Dr. Heather MacKenzie

Reaching and Teaching Children with Special Needs

imageMap

My biography

Heather MacKenzie, Ph.D., is a speech-language pathologist and educator who has spent a large part of her career developing and implementing approaches for enhancing learning in children with special needs.  She has a special interest in understanding autism spectrum disorders (ASD).  A major focus of her work with children has been on understanding them and how they approach learning and then using this knowledge to optimize their development.

She has developed the Learning Preferences and Strengths (LPS) model designed to determine each child’s learning preferences and strengths and then ‘harness’ them to improve the child’s learning and development. She has also developed a program (spark*) to teach behavioral, cognitive and emotional self-regulation to children with special needs. Both the LPS and spark* arise from years of clinical work as well as current neuroscience. Heather established a preschool program for children with ASD based on this model.  The program used a shared storybook reading approach which was both well-received and highly productive for the children and their families.

Heather has provided workshops and presentations all over North America, in the U.K., United Arab Emirates and Singapore  Her workshops are very positively received.

Heather has published two books since 2008.  The first, Reaching and Teaching the Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder, concentrates on planning and implementing the Learning Preferences and Strengths model with children with ASD.  The second, One Story at a Time, is about how to plan, implement and evaluate shared storybook-based intervention with children.  The most recent book, The Autistic Child’s Guide to How to Behave, introduces spark* (Self-Regulation Program for Awareness and Resilience in Kids). She has also written a professional’s training manual for the spark* program and will soon start one for parents.