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Welcome! Inspire Behavioral Learning, LLC believes that to inspire learning is to inspire action. We do this by engaging learners in hands-on, interactive lessons that are personally motivating and relevant to their entire lives. Separate services include English tutoring, ESL tutoring, PreK-6 multiple subjects tutoring, nature camps, and behavior therapy with caregiver training. Inspire's educational and behavioral health services are remote and in person for children to adults throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. We are committed to learning by doing for every learner.
We believe in the power of the individual. You are important. Your unique needs and perspectives matter. Our dedicated educators and therapists create individualized, naturalistic, play-based learning for children and student-centered learning for all ages. Learners enjoy positive reinforcement based on their unique motivation, preferences, and choices. We use emergent curriculum to empower learners to develop their interests.
We believe in the power of the environment. If a flower does not bloom, we do not think of blaming the flower; we change or introduce new aspects of its environment to support it. Learning is not limited to the four walls of a classroom or office. As such, we provide our services in natural environments where behavior and learning take place, not in a center. In addition to the option of meeting online, we travel to you and your child in the convenience of your own home, local library, school, park, or other environment of educational or therapeutic value, depending on the service you are receiving. Learners apply new skills in personal, social, school, career, and community life. We promote a lifelong love of learning in academics and in life beyond the classroom.
We believe in evidence-based practice. We provide services based on research in behavioral science, psychology, education, biology, linguistics, and applied behavior analysis (ABA), the science of learning. ABA focuses on learning by doing, measurable interaction between the learner and environment, and observable improvements in the learner's life. Check out What is ABA? to learn the facts and its many, diverse subspecialties. ABA is effective in diverse applications, including empowering people of all ages to achieve their educational and health goals. At Inspire, we guide learners to apply new skills that promote the whole person's growth and success. ​What goals do you want to achieve today?
S E R V I C E S
Call of the Wild Camps: Outdoor Nature Camps (Ages 5-10)
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Outdoor day camps with hikes, biology, art, and language arts enrichment in Berkeley, Oakland, Cupertino/Los Altos Hills, and Vacaville. Keep your child both physically active and educationally engaged with a fun blend of experiential learning, environmental education, and outdoor play!
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Nature camps for young trail blazers, curious naturalists, eager readers, and budding writers in forests of the Bay Area. Serving K-5th graders. Children enjoy outdoor education with fun, hands-on activities in academic seasonal camps. Kids take a breath of fresh air away from screens, spark a love of nature, hike, play games, create nature-inspired art, read and tell nature-themed stories, make new friends, and learn and write about the great outdoors while being in it! Enjoy day camps for summer, fall, winter, and spring.
Academic English Tutoring
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We accept students both online and in person! Accepting new students for morning hours only at this time.
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Student-centered tutoring for Pre-K, TK, K-12, college and university students in English Language Arts. Inspiring joy in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Executive function tutoring also helps students improve study skills and self-management to attain mastery and independence.
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The tutor travels to you in your home and/or libraries or online with live video sessions!
Multiple Subjects Tutoring in Home and Outdoors
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Multiple subjects tutoring for grades PreK-6. Small group and 1:1 tutoring for kids in public school, private school, charter school, and home school. Accepting new students for morning hours only at this time.
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Tutors provide academic and extracurricular activities at your child's home and outdoors. Students learn English Language Arts and mathematics creatively applied to multiple subjects; executive functioning (such as study skills, organization, and time-management); social-emotional skills in cooperative learning; and enrichment in multiple subjects, such as art, science, and more!
English as a Second Language (ESL) Tutoring
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We serve students both online and in person. Accepting new students for morning hours only at this time.
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ESL tutoring for children and adults, including K-12, college and university students, professionals, and those seeking U.S. Citizenship. Master speaking, listening, reading, and writing in English.
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The tutor travels to you at flexible and convenient locations. Full immersion experiences are also offered to practice English in relevant locations. Get online ESL tutoring in live video sessions.
Behavior Therapy
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We serve clients for telehealth online therapy and in-home services, following health and safety requirements. Not accepting new clients.
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Behavior therapy for toddlers to teens and young adults. Serving individuals with autism and other developmental delays, as well as ADHD. ABA therapy helps increase communication, social skills, self-management skills, self-advocacy, and more! Services include parent training and caregiver training.
Ordinarily, the therapist travels to you in your home, your child's school, and/or places in your community!
M I S S I O N
Mission
Inspire's mission is to empower people of all abilities to live happier, more independent and fulfilling lives by achieving their health and educational goals.
Philosophy
At Inspire, the philosophy of care and education is to collaborate with each learner, so the educator is less a "sage on the stage" and more a "guide by your side," inspiring you to achieve your dreams and goals, instilling the principles of behavior and learning in you so that you reach the heights of greater independence and success.
What makes Inspire unique?
At Inspire Behavioral Learning®, everyone is respected as a whole person who is an integration of head, heart, and body. This is demonstrated with thoughtfulness, kindness, and dynamic action. The learner is not treated as a robot who only repeats responses. Services are brought to you where behavior occurs, which means relevant environments for active learning. Progress is objectively determined with data. Inspire takes the guesswork out of learning.
Respect for the whole person - head, heart, and body. Contrary to popular myth, thinking is behavior, just as outwardly observable action is also behavior.
In behavior analysis, public behavior is any action that other people can observe, such as speaking, while private behavior is any action that only you can observe, such as your thinking. At Inspire, the focus is on public behavior while also respecting that everyone thinks. You can expect precision of thought and evidence-based practices. For services that include individual goals (tutoring or therapy), data are recorded and examined on an ongoing basis for new skills in order to determine whether progress is occurring. If progress is not occurring, the behavior analyst examines the data and the environment and modifies teaching procedures where applicable. For the learner, some services foster problem solving, perspective taking, and creativity, which can include both the learner's own novel thinking and novel outwardly observable actions.
Consideration of the whole person - head, heart, and body. We promote happy engagement by providing many choices, and we provide positive reinforcement for kind actions and a variety of executive function skills.
According to the Golden Rule, treat others as you would like to be treated. According to Oscar Wilde, treat others as they would like to be treated, because they may have different tastes. The word "kindness" comes from "kin," meaning family, native, or from the same kind. However, a kind person is empathic, compassionate, and caring towards multiple kinds of people and not only his or her own kind. At Inspire, kindness manifests in extending a circle of empathy, compassion, and care to you. Kindness manifests in respect for cultural and individual differences by taking into account the learner's preferences. When people ask, "How are you?" sometimes they do not care to hear your answer, such as when they ask because of social obligation more than heartfelt genuineness. At Inspire, how you are feeling and how you are doing matter.
Inspire Behavioral Learning® primarily uses emergent curriculum, which is a type of student-centered curriculum that organically adapts to the learner's needs, skills, interests, and explorations. Learners are provided with abundant choices for activities. You might correctly guess that in such a student-centered approach, the student's happiness and enjoyment are taken into account. Learners in therapy may also achieve goals to develop their perspective taking and social skills regarding how others feel, not only perspective taking for other people's differing beliefs, thoughts, and senses. In addition, learners participating in executive function tutoring can learn not only organization and time-management skills but also emotion regulation and perseverance applied to their academic goals, which may increase their positive emotions and optimistic speech about their skills, aspirations, and achievements.
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At Inspire's Call of the Wild Camps, nature educators model extending kindness to other species who can also feel and perceive. Inspire's three nature camp rules are to be kind, be safe, and leave no trace. Did you know there are seven different Leave No Trace principles? The last two principles are to respect wildlife and be considerate of other visitors. We encourage being kind to all kinds, not only humankind. By fostering and supporting a love of nature, forests, and the animal kingdom, we hope to inspire young naturalists to care for and protect what they love, making the world a better place. Summer camps also have vegan theme weeks for young nature lovers to consider the ethical philosophy of veganism in fun and positive ways. Veganism involves keeping animals in our hearts and off our plates. Veganism is a positive alternative to speciesism by giving moral consideration to the rights and lives of other animals. We support accessible, healthy, cruelty-free choices for food, clothing, entertainment, recreation, etc. for our daily lives. At Inspire, we provide positive reinforcement for kindness toward members of the camp community and toward other sentient species who live on the planet with us.
Teaching the whole person - head, heart, and body. We promote learning by doing, including kinesthetic learning and active participation.
You can achieve your goals when you follow a plan of action. What separates your dreams and reality is action. Learning is not merely the acquisition of new information. Learning is behavior change. The name Inspire Behavioral Learning® means to inspire active learning. We facilitate and encourage learning in natural environments, which means places relevant to the skills you or your child are practicing. Learning involves frequent, observable participation and practice in relevant settings. At Inspire, for services in person, we travel to you or your child where behavior, i.e., action and learning, happen. For behavior therapy, this may include your home, your child’s school, and other places in the community. For ESL tutoring with full immersion, the tutor may meet you in cafes, libraries, stores, and other environments in which you want to practice English. In nature camps, children go on hikes and practice Leave No Trace in forests, where they learn from nature as their living classroom. We take the guesswork out of learning because learners acquire observable skills while learning by doing in natural environments.
Inspire's mission, philosophy, and uniqueness emerge from its values. What are these values?
A B O U T
At Inspire Behavioral Learning®, we are educators and clinicians who are lifelong learners. We seek to inspire others to learn in enjoyable ways that have a personal impact on their lives and the world around them.
Kelly Knowles, MA, BCBA
Founder and President
Kelly Knowles has enjoyed working with children to adults, helping them achieve their goals, for over twenty years. She has worked in applied behavior analysis (ABA) since 2008. It is her passion to spark learning that makes a difference.
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Education: Kelly earned a BA in Psychology with a minor in Education at University of California, Davis, and she enjoys the best of both worlds! Embarking on a professional journey in applied behavior analysis, Kelly completed an ABA certificate at California State University, Sacramento, under Caio Miguel, one of the leading experts in verbal behavior, and Becky Penrod, one of the leading experts in pediatric behavioral feeding issues. She went on to achieve an MA in applied behavior analysis at Florida Institute of Technology and became a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA).​ Kelly also completed a graduate-level certificate through UC Berkeley in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).
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Experience: Kelly has always worked to educate, beginning with peer tutoring in high school to creating Inspire's academic, enrichment, and clinical programs for children to adults throughout the Bay Area. Throughout Kelly's undergraduate and graduate school years, she worked with children and adults in academics, ESL, and behavioral health, discovering early on that she cared about the development of the whole person and not just academic achievement. She has provided emergent literacy tutoring for Pre-K and academic English tutoring for elementary school to college and university students, including typically developing students and students with autism, English Language Learners, and children in at-risk schools. In addition, she designed and oversaw an after school program integrating academics, enrichment in the arts, social-emotional development, and recreation for first through sixth graders at an at-risk elementary school. She has also enjoyed tutoring ESL for diverse learners, including native speakers of multiple languages; preschool to college students; immigrants working towards U.S. Citizenship; business professionals; and an international visiting professor at UC Berkeley. She has breadth and depth of experience in ABA both within and beyond health care for toddlers to teens in their homes, communities, public schools, preschools, after school programs, treatment centers, and integrated play groups, as well as training parents and caregivers. She has experience with training, assessment, and supervision of Registered Behavior Technicians and BCBA candidates. Last but not least, Kelly founded Inspire's Call of the Wild Camps, providing youth education in the forest as our living classroom in seasonal camps.
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Philosophy: The word "educate" comes from the Latin educare, meaning to draw out or lead out, instead of only memorizing responses. Kelly's philosophy is to integrate head, heart, and body to be the best version of oneself. It is her philosophy in work and in life! In her free time, Kelly enjoys hiking, nature photography, and spending time with her fun-loving rescue dogs.
Contact Inspire Behavioral Learning® to get started with our educational or behavioral health services.
Want to get in touch? We'd love to hear from you. Here's how you can reach us. Reach out by email for the quickest reply or to schedule a phone appointment.
Email: info@inspirebehavior.com
Phone: 510-296-5519
Fax: 510-296-5780
Hours:
M-F 8:00 AM-7:30 PM
Sat 9:00 AM-6:30 PM
Sun Closed
Serving the San Francisco Bay Area
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Alameda County
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Albany​
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Berkeley
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Emeryville
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Oakland
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Alameda
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San Leandro
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Castro Valley
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Pleasanton
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Dublin
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Fremont
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...and more!
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Contra Costa County
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Concord​
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Pleasant Hill
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Walnut Creek
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Antioch
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Brentwood
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Orinda
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Lafayette
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Alamo
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Danville
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San Ramon
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...and more!
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Santa Clara County
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Milpitas
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San Jose
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Cupertino
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Santa Clara
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Sunnyvale
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Mountain View
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Palo Alto
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Saratoga
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Solano County
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Vallejo
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Benicia
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Cordelia
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Suisun
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Fairfield
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Vacaville
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