The 1:1 RFT Intensive | Generative Practitioner

For practitioners who never fit the model.
For learners the model never fit.

The 1:1 RFT Intensive

The Generative Practitioner Method. Three lenses. Six modules. One learner.

A 90-day cohort for practitioners building the practice that fits them — and the work they want to be doing. This isn’t a self-paced course. It’s a structured mentorship for practitioners building or running a 1:1 private-pay practice — grounded in RFT, instructional design, and precision teaching, applied to a learner you already work with.

Who this is for

You’re a practitioner who never fit the model. Most of your learners haven’t fit it either.

This is for practitioners working with learners who are stuck in the gap between what insurance won’t pay for and what schools don’t have the resources to do — the learners who are behind in school, struggle with comprehension and executive function, and get stuck in conversations that are scripted or rote. These are learners of any age — children, teens, and adults — whose foundational communication, executive function, and academic skills were not built to fluency.

You’ve probably felt like a stranger in your own field — a renegade who wants to blaze a different path, but given a model that was never built for you or your learners.

This is the program for the practitioner who’s done dressing for the job they won’t want in five years — and is dressing for the one that will.

The gap

Most of our training was never built for the work that’s coming.

RFT is powerful — but often treated as a “nice-to-have.” Training programs rarely require it, and the leap from published research to the actual 1:1 context is wide; most of us were never shown how to make it.

Frequency is the fundamental property of behavior, but applied practice traded it for percentages and non-standard line graphs. Those derivative measures can’t show rate of learning, can’t measure instructional control, and can’t tell you if your learner’s skills are fluent or just “mastered.”

Programming for skill acquisition can stall at the basics — mands, tacts, and simple instructions — right when the learner is ready for more. For the work that comes next — building generative language, comprehension, and conversation — published curriculum doesn’t always exist, and when it does, it can be hard to individualize.

Insurance companies decide what’s medically necessary. Schools cast you as a crisis manager, not a teacher. And the work you’d most love to do — building foundational and abstract language, designing instruction that fits, charting a learner’s growth — is the work no one prepared you for. So you do it alone, off the clock, or never quite get to it at all.

So you’ve been left with three questions no one ever trained you to answer:

What

What do I teach my learner next?

Proof

How do I prove it’s working?

How

How do I actually deliver the instruction?

When the data don’t match your expectations, it’s not the learner. It’s not the family. It’s not even you. It’s structural — a field built on a medical model, and a system that was never set up to let you teach. No one rewrites that alone.

But the learner is always right. And the learners we serve are telling us — every day, in their charts, in their words, in their behavior — that the system isn’t working for them. You already know that. You just haven’t been given the tools to do anything about it — yet.

The method

The Generative Practitioner Method

Three lenses. One method. The tools you weren’t given — built for the practitioner you’ve become.

For when you can’t see what’s missing.

The RFT Lens

You’ll learn to think functionally about your learner’s relational language. This is the lens that tells you what to teach next — and lets you build language repertoires that can’t be left to chance.

For when you can’t deliver what the learner actually needs.

The Instructional Design Lens

You’ll learn to design teaching sequences from scratch, modify existing curricula when they fit, and construct supplemental instruction when they don’t. This is the lens that tells you how to teach it — and gives you the architecture to do it consistently.

For when you can’t prove it’s working.

The Precision Teaching Lens

You’ll learn to chart your learner’s progress on the Standard Celeration Chart — frequency, accuracy, bounce, celeration — and make decisions on real data, in real time. This is the lens that tells you if the work is working.

A Generative Practitioner doesn’t just deliver curriculum. They adapt it, generate it, and prove it on the chart — building from scratch when nothing fits, modifying what exists when it does, and supplementing the gaps in between.

What you walk out with

In 90 days, you walk out with a method.

Walk in

Dependent on published curricula, agency protocols, and insurance-justified treatment plans.

Walk out

Able to design, deliver, and measure individualized RFT-aligned programs from scratch — with a method that fits you and your practice, for the learners the traditional model never fit.

By Day 90 you’ll have:

  • A complete case conceptualization for a real learner, through an RFT lens
  • A custom instructional sequence built or modified for them
  • Multiple charts showing celeration on the Standard Celeration Chart
  • A parent-facing progress report that builds trust through transparency
  • A practice architecture plan for your work going forward
  • A complete case study presented to the cohort

Together, these become your portfolio — evidence of the work you can use for supervision documentation, conference proposals, or future client conversations. You won’t leave with theory. You’ll leave with a method, and the work to prove it.

The modules

Six modules. Three lenses. One learner.

Delivered across twelve or more self-paced one-hour courses — each one applied to the learner you choose before we start.

Analyze

Think functionally about your learner’s relational language, and decide what to teach next.

Design

Engineer the teaching sequence: build, modify, or supplement instruction to fit the learner in front of you.

Measure

Chart on the Standard Celeration Chart and make decisions on real data, in real time.

Apply

Turn assessment into individualized, RFT-aligned programming for a complex repertoire your learner actually needs.

Report

Communicate the work — to learners, families, peers, and the wider field — so it’s transparent and verifiable.

Architect

Design the practice that holds it all: your offer, dosing, integration, time, and identity.

What’s included

Everything you need to build the practice that fits you.

Over 90 days you get the full Generative Practitioner Method, personal and small-group coaching, the assessment and instructional tools I use in my own practice, a private cohort capped at five, and guaranteed CEUs — all applied to a learner of your own, from Day 1 to Day 90.

The specifics are mapped out on your strategy call.

Proof

I don’t ask families to believe me — I ask them to verify their trust in me.

I don’t run on testimonials. I run on data. A behavior technician who’d worked with one of my adult learners for nearly ten years messaged me after a session:

His language today — out of this world. So many different emotion words, beautiful full sentences. I got teary-eyed — I’ve worked with him almost ten years and I’ve never seen this communication from him. I can tell he’s really thinking about the world around him.

Ten years of the standard approach, then this — reported by a clinician who knew the learner better than I did, watching language come online that a decade hadn’t produced. It happens with families, too. One parent wrote, mid-program, unprompted:

Significant improvement this past week in his conversation skills. His questions are seriously intended to get new info — not scripted questions with a predetermined answer. Talking about the future more. It’s a significant change. Very exciting to see.

Questions asked to actually get information. Talk about a future that isn’t here yet. Those aren’t vocabulary gains — they’re generative, relational language coming online: derived, flexible responding, and the deictic framing that lets a learner reason across time. That’s the work the standard model leaves to chance, and it’s exactly what the RFT lens is built to produce — and the chart is built to prove. I’ve built mine over six years on word-of-mouth alone — no funnels, no ads — in a place that mostly didn’t know what behavior analysis was.

Why me

Hi, I’m Sophie Steele.

I’ve run a 1:1 RFT-based private-pay practice for six years, and co-founded Compassionate Behavior Analysis in Colorado. I started with no marketing or business background and broke into a market that either didn’t know what behavior analysis was — or didn’t want anything to do with it.

Before that, I was a disillusioned practitioner stuck between what insurance wouldn’t pay for and what schools didn’t have the resources to provide. I loved my clients, but I was sick of watching the buck get passed. And I didn’t want to spend my career supervising other people doing the work I trained to do myself.

During the pandemic, my income was cut to a quarter of what it had been — and it became obvious that I could never again hand my livelihood to an organization with a shrinking ceiling. What changed everything was learning to stop thinking like an employee and start thinking like the CEO of my own practice — and the CEO of my own life.

Maybe you came to behavior analysis already knowing what direct 1:1 work could feel like — from teaching, tutoring, or therapy. Or maybe you’ve always wanted to work this way, and the system you trained in didn’t let you. I never quite fit the model. And the learners I cared most about never fit it either.

Now my practice generates five figures a month consistently — with relationship-first methods and very little marketing. I’ve built strategic frameworks drawing on contextual behavioral science, precision teaching, and instructional design, and a low-dose, high-impact model versatile enough that behavior analysis can be for everyone.

This program is the method I use, codified. I’m not going to teach you something I don’t already do.

Is this for you?

This program is for you if…

  • You’re running or building a 1:1 private-pay practice — or you know you want to, and you’re ready to start training for it now
  • You’re done shrinking to fit a model that doesn’t want all of you — or all you can offer
  • You work with learners who are behind in school, struggle with comprehension and executive function, or get stuck in scripted, rote conversation
  • You’ve read about RFT but never been shown how to apply it on Monday morning
  • You want to use the Standard Celeration Chart and make decisions on real data — not guesswork
  • You’re ready to bring one of your own learners into the work for the full 90 days
  • You’re ready to shift from a deceleration lens to a constructional one
  • You believe the field is changing, and you’d rather build what comes next than wait for the model to catch up

This program is not for you if…

  • You don’t have access to at least one 1:1 learner over the next 90 days
  • You can’t commit 4–6 hours per week (group coaching, 1:1 calls, self-paced work, and your chosen learner’s sessions)
  • You’re looking for a quick certificate or a CEU bundle rather than a full mentorship

Looking for standalone CE courses instead? My CE library is short, focused, and self-paced — a different way to start.

Frequently asked questions

The questions practitioners ask most.

How is this different from other RFT trainings?
Most RFT training stops at theory and uses examples from verbally sophisticated learners. This is built specifically for the harder-to-teach skills — comprehension, conversation, executive function, logic, problem-solving, inferencing — and for learners whose foundational and abstract language needs both construction and refinement. Every module connects directly to your own learner. If you can’t use it in a session this week, we haven’t taught it yet.
Do I have to abandon what I already know?
No. The Generative Practitioner Method is integrative, not replacement-based. Your verbal behavior training, your data systems, your ABA foundation: all of it stays. RFT adds the lens that makes the rest of it work for the learners you’ve been struggling to reach. Instructional design and precision teaching extend what you can already do. You build on top of what you have.
Who is the program for? Who counts as a ‘practitioner’?
The program is for people who do direct 1:1 instructional work: credentialed behavior analysts (BCBAs and equivalents), special educators, and academic tutors and learning specialists. Non-credentialed-behavior-analyst participants won’t earn CEUs, but the method, the cohort, and the coaching are fully available to them. The CEUs are a benefit for those who can use them; they aren’t the point of the program.
What does the chosen-learner work actually look like?
You pick one of your own learners before we start. Across 90 days, every module includes a structured assignment applied to their progress — a case conceptualization, an instructional sequence, a charted repertoire, an RFT-aligned program for one complex skill, a parent-facing report. You’ll bring this work to recurring cohort chart-shares, culminating in your Final Case Presentation. By Day 90, you have a complete case study you can use as your portfolio for years afterward.
How much time should I expect to commit each week?
Plan on 4–6 hours per week: roughly 1 hour for live group coaching, about 30 minutes (averaged) for bi-weekly 1:1 calls, self-paced module work, and your chosen learner’s session work. You’re charting your learner during sessions you’re already running, so the chart work doesn’t add time — it changes how you spend the time you already have.
Is private-pay really viable for someone in my market?
The practice-architecture module is where this gets answered for you specifically. You’ll work through your market, your dosing, your offer design, your pricing, and your time architecture — so you leave with both the practitioner skills and the structural decisions to apply them sustainably. The program doesn’t promise revenue; it teaches you the frameworks that make revenue possible.
What if I work primarily in agency, insurance, or publicly funded ABA right now?
You’re welcome. Many practitioners come into this program while working inside agency, insurance, or publicly funded systems — particularly direct-care practitioners working with adults in supported employment, adult day programs, or other services where there’s structural room to apply individualized, building-focused programming. Some use it to think about a future transition. Others apply parts of the method inside their current setting. The program teaches the method; what you do with it is yours to design.
What if my caseload doesn’t fit your niche?
The program is designed for practitioners working 1:1 with learners who have language gaps, comprehension challenges, or executive-function struggles. That includes school-age and adolescent learners — and adults with disabilities, who are often years behind in school with the same kinds of issues. If your caseload is centered on early intervention or severe behavior reduction, a strategy call is the right place to figure out whether this program is the fit, or whether a future offering would serve you better.
When is the next one?
The beta cohort is full. The next cohort opens in autumn 2026 — join the waitlist and you’ll be first to know when applications open, with priority access. A strategy call is a good place to talk through what would need to be true for it to fit, and what to work on in the meantime.

Autumn 2026 cohort

Join the waitlist

The beta cohort is full. Add your name and you’ll be first to know when applications open for the next cohort — with priority access before it opens to anyone else.

You don’t have to choose between meaningful work and work that pays.

Success that costs you your peace isn’t success.

For practitioners who never fit the model. For learners the model never fit. The beta cohort is full — and the next cohort opens in autumn 2026.

No pressure, no cost, no script. Honest answers to your questions, direction on what’s actually keeping you stuck, and clarity on whether this is the right move for you right now — and whether I’m the right coach. If I’m not, I’ll point you somewhere better.

The model never fit.
Build the one that does.

Put the science in everyone’s hands. — Sophie