Scott Douthit is the acclaimed author of My Dyslexic Life. He has been an actor, teacher, and theater director for over 40 years. He believes that students with learning struggles focus on what they can’t do without exploring what they can do. In high school, Scott struggled in auditions and monologues because of his poor sight-reading and memorization skills. He felt like a “square peg” trying to fit into a round hole. He was relying on skills that he didn’t have and ignoring the talents and strengths that he did have.

This course is designed for fellow square pegs. Scott has developed his own style of acting based on one's strengths.

This group will use a variety of techniques, including:

• Improvisation

• Theater games

• Character development

• Theater combat

• Clowning

• Physical comedy

• Musical theater

It will develop self-confidence and foster an appreciation of individual gifts and talents for students in 4th and 5th grades.

Who: 4th-5th grade students
When: February 26th- April 15th, Mondays 4:00pm -5:30 pm
Cost: $400
Led by: Scott Douthit

Register Today!
Call: 650-322-5910
Email: brooke.budelli@mcinc.org

Finding Friendship is a social skills group designed to help children develop and enhance their social abilities in a supportive and structured environment. Many young children were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which reduced their chances to integrate with peers and develop social skills. The primary goal of this group for 5 and 6-year-olds is to foster positive social interactions, communication, and emotional regulation. This group will focus on building foundational social skills to contribute to overall social and emotional development.

Check out “Gained skills and more about the group” below for more information on this group.

Does your teen/tween struggle with making and keeping friends? Socializing in middle school can be challenging for many reasons: social anxiety, loneliness, cliques, jealousy, gossip, social media, bullying, and peer pressure can all play a part. While friendships can sometimes be difficult to navigate, middle school students who have strong, healthy, long-term friendships will be better equipped to handle the other challenges associated with middle school.

The 12-session friendship group will cover many social skills topics appropriate for female, male and non-binary middle school students. The group will incorporate games, art projects and other activities to help your middle schooler learn and practice a range of skills: listening and reciprocal conversation skills, perspective-taking and showing empathy, self-advocacy, conflict resolution, identifying feelings, managing strong emotions, and more.

Check out “Gained skills and more about the group” below for more information on this group.

PEERS® for Adolescents is a 14-week evidence-based social skills intervention for motivated teens in middle and high school who are interested in learning new ways of making and keeping friends. This internationally acclaimed program, used in over 35 countries, was originally developed at UCLA by Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson. During each group session, teens are taught important social skills and are given the opportunity to practice these skills in session during socialization activities. Parents attend separate sessions and are taught how to assist their teens in making and keeping friends by helping to expand their teen’s social network and providing feedback through coaching during weekly socialization homework assignments. PEERS® may be appropriate for teens with Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, or other social and behavioral disorders. Parent participation is required.

The 4-week workshops cover a series of math topics typically studied in Middle School. Each 4-week workshop will focus on remediation or supplementing the existing curriculum. Each topic will begin with an individual pre-assessment, from which a learning path will be determined. The following competencies will be addressed: whole numbers, fractions and mixed numbers, decimals, ratios and proportions, pre-algebra skills, measurements and geometric figures, coordinate planes, etc...

Each student attending the workshops must sign up for a minimum of 4 monthly sessions:

November 27th - December 18th (This is a 6-week session)

January 8th - January 29th

February 5th- February 26th

March 4th- March 25th

April 8th- April 29th

(Begins November 27th with no class December 25, January 1st, and April 1st)

Who: 6th-8th grade students
When: November 27- April 29th, Mondays 5-6 pm
No class on December 25 or January 1st, and April 1st
Cost: $75 per session
Student must sign up for all sessions offered for the month
Led by: Edwige Gamache, Ph.D, Educational Specialist

Register Today!
Call: 650-322-5910
Email: ashley.koedel@MCinc.org

Does your teen/tween struggle with making and keeping friends? Socializing in middle school can be challenging for many reasons: social anxiety, loneliness, cliques, jealousy, gossip, social media, bullying, and peer pressure can all play a part. While friendships can sometimes be difficult to navigate, middle school students who have strong, healthy, long-term friendships will be better equipped to handle the other challenges associated with middle school. For female, male and non-binary middle school students. The group will incorporate games, art projects and other activities to help your middle schooler…Check out “Gained skills and more about the group” below for more information on this group.

Middle school is a huge transition for many students and places a high demand on organizational skills, attentional control, planning, initiation, and time management. This group is focused on the development of the executive functioning skills most salient to middle schoolers so that they can navigate numerous classes, extracurricular activities, and social interactions effectively. In this 10-week group, topics covered include… Check out “Gained skills and more about the group” below for more information on this group.

Could your child use some help with managing big feelings and impulses? Are these difficulties interfering with their functioning at school, at home, or with friends? In this group, your child can connect to peers who have similar struggles in a fun environment where they will develop skills in these areas and build new friendships.

Is your child struggling with the basic foundational skills of making friends? Play and art-based social skills group will focus on providing them with instruction on the building blocks of friendship. In this group, children will be able to learn about and practice the communication, engagement, regulation, and interpersonal skills that are needed to form meaningful relationships with peers. This group is farm themed, so each session, your child will be introduced to an animal that teaches them about a new helpful skill.

As students progress through high school, teachers and parents work together to build sufficient executive functioning abilities for independent living. Meeting the demands of high school requires integration of a wide variety of executive functioning skills. In this group, students will learn and then apply developmentally appropriate executive functioning strategies and tools to the areas they are struggling in most. Through group discussion, games, group projects, art, videos, individual writing/reflection, and direct feedback, students will learn about what they can do to be more self-sufficient in high school and beyond.

In fourth and fifth grade, teachers begin reducing external support and expect their students to rise to the increased demands. However, some students benefit from more explicit instruction, modeling, and practice before they can successfully meet those demands without support. This group focuses on introducing developmentally appropriate executive functioning skills for older elementary students through games, group challenges, art, videos, storytelling, group discussion,individual writing/reflection, and direct feedback.

Does your child struggle with a basic understanding of emotions and emotional expression? Have you noticed they need more support in talking about emotions and understanding their emotional responses? If you have a child who struggles with emotions and loves books, then this group may be a good fit. This bibliotherapy group uses children’s books to support social emotional learning (SEL). Each session, the group will read a book featuring a different emotion, will reflect on the story and skills they learned, and will participate in different art and play activities related to the emotion.