Success! 10th Annual Community Professionals Breakfast

10th Annual Community Professionals Breakfast Attendees

Our annual Community Professionals Breakfast provides us with the opportunity to collaborate and network with other area professionals who serve students with needs similar to those at CBA.

Two of our guests, Dr. Matthew Sachs and Matt Mullenix, MA, LPC, provide telehealth services for children, adolescents, and adults. We learned that one benefit of online counseling services is children often feel safer to dialogue with their therapist, given that they are communicating from the comfort of their own homes.

We also hosted our long-time CBA friend and former neighbor, Tyler Williamson, CEO of Families of Autism Coming Together (FACT). FACT was originally located within the Heritage United Methodist Church in front of CBA, but they moved into a new facility on Virginia Beach Boulevard last spring and are a “one-stop shop” of resources for the Autism community.

It was a joy to welcome back two professionals who are former CBA teachers and have moved into other related fields, including Emily Morvant, a BCBA as well as Nancy Prather-Johnson, the dean of business from Tidewater Community College (TCC). It’s a high compliment when former faculty members truly want to stay connected to our school community.

While the group enjoyed our breakfast, we engaged in deeper conversation about screen time, particularly as it relates to children with learning differences. There was consensus that – like many things in life – there are benefits and there are challenges. We agreed that it is important for adults to model healthy boundaries around time on devices. This is clearly an ongoing conversation as technology is integrated into so much of our daily lives, but it was helpful to hear from a variety of perspectives.

Thank you to all who joined us and for those we missed, we hope to see you next year!