RyanWitterschein

I am a behavior analyst, an organizational leader, and a father first and foremost. For more than fifteen years I have worked where behavioral science meets real organizations: residential and community programs for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, forensic and high-acuity services, schools, and the leadership teams that run them.

My work spans applied behavior analysis and organizational behavior management consultation, leadership coaching, functional behavior assessments and behavior support plans, supervision for behavior analysts and technicians, staff and caregiver training, school-based supports, and education and individual advocacy for the people I serve. I also design and deliver trainings, including continuing education for behavior analysts.

Across my clinical work, the behavior support plans I design have produced significant, measured reductions in challenging behavior for the people I support. On the forensic side, I complete risk assessments with a 90-day turnaround. I am a certified facilitator of Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT), a cognitive-behavioral program used widely in forensic and justice-involved settings, and I am experienced in applying dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills. MOTAB, a training program I developed, is specifically about the person intervening: the person trained in it learns to manage their own behaviors and techniques.

I do not use restraint. I use MOTAB, and I have never filed a restraint or seclusion report with the State of New Hampshire. That includes more than a dozen high-risk forensic individuals I took on after placements in the State of New Hampshire Secure Psychiatric Unit, designated receiving facilities, and intensive treatment service homes, and supported in enhanced family care and community residential settings with zero hands-on intervention.

In schools, I have consulted across more than seven districts and two dozen schools, including private residential schools. In several districts I trained paraeducators and educational assistants to become Registered Behavior Technicians and supervised them in partnership with the district, so that RBT supervision became part of how the district itself works.

I also serve in public roles. The Governor appointed me to New Hampshire’s Statewide Independent Living Council, which I now chair. I sit on the State Rehabilitation Council, a public charter school board, and the board of Behavior Analysts for AI.

My personal motto is Semper Dignitis, always with dignity, because every individual deserves to be treated with dignity. It is the standard I hold my work to. Away from work I keep a small homestead in Concord, where I raise Silver Fox rabbits.

My teaching philosophy is less about teaching someone a skill than about teaching them how to learn. My touchstone is Daniel Quinn’s novel Ishmael. Its teacher rarely hands his pupil an answer. He asks questions and lets the pupil reason his way forward, until the pupil can see for himself what he had been looking past all along.

A skill solves the problem in front of you. Knowing how to learn solves the next one, the problem no one trained you for. In human services, that is the problem that matters. The staff member alone on an overnight shift, the paraeducator in a hallway, and the new clinician in a team meeting will each meet a situation no training covered. So I teach the reasoning behind a procedure, not only its steps: what a behavior is doing for the person, what in the environment keeps it going, and how to check a guess against data.

Behavior analysis has its own language for this: learning sets, generalization that is planned rather than hoped for, and the derived relational responding at the center of relational frame theory, the same science behind my leadership work. Whether I am supervising one future behavior analyst, training a room of direct support staff, or presenting at a conference, the goal is the same. People should leave able to analyze a situation they have never seen, not just repeat one they have. If I have done my job well, the people I teach need me less over time.