by Stephanie Madrigal, therapist at Social Thinking and author of Superflex (Part 1 of 2 part post)

Superflex: A Superhero Social Thinking Curriculum, ironically, was developed as I had to work on my own rigid thinking in trying to work with one of my students!  I began working with a student, Eric, individually, because he was so rigid and did not have the skills, to work in a group setting.  As I quickly realized, he and I were going nowhere fast.  He was extremely rigid and had difficulty following anyone else’s plans and had huge meltdowns when things did not go his way. So after a couple of weeks of banging my head against the wall because I could not figure out a way to reach him, I remembered that he liked Superheroes.  Hmmm… do I stick to my own ideas and lessons that I had already outlined for his treatment? I already knew the answer to this question--No way! I needed to think outside the box with him and find something that would motivate him or I was not going to be able to teach him.  

So the next week, before Eric’s session, I wrote, in big letters on the white board, "Superflex a Social Thinking Superhero!" Then, once he entered the room, I just waited to see if he noticed. It was only a few seconds before he walked over to the board and asked, “Who is this?” In my confident tone, I responded, “Superflex!  Haven’t you heard of this Superhero before?” I proceeded to explain that this Superhero was a little different than most he had learned about.  “Superflex is a superhero that hangs out in our brain and helps us to think about thinking about others, being flexible and making good choices,” I said.  “However, like any other Superhero, Superflex has a nemesis and his name is Rock Brain!”  I can remember consciously thinking at this point, “Is he really letting me talk about this with him?” he was completely intrigued with this concept.  So, of course, I continued…”Rock Brain is that character that also lives in our brain, and attempts to defeat Superflex by trying to prevent our flexible thinking.” Rock Brain makes us get stuck on what we want to do, insisting on doing things only one way, our way and does not let us see things from another’s point of view.”  Eric quickly agreed with this assessment of Rock Brain’s powers and then proceeded to tell me that Rock Brain was active in his brain a lot except, “He was not made out of rock, he was made out of titanium!”

Eric and I spent the next year exploring the concepts of Superflexible thinking and Rock Brain thinking and was it a great year!  He and I now had a motivating vocabulary to talk about his behaviors and show Rock Brain that Superflex would not be defeated!

I eagerly shared the concept of Superflex with my colleagues and we had the idea to expand on the idea by creating a whole cast of characters (Team of Unthinkables) that might denote unexpected behaviors that our student’s exhibit such as Glassman, who can get into our brain and make us have huge reactions to tiny problems.  Shortly thereafter, I worked to create a curriculum and comic book and Superflex was born! It has been an amazing process to take the core concepts from Michelle’s Social Thinking Vocabulary, etc., and apply them in this method to help so many students.

Here we are, two years, after the release of Superflex: A Social Thinking Superhero Curriculum, we are receiving more and more emails from parents, kids and professionals who have had  the wisdom to create more Unthinkables to help figure out the many and varied ways our Unthinkables lurk and challenge our Superflex, to tell us a great related story about the curriculum or to tell about the other exciting activities they are creating with the Superflex curriculum. We did not imagine the impact it would have on educators and parents alike, let alone so many kids!    

We are so inspired with the energy and would like to share some of these ideas and some of the important work that is happening at Superflex Academy’s across the country.  

A few fun Superflex Academy quotes we’ve received

➢    "Wow.  I did the introductory lesson for Superflex with my 7th grade student on Wednesday.  On Thursday and on Friday, he barged into my therapy room, interrupting sessions, wanting to talk about Superflex!!!  He is SO PSYCHED about it!!"  Sent by S. M.

➢    "I cannot tell you what the Unthinkables and Superflex has done for my 8 year old son with PDD.  They are using your curriculum in his social skills class at school.  It is as if the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders since he learned about the Unthinkables and Superflex.  He now knows that he is not the only one with unthinkables and he is not the only one who has to work to get them away.  He sees now that it isn't HIM, but an outside force that he can control." Sent by L.M., parent

➢    "I have to tell you, I got goose bumps when I walked into this class.....the teacher is just so cool, you would totally love her, and she is using it with all her kids....I am so excited to be working with her." Written by C.A. educator, after walking into a 4th grade mainstream class.

➢    "I’m a para and I work with a boy who absolutely loves Superflex and his gang. Out of the blue last week he asked me if Superflex was real and I said, of course he is, as real as Spiderman or Superman. He looked at me and said that if they were real why couldn’t he buy any Superflex toys at Walmart."

Other exciting Superflex Academy teacher highlights

➢    Last summer, D.Z., a music teacher in Minnesota, was so inspired with the curriculum that she began creating songs for the different Unthinkables.  Now, she is sharing these songs with her teachers on her campus to use with their students.  Is Superflex, The Musical, in the horizon? I think it might be!

➢    A principal in Pennsylvania has used the Superflex curriculum and his staff is jazzed with the concept they are working towards developing mini-commercials with their students for the video morning announcements.

➢    In the article, "ASD in the USA" published by in the UK, Ron Fortuna, a specialist teacher for autism who received a scholarship to travel America to see how teachers are coping with ASD, saw the Superflex curriculum and Social Thinking in action:

“Next stop was Buckman Elementary School, a magnet school for the arts. In a resource room, I witnessed a group of three children with ASD learning about analogies (often an area of difficulty for children with ASD). I then watched a mainstream Kindergarten class learning about flexibility, using the fun techniques developed by authors Stephanie Madrigal and Michelle Garcia Winner... This was an incredibly fun, visual and accessible way of teaching flexible thinking – not only for the children with ASD, but their classmates too. The students then fought off the Unwonderer (another Unthinkable who doesn’t want students to be curious about other people). By interviewing me the students had the chance to practise expressing an interest in another person, a valuable social tool... At Irvington elementary... students explored a different Superflex Unthinkable: Rockbrain (who wants your brain to be as inflexible as a rock). The seven year old pupils explored their ‘rock brain moments’ and thought about how they could have been more flexible. One boy noted how he had drawn bubbles when it was writing time. His flexible thinking told him: `I can tell myself that I can just do that later.' Success! Back at Beaumont middle school, Kathee is outlining how to use social smarts (as in Michelle Garcia Winner and Pamela Crooke’s book You are a Social Detective). This method outlines why we have to think through our actions before we do them."

Superflex doesn't do it alone!

The article highlights another important piece we keep learning as we hear from others using the curriculum around the country: the need to remind educators and parents that this is not designed to be a solo curriculum, but it was meant to be used as a logical progression of teaching behavior regulation and change after the students have explored basic social thinking concepts that we teach at the clinic and that are introduced in Think Social! (2005) and a comic book written for K-5th graders that introduces the basic social thinking vocabulary, You Are A Social Detective (2008). Please read Michelle’s blog for more information on where to start when using our child-centered products: Social Detective and Superflex.

By popular demand: more Superflex!!

You may be pleased to know that The National Superflex Academy Team here in San Jose, CA, are working hard and trying to keep, the very common Unthinkable, Too Much On Our Plate-inator (who gets in our brains and tricks  us into putting too many things into our schedule) out of our brains so that we can create more Superflex products.  Here is a glimpse of some of our Superflex plans.

•    Superflex t-shirts for the kids

•    A large Unthinkable poster

•    Superflex cards

•    Superflex and Unthinkable action figures

•    …and each year we hope to come out with a new Unthinkable comic book. As simple as they appear in print they require a lot of time to put together. We are now enjoying writing educational comic books to serve as an all-in-one curriculum for more advanced Superflex lessons. Superflex Takes On Glassman (2009) is our first published sequel to advance the Superflex teachings.

Thank you to all who have written to us and shared your ideas and all of you who are out there making our Social Town a great place to live!!

Please check back for the second part of this blog...

And stay tuned for more developments!

Stephanie

© Michelle Garcia Winner 2011
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