Manhattan Psychology Group

Anita D’Abbraccio is an award-winning educator specializing in helping children with emotional and behavioral disabilities. She worked in Wisconsin for Racine Unified School District as a special education teacher for 20 years in a self-contained classroom for students with behavior disorders. Anita began her career in behavior interventions in the 1980s when she worked at, and eventually directed, several group homes for adults with autism. It was in this early career that Anita was introduced to Applied Behavior Analysis. Her training was informal and on-the-job as the field of ABA was very new at the time. Nevertheless, it was incredibly impactful as Anita experienced using ABA to help adults and children with autism develop skills that improved their quality of life dramatically. It was in her next professional role as teacher that she used ABA to help her students succeed in meeting IEP goals and other benchmarks. She especially focused on positive behavior techniques to support her students as they learned new and more adaptive ways to handle their emotions and to self-regulate. It was in the world of public education that Anita saw other areas of need that could be addressed through ABA. She recognized how ABA could be used to support all students in a school setting and especially for those with a behavior disorder or other disability. Her passion for promoting the benefits of ABA only grew over the years as she witnessed its effects on her students. However, ABA was not being used anywhere else in the school and the behavior and climate was very problematic with fights, truancy, verbal altercations, and many other unwanted behaviors. Four years ago, Anita was asked to lead a team charged with reforming the school through the systematic application of Applied Behavior Analysis in a unique and exciting way. The newly formed behavior team, with Anita as the lead, trained teachers, and administrators in basic ABA principles, dove deep into school data to inform allocation of resources as well as school protocol and procedures. Teacher training in classroom management and support for individual students in need of prescribed behavior programming to address serious behavior issues were emphasized. The results of these efforts were extremely encouraging with a more than 50% decrease in negative behavior indicators within three years. This success led Anita to get her BCBA in the hopes of further disseminating how ABA can be applied to school settings to create a spectrum of support that ensures that every student can succeed, and every school can function in a positive and productive manner. It is her passion to share this story and the structures used to achieve such positive results with other BCBAs, teachers, and administrators.