Dec 24, 2018 6 min read

Think back to that time you thought you aced a test, only to have your teacher mark it “C+.” Or you wore your new shoes to school, only to have the smart aleck across the aisle laugh at them.

You could have used what Peters Township resident Rebecca Heaton Hall and her colleagues have to offer.

The PREVAIL team

• Rebecca Heaton Hall promotes social and emotional learning and sound structures for preventative behavior supports in schools.

Her work with schools focuses on legally sound, cost-effective, and practical approaches that can be sustained over time to advance positive outcomes for students, teachers and school administrators.

While her current focus is assisting schools, she has a diverse background and extensive experience working directly with children. Rebecca has served as guardian ad litem or legal counsel to approximately 2,000 children with complex needs and has served as surrogate parent to numerous special-needs students.

For her work in special education matters, she was the 2013 recipient of the Achieva Excellence in Advocacy Award, and she was a 2014 honoree for the Leading Education and Advocacy for Families Award.

Having earned her juris doctor from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, she is an attorney for the Pittsburgh firm Weiss Burkardt Kramer, representing local school districts – Peters Township and Upper St. Clair are among them – in various matters with emphasis on special education compliance.

• Jessica Dirsmith is a nationally and state-certified school psychologist and licensed psychologist.

Both a practitioner and a trainer, she teaches school psychology graduate courses undergraduate special education courses at Penn State University, along with supervising graduate-level student clinicians in the clinic setting. She is the 2017 recipient of the School Psychologist of the Year Award in Pennsylvania.

Her research interests include schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports, with a focus on underserved populations including racially and culturally diverse students, English learners, and students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. She also researches school-based mental health, and emotional and behavioral disability case law and legally defensible assessment practices.

She earned her doctorate of education in school psychology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and she serves as districtwide psychologist for State College Area School District.

• Eric Bieniek is an assistant professor of special education, tenure track, at Slippery Rock University. He advises between 75 and 100 undergraduate students who are working on dual certifications in early childhood and special education programs, along with transfer students entering the program from other schools or professions.

Through his Pittsburgh Applied Behavior Analytic Therapies and Services LLC, he provides independent evaluation services and consultation for students in need of behavioral supports, assessment and intervention, in partnership with families and school districts. He also is a contracted professional with Keystone/Keysource Educational Consulting Group, serving as a presenter for schools’ professional development programs and providing classroom consultation, observation assessment and intervention services.

He earned his doctorate in instructional management and leadership from Robert Morris University, certification in applied behavior analysis from Penn State and master of educational psychology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

“We started a ‘you rock’ project, where we hand out little rocks that say ‘you,'” she said. “And everybody who gets them gets a smile.”

Such displays of positivity are at the core of PREVAIL Educational Solutions, which combines the professional expertise of a lawyer, psychologist and doctoral-level behavioral analyst to offer a variety of services aimed at providing meaningful academic and behavioral outcomes for students.

“We find that instilling gratitude in students is one of the keys, gratitude for themselves and gratitude for others,” Heaton Hill, a 2006 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh Law School, said. “We try to make students take the time to express appreciation to their teachers, and then for teachers to express appreciation for students.”

She gave the example of an exercise that she and her colleagues conduct in their work with Pittsburgh Public Schools.

“We’ll talk to the kids and say, ‘Hey, can you tell me something you’re thankful for that your teacher does for you? Can you write it on this piece of paper for me?’ And some will write really thoughtful things, like ‘You help me focus’ or ‘I couldn’t have gotten through school without you,'” she said.

“We take all these tags and put them on little goodie bags, nothing big. And then the kids hand-deliver them to all the staff in the building, to establish a face-to-face relationship.”

Helping to build morale among students and educators has been one of the primary goals of PREVAIL – that stands for Preventative Resources in Education and Viable Assessment, Intervention and Law – since Heaton Hill joined together with Jessica Dirsmith, psychologist for State College Area School District and a Penn State faculty member, and Eric Bieniek, who teaches at Slippery Rock University and serves as a content expert in the areas of autism spectrum disorders, applied behavior analysis, and developmental and low-incidence disabilities.

Dirsmith contacted Heaton Hill out of the blue last December after reading online about some of her research, including information on mental health disorders that she presented during a University of Pittsburgh’s Tri-State Area School Study Council symposium.

“We had lunch and found that we just really enjoyed collaborating together,” Heaton Hill said. “From there, we came up with some research. And lo and behold, we were invited to Tokyo to speak.”

In July, they presented “School Safety and Emotional Wellness Through Intervention, Prevention and Assessment: Adherence to Best Practices and Legal Compliance for School Psychologists,” at the 40th annual conference of the International School Psychology Association.

The experience and further involvement with the association have led to a wealth of information from which the PREVAIL partners can draw.

“We’ve been able to network with people all over the world to find out what’s great about their systems, what’s great about our system, and how can we make all systems better,” Hill Heaton explained. “It’s really interesting when you start looking at what other countries are doing and how they’re doing it.

Finland, for instance, has earned the distinction of “Happiest Country on Earth” in a United Nations report, and that may be linked to some of the practices employed in schools.

“One thing Finland does that I’m fascinated with – and we’re trying to do it, as well, in schools – is focus on the strengths: Tell me what the child’s strengths are. What are they good at? What do they like? Rather than the negatives,” Hill Heaton said, noting that “I’m probably going to have to find a reason to go there.”

If so, the “you rock” should be a hit in Helsinki.

For more information about PREVAIL Educational Solutions, visit www.prevaileducationalsolutions.com.