Coach Bill / Dad, Entrepreneur Special Educator, American Political Scientist, Writer, Musician.

Running a country parallels raising a family in some aspects. They both require commitment and passion day in and day out. Commitment is a mindful decision that plays out in consistent action whereas passion is having a clear vision, having 'fire in the belly' and knowing how to be motivated towards a worthwhile goal. Without these two, one will be hard-pressed to get much of anything done, or get anyone to also invest in the common goals. Just like families have to work together for the benefit of the children (the future), managing a country, such as the United States of America requires a clear understanding of what it is all for. On a local level, such as a family home relationships matter. Taking care of and fostering rapport between the parents AND the  parent and child is pivotal in setting up future interaction and harmony within the family unit. This involves putting the needs of others before our own and that action speaks louder than words directly to the ...

The goal with the dance videos is to bring awareness to action by parents and Special Educators on the value and benefit of dancing as an efficient and effective strategy to rapidly develop gross motor skills, executive function skills, cross-hemispheric cranial connectivity and all in all increasing cognitive processing speed. This is of great importance to families with children who have special needs, such as autism. Infants, children and adults like to listen to appealing music and swaying our bodies to it comes naturally. This is not always so with children on the autism spectrum. The antidote is to get them moving and playing, roughhousing (safely), dancing and being adventurous. Do schools support these values? How so? The ease a parent or Educator has in playing a song and dancing with their child or students in a classroom to strengthen their cognitive-physical syncronicity makes the activity practical and easily to replicate. In addition, dancing  has a tend...

(Updated 11/27/15 2:40 pm) Did you know that Scalzi Skatepark in Stamford is actually called a ‘flow’ park?  That’s a skatepark that has both a a street course and a skating bowl in the same location and having both skating ‘style of segments’ easy flow from one on to the other. At Scalzi, we have two tremendously awesome skate bowls and yet, the ‘street course’ venue is truncated and demure …off to the side sort of. Currently, I am working on landing an ‘ollie?’ I grew up surfing long-boards and not trick skating so I am nowhere near as great on the board as most others at the park, but I have come a long way in just the three months I have been practicing at their. Others do ollies AND kick the board flipping it once or twice in the air as they seemingly hover above it placidly before they land back confidently on it again. Creating independent operating systems tied to a common goal Chris and Brian, are two operating systems within the context of our common ...

A child’s first 5-6 years are a time of cognitive growth and eventually neural pruning, thus what is done with that time is of utmost importance. Recognizing dancing as a versatile, formidable modality for autism intervention is worth parents consideration. For starters, dance therapy is not dance class. With my three students  (on the spectrum) whom I have coached for over five years, I have rolled out the use of dancing as a form of communication, emotional processing, and tool to re-channel stemming behavior. I do not use this modality with every student I coach.  These early years need to be a time of setting precedent for a child with special needs. The development of the below skills can be strengthened in short time with the right teacher setting up the right conditions.  communication skills social skills sensory skills soft skills (grit, resilience, humility, compassion) executive function skills (like sustaining attention, functional balanc...

I s it possible to connect one's work with what one loves? What fruit comes when you bring work and play together? How does passion play into the equation if it is mixed with our work? In the heat of the moment, a Father wrestled with how to embark on how to best empower his son. The boy was diagnosed with autism, a condition created almost completely by damaging preservatives found in vaccines that severely damages brain tissue. These preservatives are heavy metals like aluminum and are listed on the CDC's website. There is also strong scientific evidence pointing to other factors that exacerbate the severity of autism in a child, such as bisphenol A, and exposure to modern day environmental pollutants which can be found in the food, water and air. This post is  about what one parent did in response for his son. Its about being positively   and lovingly proactive and not sitting back with his main priority of taking care of his family. This post is about how I...

Part of my job as a Private Special Educator and Executive Function Skills Coach is to engineer, innovate and grow my tool and strategy base. I basically pop the hood and look at the motor all the time. I look at other motors, I try adding new parts, I take away parts, I look to streamline.  Generally, I use a notebook or a white board and a marker and start considering how to smartly grow my destablizing initiative to upend Special Education as we know it.  Like an actual enginneer, I prod, poke and test the importance, practicality, and effectiveness of the tools and strategies I use in my coaching. As of late, I have an old tool which I have dusted off thanks to a young boy who 'took me to school.' Recently, I was working in Marthas Vineyard with a band of brothers and the youngest started dropping rhymes with such execution and swag that it blew me away and captivated me. Not being able to back out of the challenge and in full view of one of his other brothers, this boy ba...

updated 2/7/16 Are you a young professional, a parent, or a student accustomed to uphill progress? How about uphill failure? It is not uncommon to have children and adults diagnosed with severe cognitive deficits to encounter a sense of repeated failure in their academic performance. Just like a mathematical formula, a repeated sense of failure can have what seems like a compunding effect over time on a growing, developing human being, if not corrected.  One helpful aid parents can integrate is to give their children strong study skills. Good study skill tool and strategy application can make an incredible difference in grade performance. E mphasizing the use of different study skill tools for your child as part of a home executive function skill program puts more focus on an effective process, or modus operandis, rather than an all-encompassing focus on end results. This shifts the focus into a 'growth-oriented mindset,' or perspective which greatly disallows a s...

If ever their were two most popular executive function skills, they would be in the Working Memory Family. Short and Long Term Working Memory get called into action and impact just as much when they are used, to when they are not in use. Short-Term Working Memory's definition is the ability to hold information while outputting/ inputing new information. For example, when Short-Term Working Memory is exercised, it works swimmingly well for the ability to listen to a professor speak new information, while writing notes of information said by the professor just three to fifteen seconds or so. At the same time, Short-Term Working Memory connects and collaborates with other Executive Function Skills present to not only play its part, but to do so as part of a larger orchestration that includes his bigger sister, Long-Term Working Memory.  She is known for her ability to retrieve long-ago information from weeks, to months or decades, and bring it to her little brother Short-Term WM who w...

Lately, I have been using the word 'outflank' quite a bit.. I like it. As an entrepreneur and a professional, outflanking has to be part of my repertoire to stay effective. When your army is small and your reach limited, being able to come up with creative ways to reach one's target market becomes essential (or at least that's what I tell myself). In an age of #BigDataMimicry where full, fake profiles of nonexistent people exist on the internet, complete with blogs, tweets, posts, and even video footage, the importance of 'outflanking' becomes tremendously important, less you want your message stifled a bit with waves of similar-content created algorithms. 'Marketing Tsunami by algorithm!'  The tsunami is not fatal, but it surely breaks down the ability, or makes it ever more difficult for real people offering and looking for services to meet. In a room with one bee, it is easy to spot the bee. In a room with one real bee but dozens of similar, yet diffe...

1. Do you know that in the world of social media, one can purchase followers from fake accounts? 2. Did you know that big data crunching now can create mimicry algorithms to tailor masses of nonexistent, fake profiles, complete with blog postings, timely twitter tweets, and yet all strikingly resemblant to your own content? Of course, not everyone in Social Media is a computer-generated fake profile, but their are nonetheless legions of created profiles out their that are at the beck and call of algorithms that can be re-tailored to suit the present needs of a real customer.. like an aspiring presidential candidate, a local political leader running for re-election, a deep pocket corporations looking to seize on a cottage industry...just like the 'industry' of executive function skills development. This is la creme as far as direct marketing is concerned. It's marketing to the power of 10 on nitro in one sense. In another sense, the fake profiles created, if you can actually...

On first glance, one may infer three friends going fishing, but looking closer, it is evident that their are various observations one can deduct if they were to study the painting/ drawing a bit closer.  In this post, I will unrelentlessly expose fishing itself as a major executive function skills development activity that should be part of every kid's life. With my professional experience spilled out onto a keyboard, it is possible to pinpoint and describe if, how, and to what degree each of the 30-35 or so known executive function skills are coming alive in a natural environment activity like fishing. Integrating this activity as part of a life-long routine directly and indirectly tones the:  executive function skills,   sensory skills,   social/ emotional skills,   para verbal skills,   and I guess we can't forget to mention, the concept of emotional intelligence. This is an especially pertinent message to mothers and fathers with chi...