Building Soft Skills: Collaboration and Culturally Responsive Practices

Jenna Sage, with panelists Ronnie Detrich and Manya C. Ralkowski, examines how teams organize collaborative meetings and account for different perspectives. The recording connects shared goals, feedback and family context to the everyday work of supervisors, care teams and school staff.

Catalogue presenter credits: Jenna Sage, Manya C. Ralkowski, Ronnie Detrich.

MANDATORY DISCLAIMER: The Behavior Analyst Certification Board (“BACB”) does not sponsor, approve, or endorse Special Learning, the materials, information, or sessions identified herein.

The panel distinguishes collaborative discussion from meetings that only assign tasks. It examines meeting purpose, shared norms, stopping criteria and follow-up that shows participants what changed after their feedback.

The cultural discussion examines family values, language, jargon and prior experiences alongside square-counting and household-image reflection activities. This discussion-led recording does not include the role-play demonstrations requested in learner feedback.

What does this recording cover?

• The panel examines the National Association of Colleges and Employers competency framework in recruitment, onboarding and professional development.
• The meeting discussion covers shared norms, facilitation, clear objectives and stopping criteria.
• The feedback discussion covers debriefing and showing participants how their input changed the process.
• Culturally responsive practice includes attention to family values, language and differences in perspective.
• Reflection activities use square counting and a household image to examine initial assumptions.

Recording context: The recording date is not supplied. Research, professional requirements and examples reflect the discussion at the time of delivery.

Three selected learner comments

The six-item evaluation mean was 4.64/5 across 22 complete responses, from 113 recorded rating responses. This mean includes only complete six-score responses. Source: Special Learning's course evaluation records, snapshot October 11, 2026.

Three selected anonymous responses appear below, with the wording and spelling retained. They describe learners' experiences and requests; they are not a guarantee of results or a claim that these comments represent every learner.

I thought this was very informative. Maybe a few more examples of what others have done to help translate the concepts into real world practice.

Course evaluation response, 2024

I do not know if it is possible or not - all the presenters have relevant experiences to share. I wish they had more time to expand on those experiences.

Course evaluation response, 2023

More emphasis on the cultural would have been more specific to what I was personally looking for

Course evaluation response, 2023

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