Click here to view the teleclass schedule and register for the 3rd Quarter Teleclasses . The listing below will be updated shortly.

Janice Russell CPO-CD®

This teleclass is for anyone interested in learning more about the NSGCD's Certificate and Certification Programs.

Margaret Pearson Pinkham, CPO-CD®

What determines a chronically-disorganized (CD) client? This basic class will cover the criteria for CD, defining how a CD client is different from other clients. Basic methods/techniques professional organizers can use and other issues in working with CD.
Note: This teleclass is required for the Level I Certificate of Study in Chronic Disorgination.

Denslow Brown, CPO-CD®

This course provides a basic overview of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). An understanding of ADD (or AD/HD) will help professional organizers and related professionals be more effective in working with clients who have ADD.
Note: This teleclass is required for the Level I Certificate of Study in ADD.

Sheila Delson, CPO-CD®

Professional Organizers and Related Professionals will learn the importance of being prepared; the value of developmental listening skills, and the value of letting the client guide through listening, but also the importance that you, as the professional, need to LEAD in that process.
Note: This teleclass is required for the Level I Certificate of Study in Client Administration effective July 1, 2009.

Mette Pedersen, M.A., M. Ed.

Today, individuals with intellectual and cognitive challenges live within every community in the United States and Canada. Supports for this group of people are critical in helping them be successful members of communities, neighborhoods, and families. This course will provide an overview of the definition and characteristics of people with intellectual and cognitive challenges; typical supports they may need; suggestions for adapting and tailoring organizational supports for this population; and how one might integrate organizational services into the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and market professional services through related systems of care.

Catherine Roster, Ph D.

Life transitions include expected events, such as leaving home to attend college, starting new jobs, getting married, having children, “empty nest syndrome,” and retiring from work. Life courses often force transitions that are not necessarily planned for but are equally disruptive, such as divorce, losing one’s job, the untimely death of loved ones, unexpected health crises, or extreme loss due to natural disasters. This teleclass presents an overview of research studies that reveal psychological motivations rooted in self-protection that can accompany these disruptions, and the resulting impact life transition events have on meanings a person assigns to material goods. Preliminary findings from the presenter’s Safe Passage study for the NSGCD and her own published research suggest techniques that professional organizers might find useful when dealing with clients who are undergoing personal rites of passage or who are engaging in the process of identity reconstruction following life-altering events.

Kristin Bergfeld

Record numbers of elders are choosing not to enter assisted living or retirement communities, deciding instead to stay in their own homes to age in place. This issue presents challenges for organizers working with elderly clients who may need services and assistance that go beyond the scope of a PO’s expertise, requiring collaboration with other professionals. This teleclass will share ideas on how to reframe assessments, incorporate special issues into an organizing plan and collaborate with others.

Janice Russell, CPO-CD®

This teleclass will discuss how a professional can identify and conform their organizing work sessions to fit the needs of a client’s personality type for building a stronger working relationship and better success.

Roland Rotz, Ph.D.

Fidget to Focus: At Home - Living with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) means always looking for a new or different way to manage the ongoing struggles of life. Often it seems that just as an ADDr gets ahead, something is there to trip them up. CD Clients with ADD can feel that no matter how hard they try, their lives will always be two steps forward and three steps back. Dr. Rotz will discuss how using Sensory Strategies can help the ADDr reframe their failures into success and retrain themselves to fidget effectively while building two important focusing skills, self-monitoring and self-regulation. In this session, the first of three, Dr. Rotz will share tips and strategies related to the ADDr’s life at home.

Description of the Fidget to Focus Series: This series will discuss the influence of sensory strategies on learning and change. As Professional Organizers work with clients who live or work in compromised conditions, they are asked to assist in making changes to their client’s environment by facilitating effective choices. Success, whether short or long term, often depends upon an awareness and understanding about the internal and external factors influencing choices. Recognizing that a great many of our clients have ADD (ADHD), this series is designed to increase awareness and understanding about how the ADD Sensory System directly and indirectly influences choices that are made. Following an overview, the series will direct its attention to differentiating strategies useful for home, work and school.

Upcoming dates to save for the remainder of the series: Fidget to Focus: At Work – September 2, 2009 and Fidget to Focus: At School - November 12, 2009

Panelists: Sheila Delson, CPO-CD®, Debbie Stanley, and Leslie Robison, CPO-CD®

Using strong ethical boundaries with all clients is of paramount importance, but especially so when working with CD clients where learning differences, mental health issues, addiction and other concerns can cloud interaction. This panel of experienced professional organizers will discuss some real life issues as relates to Ethics and CD Clients.

Eileen Stevie CPO-CD®

Whether a client is six or ninety-six, moving can be an upsetting life event. But moving in later years may mean leaving the place that has been “home” for 40, 50 or more years. Hundreds of decisions have to be made, sometimes, very quickly with the result of a different kind of stress. This course will provide an overview of Relocation Stress Syndrome, especially as it pertains to elderly clients. Strategies and ideas will be presented to help prepare elderly clients for the best possible transition when downsizing and moving.

Janine Sarna Jones

Organizers are change agents, charged with the responsibility to facilitate transformation in the lives of their clients. An organizer can better serve their clients with a comprehensive understanding of effective change agent techniques. This course will define what a change agent is, explore roles that may be used with the CD client and explain techniques of an effective change agent.

Jennifer McDaniel Wolfe, CPO-CD®

This course will provide an overview and description of Fibromyalgia and discuss the impact it has on a client's ability to organize. Strategies an organizer can use with the CD Client with Fibromyalgia will also be addressed along with helpful resources organizers and their clients can use.

Heidi Schulz, CPO-CD®

Collaborative Therapy (CT) is emerging as a model to address the blended and often complex needs of the clutterer and hoarder. CT involves any combination of organizers, therapists, coaches, family, and community service agencies. Working side by side with clients, the team facilitates interventions that help create and maintain environmental change in the home as well as lasting therapeutic change within the client.

This is a challenging, yet supportive effort to assist clients in removing excessive items to which they feel extremely attached. These items may represent a conflicted/symbolic part of themselves. Using a blend of Motivational Interviewing and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, CT helps clients identify and reframe their emotional and physical connections to their “stuff” so that they develop effective alternatives for long-term solutions.

Louise Kurzeka

Significant success in working with any CD Client comes from connecting to the client’s preferred learning style. In this course you will learn what distinguishes someone with an auditory preference for learning and how to best strategize for working with an auditory learner.