Rethinking Social Skills: Teaching Social Thinking for All Learners with Michelle Garcia Winner ~ 1330

Michelle Garcia Winner: Example, if your goal is working as part of a team, but you worry that your hand flapping or otherwise stimming might get in the way. Then we would work with you on self advocating and explaining to people what’s going on with you. In terms of, I have autism and that leads me when I’m stressed to flap my hands and I realize you’ll be seeing that and or might be experiencing that with me.

And I wanna let you know that it really helps me to focus my mind. And so please excuse any kind of behaviors that you’re not used to, but this is really helpful to me to be a better member of this team.

All of us are social thinkers, whether we know it or not, right? If we are trying to make sense of people in the situation, the context, then we’re engaging our social mind and that’s then guides us to figure out should we respond, how do we respond?

What do we do? What don’t we do? What should we say? What should we not say based on our own personal goals, how we wanna succeed at that time, whether it’s in classroom or our personal lives or in a grocery store.

Tim Villegas: Hey, friends.

Welcome back to Think Inclusive: Real Conversations About Building Schools Where Every Learner Belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about the invisible rule book, the one most of us pick up without ever being taught, and the one some of our students are quietly trying to crack every single day.

We’re talking about what it really means to be social and why teaching it like a checklist of behaviors tends to miss the point entirely. Who might help us rethink all of this? None other than Michelle Garcia Winner. Michelle is a speech-language pathologist and the founder and CEO of Social Thinking, where over more than thirty years, she’s built a methodology and a whole library of strategies for teachers, therapists, and families supporting social and organizational learning.

In our conversation, we get into where social thinking actually lives, not just in the lunchroom, but in reading comprehension, history class, and group work. We talk about flexible thinking, self-advocacy, and why expected and unexpected behavior is more nuanced than it sounds. And stick around for a story I share about an old roommate named Phil and a conversation we had unloading a truck that I’ve never quite been able to shake.

Before we meet our guest, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K-twelve that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress in one place. As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps.

Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive.

All right, after a quick break, it’s time to Think Inclusive with Michelle Garcia Winner. Catch you on the other side.

Michelle Garcia Winner. Welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Tim Villegas: All right. I am almost positive everyone that’s listening knows about social thinking, but just in case for anyone hearing about it for the very first time and going, what’s social thinking? Hmm. What is social thinking? And then as a follow up question, what is it not?

So let’s start there.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Ah, okay. So social thinking. I designed to be able to support helping individuals figure out the context, the situation, the people that they may be talking to, communicating with, to help them figure out the best way to go about what they’re doing, the response that they’re giving and to help make sense of what other people are talking about as well.

Tim Villegas: So tell me a little bit about your background? Like where did this idea of social thinking start?

Michelle Garcia Winner: Yeah, so I’m a speech language pathologist and I have, for whatever reason was just always fascinated by or interested in understanding individuals with autism.

And I went to grad school in the 1980s and I ended up working in a program that was exclusively focused on individuals with autism, also in the 1980s, but at that time we did not have an autism spectrum, and we thought about autism as really being something that impacts those who perhaps have lower cognition, limited language, limited ability to just understand what’s going on around them.

And so, in working in this program, I actually just learned a ton about what is it, what does social even mean? What is it? And then of course, how can you teach it?

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: And so that’s where I started breaking all these concepts down and trying to figure out how best to explain things.

Tim Villegas: So you saw a lack of knowledge around this area, or?

Michelle Garcia Winner: I think this idea of social skills has been taught for a long time, but often in terms of it’s a behavior and you memorize behaviors. Oh. And so this idea that here’s what you’re supposed to do, memorize how you’re supposed to do it, and just do it, which doesn’t really work very well in the social situation because the context is constantly changing.

The people are changing. You have to infer and predict what might be going on. So there’s a lot of abstract thinking that goes on within understanding social information.

Tim Villegas: And I think there’s this misconception that particularly people on the autism spectrum can’t do that.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Yeah, absolutely. So there’s different, I don’t know, what’s the best word to use for it? Types of autism and autism overlaps with ADHD and language disorders.

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: And so they’ve ended up defining three different types of autism and the highest or the most able type of autism is considered ASD autism spectrum disorder level 1.

And the type of autism that really struggles with language and interpretation, problem solving is autism level 3. And so at the same time, it’s autism overlaps with so many other disabilities. So autism and ADHD are really common partners. Speech and language learning and learning difficulties or differences, educational learning. They all overlap with each other and they’re all part of this, they all require social interpretation. So if you think about autism, think about it more in terms of how is a person making sense of social situations and how are they responding to those situations?

Tim Villegas: Sure, sure. And I just wanted to just back up for a second with the levels. ‘Cause I think also, not to say that someone who is significantly affected by autism or the symptoms of autism, or however you wanna say it, right. That they aren’t capable of social thinking either.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Yeah. So with autism, there’s also our just basic abilities to understand language, produce language, and so we always wanna know who this person is and how they’re processing the world. What are they doing easily, what’s harder for them, and then how does that overlap with other experiences in their life? So, for example, people think of social as social skills, social behaviors.

How are you showing up to other people? But actually when you really get inside of what’s it mean to be social? That’s what we’re doing, not only in classroom participation, but reading comprehension of literature is all about understanding people in context. History, social studies, these all have big factions that you have to really understand people and their experience to be able to understand the curriculum in front of you.

Tim Villegas: That wow, yeah, that is a great point because one of the, I guess aspects of reading comprehension is perspective taking. That’s not even, I know perspective taking is far as social thinking, but even in instruction and just instructing about how to think or analyze characters like that’s perspective taking.

So, I never really put that together so that yeah, that’s powerful. Yeah.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Yeah. Just look at history, wars, leadership, and then the everyday people and what they have to experience as it’s tagged onto all these other things, makes for really big topics. But it’s really interesting how, like when I started really thinking through social thinking, I didn’t really think, well, I’m gonna come up with something. It just kind of evolved from working with so many different students and observing. And when I first started in the field, I was working with very, very literal individuals who were had very limited in some many elements in terms of academics, limited learning abilities, but by watching them and trying to figure out how they figured things out actually really helped me to start to understand how to unpack the social world, to think about, how could we teach this to other people so it can not be so hard to understand.

Tim Villegas: Right. So you’re putting all this all together. You’re observing students and you’re thinking like, how might we educate learners on how to do all this stuff? How did you put it all together into the methodology? Was it part of research? Was it like a PhD dissertation or?

Michelle Garcia Winner: I don’t have a PhD. I have a master’s level speech language pathologist, but I just started trying to figure out, how would we make sense of this? How do we help other people understand what’s involved with being social? Because pretty much, and still to this day, many times when people are teaching social, they teach it behaviorally.

Here’s what you’re supposed to do. Do it. Here’s a reward or not for how you’re handling that situation. And I was just really intrigued by not only how we use our social and everyday life, but how we understand it so that we can engage in reading comprehension and literature history, all these different factors.

Tim Villegas: So you’ve said, or I’ve heard you say that it’s, this is not social skills, right? So what is it exactly like, I know it’s a methodology,

Michelle Garcia Winner: Right.

Tim Villegas: But how is it packaged so that educators can use it to instruct learners?

Michelle Garcia Winner: So if you think about social skills, people often think about social behaviors. How is this, what is this person doing? How are they doing it? Do they need help in learning how to do it better? And then with the social thinking methodology, what I started doing was figuring out what does someone need to know? How do they interpret social information to be able to figure out how to respond to it?

To this day, as we continue to work with, do social thinking, and right now I only am working with very mature adult clients who are benefiting from this, like in their workspace and all, is just understanding how do we break it down? How do we think socially? Like do we imagine what somebody else is thinking and feeling?

Are we looking at the situation? What is the context? What’s happening right now? In this situation that would lead us to make a prediction about how somebody may behave in a manner that helps other people to be comfortable.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Or at least continuing to be able to participate and learn, versus something that someone does that actually can distract themselves and possibly others.

And then that they struggle to be able to engage in the goal-driven behaviors they’re supposed to be doing.

Tim Villegas: And so that’s what, that’s where the books come from and the games, the visuals, all of that.

Michelle Garcia Winner: So I started with teaching just how the social world works to help us learn how to work within the social world.

So like to that end, I created four steps of communication. Four steps of perspective taking, just how can we break this down and understand it. And then it was interesting to see just how people thought that was helpful and started adopting it not only in face-to-face interactions or to foster friendships, but also to work as part of a group.

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: To be able to sit in a classroom and try to pay attention to something they don’t find interesting. Just all these different things that we’re expected to do without direct instruction and so I started.

Tim Villegas: Right.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Providing assistance on that. And I was getting just really positive feedback about how this was helpful, not only in class, but for family members in the community, all aspects.

I’m having a flashback too, and so I hopefully this is social thinking, about expected and unexpected behaviors. Is that right?

Yeah. So that’s some language we put together.

Tim Villegas: Right.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Just, one of the things about social is that without direct instruction, without anyone really telling us, when we do things socially, we’re trying to, not always, but encourage people to understand our point of view, want to engage with us possibly.

And then, or not, right? Mm-hmm. So just, shut down, refuse to work with others, determine that what you’re doing is the only way to do it and there’s no other way to think about it.

Tim Villegas: Right, right. So there’s unexpected, I’m just trying, I’m trying to remember the things that were, that I thought were helpful when I was working with students.

And that was helpful because you to explain that a certain behavior is expected. Like you walk into a room and everyone’s sitting at their desk and working, and that’s expected, but someone is running around and screaming and that’s unexpected or whatever. That’s, it’s a bad example. The other thing that was helpful was this idea that it was like the reaction to the problem, like a little problem and a big problem. Right. I don’t know if I’m using the language correctly. It’s been a minute since I’ve,

Michelle Garcia Winner: Yeah.

Tim Villegas: Been doing it. But that was really helpful too. It’s like, my pencil breaks and, but I’m reacting in a way that it’s like, I’m lost and I,

Michelle Garcia Winner: Big reaction to a small, what people would consider a small problem. That person might not consider it a small problem.

Tim Villegas: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But that was really, that’s really helpful, to have that conversation and discussion around that. And that was always class discussions, one-on-one discussions.

That was always really helpful. But those sort of like thinking routines I think are really, that was in the social thinking books that we had. I’m sorry I cut you off.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Well, it was just, it’s intriguing to think about just how much, how many of the minutes of the in the day we are really supposed to be considering other people, others’ motives, plans.

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: How they’re carrying them out. What we’re supposed to be learning about or interpreting that person. So, even like trying to cross a street, being able to be aware of whether a car’s coming, how fast it’s moving, how safe are you, what’s the light? Is there a light? Do you follow the light?

If there’s a light, just so many things that we think about routinely in a day, and then how do we break that down to be able to teach it? Explicitly when students are expected to learn it implicitly without any at all.

Tim Villegas: Right? Right. I feel like that’s just an, I mean, talk about expected behavior.

That is all that is expected, right? That any learner just learn all of this stuff implicitly. As opposed to, and also, and I don’t know if you think this or if it’s in the methodology, but this direct instruction of social thinking, it really benefits I would think every learner, not just learners with quote unquote disabilities.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Right? Right. So one of the big things in social thinking and in our social lives is social problem solving. What is the problem? How do you break it down? How do you interpret whether your problem is being solved or whether it’s perhaps launching into a new problem are just all parts of what we do on a daily basis.

So in terms of like being in a fully inclusive setting and using social thinking, it’s, well, one, it’s just all of us are social thinkers, whether we know it or not, right? If we are trying to make sense of people in the situation, the context, then we’re engaging our social mind and that’s. Then guides us to figure out should we respond, how do we respond?

What do we do? What don’t we do? What should we say? What should we not say based on our own personal goals, how we wanna succeed at that time, whether it’s a in classroom or our personal lives or in a grocery store.

Tim Villegas: After the break, Michelle gets into what social thinking looks like in real classrooms. From a four-year-old figuring out body in the group to a middle schooler navigating self-advocacy around stimming, we talk about what it takes to teach this stuff explicitly. This episode is sponsored by Adaptiverse.

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Yeah. Yeah. I also wanted to ask you. Since people think about social skills in general, as behaviors, right?

And so, okay, you say this certain thing, you do this certain thing, and then it’s often tied to some sort of reward system. Like if you say the right thing, if you say hello to me when you walk in, then great job. Great. Saying, Hello Johnny. And then you get a token or something, some sort of like positive behavior thing.

Is that something, I’m not trying to be controversial here. I think I just, I’m curious about your thoughts about how, if we’re teaching explicit social thinking routines and methodologies to learners. How is that self-reinforcing or do we have to apply like other reinforcement or behavioral strategies in connection?

If you don’t want to answer that, that’s fine. That’s just, I’m trying to dig a little bit deeper into that. That’s all.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Yeah. So with our social thinking, we’re trying to figure out different people’s goals, right? One’s own goals, the goals of other people, the situation, how to interpret it and how to, and as we make sense of it, does that help other people make sense of us as well, right?

Mm-hmm. And so in the social thinking methodology, we’re always trying to figure out the first part, which is what’s the context? Who are the people, what are their roles? And then as we figure out the situation, then we figure out what we should do in that situation. So if I am in a class and I’m really confused.

But the teacher has made it clear that she doesn’t want anybody to ask any questions.

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Do you raise your hand? Don’t you raise your hand? And how do you handle it? If you do, raise your hand in a manner that the teacher will accept. When that teacher had said, don’t raise your hands.

Just let me teach this lesson, blah, blah, blah.

Tim Villegas: I don’t know if I asked my question. Right.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Okay,

Tim Villegas: Because I mean, I hear you. I agree with everything you’re saying. I guess my question was, it sounds to me like what you’re just described is like, no additional reinforcement is needed. Like I don’t need a skittle every time. Like I figure out the social context.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Well,

Tim Villegas: Does that make sense?

Michelle Garcia Winner: So in the methodology, the social name methodology, there’s very different things we expect from a 4-year-old than we do a 14-year-old. Sure, yeah. 4-year-old, right?

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Michelle Garcia Winner: And so we’re gonna want to help people tune in at the level that they’re able to, to try to make sense of what’s going on, and then if they wanna contribute.

Does whatever they wanna say or do, does that help other people in that situation or does it take away from being able to pay attention or learn in that situation? And so in that end, we’re doing a lot of social problem solving. And that’s a big part of social thinking is not just memorize a list of things to do, do them, but being able to figure out.

What are my choices? What’s a good choice? What might not be a good choice for this situation? And basically we figure out what choices are better based on the consequence, right? If I do this, how will people, will people understand what I’m trying to say? Will they wanna work with me in a group?

Versus if I just say, God, this is so stupid. I hate this assignment, I hate this class. I don’t wanna work with anybody. Not such a good choice. What’s the consequence of that? There’s a good chance you’re gonna be left alone and you won’t be working with anybody, but you also will be

Tim Villegas: Right,

Michelle Garcia Winner: Struggling to figure out, how, what am I supposed to do in this class?

I wanna be included. How do I make that work?

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s what we want, I think, right? For everyone is that, yeah, I make a choice. Based on the situation. And then something happens, you react to something I say or do, and then there’s a natural consequence.

It’s not like someone is looking over and observing and then yeah. I mean, it happens, but yeah, we want the natural consequence. We want it to be self-reinforcing and self, learning and perpetuating.

Michelle Garcia Winner: So a huge part of social thinking is flexible thinking.

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Because things don’t go in the direction that we want, just ’cause we want them. People have different points of view, interests, focus, and perhaps not interested or not focused on what it is you want them to be paying attention to. And so we’re constantly working on flexible thinking, making smart guesses, that’s inferencing.

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: That and just trying to make sense of. Trying to help each of us be interpreted in the manner we want and to be included in the manner we want. And so it’s a big part of problem solving and making choices. But to do that, you have to take perspective of other individuals. You have to understand what’s happening in the group at that time.

If it’s a group situation, is this a good time? Is this not a good time? If it’s not a good time, how do I hold a thought in my head and figure out a different time to express what I wanna say or do?

Tim Villegas: Right? Have you either gotten feedback or observed learners who are working through this, right, working through social thinking, that tend to mask how they really feel or maybe camouflage their, like, and I’ll give you a concrete example ’cause I think this is probably better for our conversation.

An autistic student is learning about social thinking and is taking all, trying to take perspectives and, and so maybe they stem right? Uhhuh, maybe it’s hand flapping, maybe it’s a verbal stem. Maybe it’s walking on toes, whatever it is, right? And they think I need to not do those things.

I need to not. About my hands. I need to not do verbal stem. I need to do that because that’s unexpected behavior. And I don’t want people to think that I am weird or don’t fit in. I want to belong. So, and so if that’s the case, isn’t that a little bit problematic? Or not. Again, this is, I’m just trying to work through some things.

‘Cause I think that that is potentially something that could happen.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Yeah. So we work a lot on time, place in person.

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: In terms of, what are your goals and how do you go about your goals? So example, if your goal is working as part of a team, but you worry that your, for lack of better word, hand flapping or otherwise stimming might get in the way.

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Then we would work with you on self advocating and explaining to people what’s going on with you. In terms of, I have autism and that leads me when I’m stressed to flap my hands and I realize you’ll be seeing that and or might be experiencing that with me.

And I wanna let you know that it really helps me to focus my mind. And so please excuse any kind of behaviors that you’re not used to, but this is really helpful to me to be a better member of this team.

Tim Villegas: Right? Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so this methodology could be used really as a self-advocacy tool, right?

Michelle Garcia Winner: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the social thinking methodology, we’ve developed so many lessons related to, what’s communication, how do we problem solve, and all of that. With the goal of people being able to figure out. In this situation. What’s the best way to handle this so that I am perceived in the manner I want to be perceived or hope I’m perceived.

And so there’s a lot of social problem solving that goes on in that process like we do in our daily lives when we’re interacting with people. In your inner thought, you’re thinking, should I say this? Shouldn’t I say this? Should I do this or. Boy, I really wanna get outta here. How is it that I can leave in the next couple of minutes without drawing a lot of negative attention to myself?

There’s just so many ways that we are constantly problem solving and interpreting to figure out the best, the way we want people to respond to us, and the best way for us to respond based on the situation.

Tim Villegas: Do you have any examples that come to mind with schools that have, I don’t know, implemented this methodology and how they instruct learners?

Just some examples. ‘Cause I know people are listening and being like, this is really cool. Maybe they have not been using any of this. Methodology in like explicit instruction? Right. For anyone? Yeah. What does it look like when implemented in like a K 12 school?

Michelle Garcia Winner: So I was actually working in a high school when I was developing this, one of the places I was working. And so for example, we have social thinking vocabulary. Think with your eyes is your body in the group, is your brain in the group. And flexible thinking versus stuck thinking. And so as we work on teaching those concepts, we’re also working on people becoming more aware of what’s happening.

In their situation, what’s happening with others. Because a huge part of the social world is just trying to make sense of behavior that’s not routine. And so what we hope to be teaching, as I mentioned, was a lot of social problem solving, inferencing, and then communication. How do you talk about this?

What words should you use? What words should you not use, based on the impression you wanna make? To others, or to problem solve a situation.

Tim Villegas: So the, so educators could take these like vocabulary words, phrases, on ideas, and then teach them explicitly to learners. Is that right? Sure.

Michelle Garcia Winner: So like one of ours is body in the group.

Is your brain in the group? Is your body in the group? So you’re using that with four fourth grader, fourth, four year olds in a kind of a preschool. Is your body in the group? And then just getting people aware of, we notice what is a group? Does it seem like I am part of the group? Am I, ’cause the teacher might be saying, wow, your body’s out of the group.

We don’t, you’re not part of this lesson right now. And how to help that student develop awareness. So that’s a really, really simple example. But then think about like body in the group, in middle school when we’re all so aware of the inferences, the innuendo of social. And it’s like, how far do you have to stand to be out of a group?

Where do you stand to be? Thought of as being part of that group. And I don’t necessarily mean like, only for academics or only for social, but just how much we read the cues of each other to figure out the world around us.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. I think what I really, I’m remembering, what I really liked about having all of that language, with social thinking is that it gave you an excuse to talk about thinking in a way that was accessible and also, like it’s not people. It’s just not something people talk about, normally.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Right, right. Like when, like if,

Tim Villegas: We’re,

Michelle Garcia Winner: We’re expected to work with each other. We’re expected to be, if we’re all in a classroom, we’re expected to all be getting, listening to the same information and interpreting what the teacher means by it.

There’s a lot of expectations we have in the social world that are not directly taught, but if you don’t do them, you might be considered a behavior problem.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yes.

Michelle Garcia Winner: So then that gets confusing because it’s like, all right, so I’m not raising my hand, I’m not talking, I’m not interrupting. So I must be a good student.

And the teacher’s like, I need you to participate. Students like, I am participating. I’m listening to what everybody and looking at people and making sure I see all the cues, but yeah, it’s,

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. Can I tell you a story? So I wanna tell you a story and then I want that to kind of wrap up with anything that you want to plug about social, so like the website, books, resources, whatever you want.

Okay. So the story is, I had a college roommate.

Let’s call him Phil. So me and Phil were tight. He and I worked together at, we used to hang like window coverings, like mini blinds and shades and stuff like that. We drive all around town. This is in LA when I, we lived in Los Angeles and he, looking back, I would say he was probably on the spectrum.

And I kind of feel that way because of like the lack of perspective taking.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas: And that was a social thinking was a struggle for him. And I remember having this conversation with him, like he, I think we were unloading the truck and he’s like, I just, I feel like there are rules in the world.

And everyone has like the secret code book to them.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Mm-hmm.

Tim Villegas: Right? Like everyone knows what to do, right? Everyone knows what to say and how to act, and I don’t know those rules,

Michelle Garcia Winner: Right?

Tim Villegas: And I cannot figure them out. And, this was like before I was trained, right? Before I kind of knew more about that stuff.

But I think about that all the time, like that conversation and going. That poor guy, poor Phil. Like if only if we just were able, like, if we were equipped to be like, okay, this is actually, this is how you live your life, Right. And so, in the context of social thinking, I’m just wondering if that’s a story you’ve heard before, of people feeling that way.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Similar. Yeah.

I think it’s important that we recognize that there is now a community of individuals on the autism spectrum, that they’ve really come together and formed community so that people don’t feel left out or unaware of what’s going on. So if you’re looking at like Autism Society of America, or different ways you can learn about support groups, and those support groups are not just solving problems with parents, but more and more it’s emerging that support groups are for adults and being able to create kinship with people who are more similar than different. A lot of folks on the autism spectrum just think that what happens with neurotypical people is crazy. Like why would you do that?

So to have other people. Who are similar to them, where they have tremendous strengths. Like as you were talking about, what you did with this gentleman and the success that you had in your. Career goals versus your social connections. And so to look for those kind of communities in your area if, where you’re, wherever you’re living, to be able to form alliances with other people who are like you.

So it doesn’t seem like you’re always part of this. Very confusing. Social world where you can’t predict all the nuances and the expectations within it, and yet it’s expected that you participate in it.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for, yeah, thank you for that. Where can people find out more about social thinking and all the resources that are available?

Michelle Garcia Winner: So, when I started all of this, I named it social thinking. So we now have a really easy way, social thinking.com. And our work focuses on individuals as young as four and all the way through. I work with 80 year olds at times. Those have been my oldest clients, although I’ve heard of people working with 90 year olds on some things.

But it’s really about just, yeah. Providing information to help people make sense of something so abstract, which is what we are expected to do with each other without direct instruction. And so we have a lot of information. So socialthinking.com, you’ll find a lot of free articles. You’ll find a lot of information about the social world.

And then different materials we’ve created for different age groups to help in that process. What, starting at four years old? Our early learners all the way through high school, college, and adulthood.

Tim Villegas: We’ve covered a lot with Michelle, how social thinking grew out of her early work with autistic students, why it’s really about interpretation rather than memorized behaviors, and how it can double as a self-advocacy tool for learners navigating the social world on their own terms.

And before we wrap up, there’s one more thing I want to get to, a little window into who Michelle was long before any of this started.

Wonderful. Okay. It’s time for the last segment. So I have some cards. They have just kind of fun, get to know you kind of questions.

And I take one card and we both answer it. That’s the mystery question. Okay, here we go. All right. The mystery question today is when you were eight years old, what did you want to be when you grew up? Yes. Like many eight year olds, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I wanted to work with animals. I love animals, pets.

Yeah. So, that’s really interesting. You, and you never pursued it beyond eight, your,

Michelle Garcia Winner: No. The idea of surgery, I think is what shut me down from that idea. Having to cut into skin.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. My daughter who is 13 now, at the time of this recording, she’s talked about being a veterinarian, but also as a, She likes the idea of training, like service dogs.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Oh, great.

Tim Villegas: So, yeah, you never know. You never know. So, my 8-year-old self, I had two, I wanted to be an astronaut, which I had no idea. Like at, when you’re eight, you have no idea what it takes to be an astronaut. So like, I just wanna get a space, is what I, ’cause space is cool.

So that was one. And then the second one. Which I don’t quite understand is I wanted to be a lawyer and so, I would remember, and I don’t know if I, I was probably a little bit older than 8, but watching like courtroom dramas and TV shows where the lawyers like really smart and has these great dissertations, when they’re talking to the jury and I’m like, one of these days I’m gonna be just like that.

I’m gonna be like in the courtroom and I’m gonna say this really interesting. This really interesting monologue.

Michelle Garcia Winner: Yeah. You wanted to be Perry Mason.

Tim Villegas: I wanted to be Perry. Yeah. Perry Mason. Exactly. Exactly. Instead, instead I talk into a microphone and have monologues, and conversations with people.

So, Hmm. Not quite the same, but you know what you’re doing very well at what you’ve chosen.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Michelle Garcia, winner, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast. I really appreciate it.

Michelle Garcia Winner: You’re welcome. Thanks for inviting me.

Tim Villegas: That was Michelle Garcia Winner. Here’s what I’m taking with me. Social thinking isn’t a set of behaviors to memorize. It’s interpretation. It’s how we read a room. Imagine what someone else might be thinking and figure out what to do next. Michelle reminded us that this kind of thinking lives everywhere, in group work, in reading comprehension, even in history class, and that most of our students are expected to pick it up implicitly with no direct instruction at all.

And when they can’t, they’re too often labeled a behavior problem. That reframe has been sitting with me. One practical step for educators, before calling something a behavior issue, pause and ask what social interpretation the moment is actually asking of the student and whether anyone has ever taught it explicitly.

Michelle’s point was so much of what we expect socially is never directly taught, and when students can’t infer it or it’s difficult for them to infer it, we tend to see a behavior problem instead of a learning opportunity. Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts.

If you have thoughts about this podcast, please share it with us. You can always email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. Now, let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Writing help from Claude, editing by Rey from internet, scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner.

Our original music is by Miles Kredich with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Adaptiverse. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and adaptiverseapp.com.

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