Case Study: How Ava Helped Reduce Behavior Incidents

Meghan is a special education teacher in East Valley School District No. 90, a small rural district in Washington. She works primarily with autistic middle school students who have significant challenges with communication, emotional regulation, and social interaction. During the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years, she used Ava with her classes of 8-10 students.

Summary

Meghan implemented Ava to help her students build social and emotional skills in a way that felt engaging, accessible, and relevant. She used the game and curriculum every Monday as part of her social skills class and adapted lessons based on her students’ needs. As a result of implementing Ava, Meghan’s class experienced a decrease in behavior incidents, increase in engagement, and improved peer interactions.

Problem

Meghan used social and emotional learning (SEL) materials prior to implementing Ava, but her students were not engaged. The materials were text-heavy and unrelatable, which made it difficult for students with limited reading and writing abilities to engage with the content. Meghan’s students also struggled to understand the connection between what they were learning and how to apply the skills in real life.

She sought out Ava after realizing that traditional SEL tools were not meeting her students’ needs for accessible, meaningful, and developmentally appropriate learning experiences. She needed tools to better support students with:

• Severe behavior incidents that sometimes required classroom evacuation or holds
• Difficulty expressing their needs, apologizing, and understanding how their actions affected others
• Little interest in connecting with peers

Solution

Meghan used the Ava curriculum and game with her students on Mondays during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years.  The flexibility of Ava allowed her to tailor implementation to meet her students’ unique needs. Her class completed the narrative modules in order and used gameplay as a foundation for discussions, role-plays, and activities from the curriculum.

Curriculum

Meghan used the curriculum to spark discussion, reinforce learning, and help students connect the situations in the game to real-life scenarios. She was able to easily adapt independent activities into group activities to better suit her students’ reading, writing, and processing needs.

Game

On Ava Mondays,  students played a narrative module of Ava and then participated in a discussion or role-play from the curriculum. Meghan used  World Builder, one of Ava’s “creative mode” modules, as both an opening task a reward for completing lessons. She would assign students specific things to build or encouraged them to work in pairs.

Impact

Decreased behavior incidents

Meghan found the Needs module especially helpful for supporting students in building self-advocacy and emotional regulation skills. One student in particular had weekly incidents that included throwing desks and chairs. Students and other staff members were sometimes afraid of him during these incidents, and the class often had to be evacuated for everyone’s safety.

After playing Ava, he began to identify what he needed in the moment and ask for it before becoming overwhelmed. Now, the number of incidents has declined from once-a-week to once-a-month and became less intense, which has greatly improved the learning environment. Several other students who displayed similar, but less intense, behaviors also experienced fewer behavior incidents as they learned to identify needs, express their emotions, and advocate for themselves. Meghan’s administrator also noticed improvements in student behavior and interactions after implementing Ava.

Improved peer interactions

Before using Ava, Meghan’s students showed little to no interest in interacting with each other or even learning each other’s names. As they worked through Ava game modules and lessons, that began to shift. Ava gave them a shared language to talk about emotions and needs, which made conversations about them feel more natural and less isolating.

When playing World Builder, students gathered around each other’s screens to watch and celebrate what their classmates created. Although the game is single-player, it became a way for students to interact, connect, and have fun together.

The improved peer interactions extended beyond Ava and into everyday classroom life. Before Ava, the students were not able to play games together without conflict. Now, students are able to play UNO together from start to finish without major meltdowns.

In addition to being able to work well together, students also learned how to navigate conflict.  Instead of repeating “I’m sorry” without reflection, they learned to think about how their actions affected others, what it looked like to take responsibility, and how to genuinely apologize. This led to fewer conflicts and a stronger sense of community in the classroom.

Increased engagement

Students looked forward to “Ava Mondays,” and one student even wanted to play at home. Meghan shared that “my kids talked about Ava all the time,” and that students who typically avoided group activities were excited to participate. Ava also inspired Meghan to extend the lessons beyond the game and curriculum. For example, while completing the “Trying New Things” module, she let the students bring in their favorite foods or items to share with the class.

Within the first month of using Ava, Meghan observed positive changes in her students’ language and processing skills.

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