pleased with the result? Totally - the evidence accumulates daily on the tagulator, but more importantly, I have a clear bench and there is no more nagging – now that’s a definition for domestic bliss. TAG!

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TAG Teaching to TAG Thinking – A Path of Training for Dancers and other Performing Artists

By Ann Aiko Bergeron MFA

It all began with a Border Terrier named Ninja. Then a clicker in my hand. Now it’s simply a way of life. As a university professor who trains dancers, TAG teaching came as a natural progression of my obsessive interest in clicker training. At first I was hesitant to bring the techniques into a professional adult training program. Would my students think I was crazy? Would my university colleagues think I had gone off the deep end? Encouraged by Theresa McKeon, who sent me a box full of clickers after we had discussed the possibilities at a Clicker Expo, I told my classes that they were going to be my guinea pigs – that I had no idea where TAG teaching was going with them, but please humor me. Fortunately, I’m not known as the most conservative dance teacher, so they moved forward with goodwill and playful curiosity.

Before beginning TAG teaching in the dance class, I first had to set the foundation for the work, attempting to extinguish the foundation of fear-based training, which, unfortunately, traditional dance training has been steeped in for centuries. Dance classes were (and often still are) a place where you needed to be “good” or you would generally feel humiliated (either externally or self-imposed).  Many performing artists are severe type A’s. They can’t tolerate the idea of not being “good enough” or “right” and spend incredible amounts of wasted energy in self-denigration and negativity.  From day one I make it very clear that “wrong” and “right” don’t exist in my class – there are only focus points.

The fear of “failing” needed to be completely erased from the students’ mind.  The first thing the student needed to learn was “letting it go” when they didn’t achieve something they intended to. They learned to stay in the moment and move forward to the next moment rather than to dwell in their “failure”. I’ve discovered it takes a good year of “practice” to make this habit rather than a purposeful effort, but the result is a happier dancer who learns exponentially faster. Usually a smile and a deep exhalation from me will get them back on track until they learn to do the same signal for themselves.

Then of course, comes the tagging. Tagging with the clicker is great fun, and the students always ask  “can we tag today?” or confirm, “we need to tag the passé in the pirouette!” and on and on. But success tagging physical skills is already well documented. Those of us in the TAG and Clicker training community are pretty well convinced it works and depend on it on a daily basis. As a teacher of adult pre-professionals, the new questions for me became, how can I adapt the work so the student doesn’t depend on me to tag them all the time (yes, this can be time consuming!) and how can these concepts be re-shaped to help them in the future when they move on into the professional world? How can TAGteaching shape detail beyond basic skills that transform dance technicians into dance ARTISTS?

And so I introduced the concept of TAG thinking to my students. I think the best part about it is that it has taught the dancers to be very active, thinking learners (do I hear my dog saying “duh?), rather than passive, “teach me, teacher” machines.

After learning the concepts of TAGteaching in a practical, audibly-tagged manner, the students learn to establish their own tag points and approximations. At first I might offer them a list of choices, but eventually they become extremely observant of their own actions and are able to self-impose tag points that I could not have ever perceived! I will often repeat an exercise “across the floor” and ask each dancer to identify their personal tag point, and ask them to change it each time they are successful. And I encourage them to celebrate their successes – forget humility. I have been known to “spontaneously combust” (Jumping high in the air with my arms up shouting “yes” at the moment a student makes a very specific breakthrough - jackpotting). And I encourage them to do the same for themselves and others.  This keeps everyone positively invested in each individual’s progress, which is great distance away from the competitive negativity that is often prevalent in the dance classroom.

Another major TAG Thinking skill is the ability to judge one’s success ratio and know when to personally decrease or increase the criteria for success. Of course they learn this first by training each other so they fully understand how the dynamic works. I will often offer students a range of criteria for a certain step and let them shape their execution dependent on their self-knowledge of their current skills. There is absolutely NO stigma about doing the “easier” choice, and often a student progresses through increased criteria by the time we are finished with that particular exercise.

And here is where my heart really starts beating. I came upon a neurologically based explanation that moves far beyond my empirical observations in the classroom. Daniel Coyle’s THE TALENT CODE explores how talent grows in the brain.  In a nutshell, Coyle suggests that many neurologists now consider the neural insulator MYELIN to be the “holy grail” of acquiring skill. Coyle affirms, “Myelin’s vital role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. When we fire our circuits in the right way our myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around that neural circuit, each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed.”

Practicing “deeply” is at the core of developing myelin, but what TAGteachers can identify with most closely is that to practice deeply, you train in small increments.

“The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities, to target the struggle. Thrashing blindly doesn’t help. Reaching does.” Sound familiar?

Robert Bjork, the chair of psychology at UCLA says: “It’s all about finding the sweet spot. There’s an optimal gap between what you know and what you’re trying to do. When you find that sweet spot, learning takes off.” I am barely scratching the surface of this study here, but one can infer its significance on the scientific validity of TAGteaching and TAG Thinking.

In my classes, I call it “riding the myelin wave”. It is training deeply on that edge where the student is highly conscious of small increments of progress.  In order to stay on the optimum edge of this wave, the student must train without fear of “failure.” Any fear puts the student on the safe side of the wave and progress does not occur. In fact – it is a rule in my classes that when someone falls, we applaud them. We applaud them for riding the wave, going for that extra off-balance dynamic, going for that extra pirouette…this is what the classroom is for. It is a place to grow, a place where students are fully confident to take risks with only positive consequences.

Since integrating TAGteaching and TAG Thinking, every day in the classroom is exhilarating for me. I have seen so many young people find their confidence and personal voices, not only as artists, but also, more importantly, as human beings.

Ninja was the inspiration that changed my teaching life and philosophy.  We now “team teach” a special lecture for Introduction to Psychology students on learning theory called “FROM PUPS TO PIROUETTTES.” He’s a terrific teacher.

SUMMARY:

TAG Thinking affects dancers in the following ways:
1. A Dancer learns to stop dwelling on “Getting it right” and takes risks, riding the “myelin wave” which accelerates the neurological path to skill improvement.
2. At advanced levels, a Dancer learns to train him/herself in all situations and becomes less dependent on direct teacher feedback.  They can stay focused on personal approximations and decrease or increase of criteria in an effective manner.
3. A Dancer learns the joy of communal energy that happens in a TAG Thinking classroom. They often rediscover that dancing is FUN even when working extremely hard.

QUOTES FROM STUDENTS:     
                 

“One of the biggest changes I have seen in myself is my way of thinking. I have learned to let go any imperfections, lower the stakes, and shake it off. Most of this came about when we learned about TAG teaching. Being a perfectionist in most things, I want to always “get it right” and with dance there are so many elements to focus on. With the tagging aspect, I allow myself to focus on one improvement at a time (Slow and steady wins the race). I also learned to celebrate the accomplishments and simply ignore anything else. I started seeing this change in me near the second half of the semester. I try to smile as I cross the floor, knowing that I have nothing to lose and so much to gain. There isn’t a chance to fail, just a chance to learn and improve. That aspect of just clicking good behavior and ignoring all others is a great way to keep self-confidence and really focus on learning rather than success or failure.”

“My mind set has changed during this course from fearing I would do something incorrect to knowing I could make a mistake but know exactly what to do to make it better. TAG thinking in this course I would give lots of credit for my improvement. TAG thinking has enabled me to grow as a dancer because you are able to make mistakes and move past them. It allows you to use our intuition and trust yourself when performing a move. Trust your body; trust that you’re able to succeed by tweaking that one detail each time you perform it."


“TAG thinking has been a huge aspect of my new way of thinking. It is so great to find a particular area to focus on while doing a routine, and it is even more gratifying when I “click” myself for being able to do it. This way of thinking is revolutionary by eliminating frustrations with dance, and turning them into tag points, or goals."


“I think TAG thinking is a genius idea. Focusing on one specific element of a piece of dance, such as a turn, really helped us this semester. It made me identify something I needed to improve on, learn how to do it correctly, have the focus to try it, learn when I was doing it correctly and what it felt like when I was, and eventually perfect that specific element. I truly think we should start to incorporate tagging in all of our dance classes because I think it could help us learn more efficiently and faster. “

Ann Aiko Bergeron is a Morse-Alumni Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Dance at the University of Minnesota Duluth.  She and her husband Dale live on the shore of Lake Superior and are owned by their two Border Terriers, Ninja and Banzai.

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TAGteacher Tale: Nursing Skills Practice

by Maggie Ouillette

Here's the latest on the tagging project I have been working on.

I needed more practice with placing long term IV catheters in home care patients, and wanted to set myself up for success. I decided to use TAGteach to help me to be successful.

The first step was to review the procedure and identify tag points. It's very tempting to want to have errorless learning by tagging everything.

A few months ago, I was working on developing tag points for teaching medication injections.I learned from that experience that tagging every individual step isn't practical or necessary.
My goal was to identify the tag points that were most important for me to perform the skill successfully.

In analyzing the previous practice session, it was very apparent that my anxiety played a role in my performance. I decided that the first tag point would address that issue.

Exercise One:

The first exercise involved a behavior that would enhance my ability to remain calm and focused.
  
Walk to doorway, stop, take two deep breaths before entering the room. My husband tagged me for this one.

The instructions " After you stop at the doorway, the tag point is TAKE TWO DEEP BREATHS".

Rationale:This behavior will help learner (me) to maintain focus and relax prior to interacting with the patient.

I practiced walking to the doorway, stopping and taking two deep breaths. My husband Jim tagged me. I repeated the exercise five time, was successful each time.

Applications for medical and nursing students.
This deep breath behavior could be used for the multiple 'first' experiences, such as hands on procedures. Students could work in groups in the classroom setting, taking turns tagging one another.

Exercise Two: 

The second exercise involved naming each of the items listed. I wrote a list of all the supplies (fourteen items) needed for the procedure, including extra items that might be needed.

The instructions: "the tag point is NAME AN ITEM ON THE LIST".

Rationale: Immediate recall of all items needed for the procedure will help the procedure to go smoothly.
My husband tagged me each time I named an item. If I hadn't named all listed items, my husband waited a few seconds, then said "try again"

I performed the exercise four times. By the third time I was naming all items on the list without hesitation.Its amazing how good I felt that I was able to rattle off the items on the list.

Applications for medical and nursing students.
This exercise could be used to help familiarize students with supplies needed for procedures. A hands-on version would be easy to set up in a classroom situation, with students tagging one another for retrieving specific items.

I realize that these exercise may seem oversimplified. They are valuable because they start the learner at a point of success which can be built upon. Tag points should always be individualized for the specific learners.

The other behaviors that I will work on will be: advancing the introducer into the vein, handling the catheter with sterile forceps, and removing tourniquet immediately after veinpuncture.

More to come

Maggie Ouillette
Whitmore Lake Michigan

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TAGteacher Tale: TAGteach Was There When I Needed It

We were touched by this post from TAGteacher Leanne Smith from Australia who shared an intimate story of using TAGteach during a very difficult time.

It's all still very raw but I wanted to share a few key points with you all.

This weekend has been the worst one in my life with having to make the heartbreaking decision to put my gorgeous 8 1/2 year old German Shepherd Dog Merlin to sleep on Saturday. That's not so much what I want to share it's more the following two points that helped me through that day, sitting with him as he went and the past two days of tears.

1. TTouch taught me to do two things that helped here - first to listen with my heart and act on it, to use my intuition. This is what enabled me to make this decision and know that it was right even while my brain continued with the what if scenaris. Second - to breathe, to consciously take a deep breath and exhale allowing my body and mind to relax.

2. TagTeach taught me how to rewire my brain/develop new habits that were better for me than holding it all in and trying to deal with it. My TAG Point is exhale. I do it whenever I feel the distress building up - and it really helps.

Thank you Theresa for bringing this to us here in Australia - it was there when I needed it.

Leanne Smith
Australia

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TAGteacher Tale - Dealing with Distractions

by Matt McKeon

My name is Matt and I’m 22 years old. I’m a server at an upscale sushi bar and restaurant and also a full time student. I have many tasks to remember throughout the day including:  cleaning and pressing my work clothes, researching for a term paper, posting on the discussion board for my on-line classes, remembering the drink order for the five people sitting at table twelve, and sending in my car insurance payment.

I’ve also been diagnosed with ADHD, along with eighty-five percent of my generation. I constantly have to readjust my focus and attention to not get lost in the myriad of thoughts that run past my eyes. I understand that this is something many people struggle with on a daily basis, but there are ways to train yourself on your day to day tasks.

First thing, decide what your problem is. For example, I was having an issue remembering to enter the customer’s order after taking it. This was causing me some serious stress because I would regularly have to have food cooked with extra haste because I spaced the order. The solution to this problem was simple, enter in the order. It seems simple enough, but so many things can come between taking the order and entering it into the computer. There are people asking directions to the bathroom, another table asking me to find their waitress and the chief yelling out that three orders are ready to be taken out.

Other people run into similar problems everyday and find themselves confronted with the same instruction, "Just do it." So how can you "just do it"? Obviously if all I need was someone to tell me to "just do it", I wouldn't be having the problem in the first place. I need restructuring. My behavior must meet the "shape" of the task at hand. I must have a clear and simple goal, make that goal a recurring priority, and execute the plan.

Here is how I made it happen. I decided the important “just do it” thing was to “enter in the order”. That would be my sole objective. The directions are, “Say thanks, punch it in”. The TAG point is…punch it in.  “Say thanks, punch it in” was the 5 word expression I used in my head to remind myself to perform the task. I mentally tagged myself every time I entered in an order right after saying thank-you. Since I started using TAG at my workplace, there have been some significant positive changes in my efficacy at work.

TAG is not just for one person to use to teach another, it is a whole new way to approach the learning and retaining information. The roles of the teacher and the student become interchangeable. I see this as one of the keys to TAG's wide success in all forms of training. I will post more on the topic as I develop.

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TAGteach Seminar Report - Hershey PA

Theresa and I were in Hershey PA last week for a terrific TAGteach seminar at the wonderful Vista School. The Vista School brings state-of-the-art special education and therapeutic services to children living with autism in Central Pennsylvania. We had a great group of people from several different backgrounds and we all learned a lot from each other. There were four behavior analysis professors there and all of them have plans for research studies, which is very exciting for us.

One of the homework exercises is to think of something that you would like to change in your own behavior and do some self-tagging to see how this works. Everyone takes home the tagulator that they made for themselves and pulls down a bead to mark the tags when they successfully execute the tag point they set from themsleves.

Here are some creative examples of self-tagging tag points that people invented:

After printing off a sheet from the printer file it right away rather than leaving it on the printer to pile up. The tag point is file the paper

While shopping, rather than getting annoyed at other people for pushing or other rude behavior, have empathy for them and think about what they might be thinking and why they might be in a hurry or stressed out. The tag point is think about others.

Instead of giving unsolicited and often unwanted advice to older teens and twenty-something children, keep quiet and let them enjoy the time together as a family. The tag point is keep quiet.

Associate Professor from Penn State, Rick Kubina told us that he has a 6 year old client with autism whose parents have struggled unsuccessfully for the past year trying to teach the child to tie his shoes. Rick had also been unsuccessful in an attempt to teach this. Rick went straight home and tried out his new TAGteach skills on this problem and posted the following on his Facebook page:

After my two day TAGteach seminar I had the chance to use my new acquired skill with a 6-year-old boy (he has autism). For the last year parents have been trying to teach him to tie his shoe. I tried about a month ago and failed miserably. After one, 20 minute TAGteach session I tagged what you see in the picture. Very proud of my little guy.

We had lots of interesting discussions about the application of TAGteach principles to real-life teaching situations that the attendees face. We look forward to hearing from everyone about their successes with TAGteach.

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