Back to School
Today was James's first day at his new school, Pleasant Hill Elementary. James is in three Special Education programs that are designed to more efficiently meet his Individualized Education Plan (IEP): the Functional Life Skills class room, SCORES/Autism support, and mainstream support for the regular kindergarten classroom. For now, most of James's day will be spent in the Lifeskills classroom to work on behavior issues and get him used to following instructions. At first, he'll be spending an hour or less every day in a mainstreamed classroom for socialization. As James's tolerance to the regular classroom improves, the idea is to increase his time mainstreamed in kindergarten. There will be an aide there to help him.
The SCORES program is designed to support the mainstreaming of autistic children. The program at Pleasant Hill Elementary has a full-time autism specialist dedicated to the school. He has a special room for autistic children. The autism specialist seems to be a likeable guy that can relate to children well, and the room is nice with computers and fun stuff, nothing like a detention area. The children can temporarily go to the room if they get overloaded or need a break from their mainstream environment--that way, they can still work on their curriculum. They also use the room if they need additional time to reinforce something they learned in a mainstream class, or (for older kids), have a study-hall kind of environment with an autism specialist there to help. Our goal is to get James a bit more "table ready" with Lifeskills, but then reduce the time in Lifeskills as needed while increasing the time in the mainstream classroom by using the SCORES resources.
Last Spring when James was still in PPCD/EC (Early Childhood Education for Special Education students) they didn't have this program for him. James got bored with the Special Education classroom and seemed ready to mainstream. The mainstreaming worked great for the first two or three months, but eventually his perseveration, obsessive-compulsiveness, destructive behavior, and outbursts got in the way. He also began hitting kids. Earlier I had problems with getting resources to support the type of Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) outlined in James's IEP. (I had to write a letter to the AISD Assistant Director of Special Education explaining that the school district was in violation of James's IEP--I might talk about that in another posting.) But even with a teaching assistant, James's behavior got so bad that I had to leave work to pick him up. At school he was throwing chairs, tearing up things, dropping down to the floor in tantrums, and regularly hitting, squeezing, and "gleefully" pinching kids--specific kids. Near the end of the Spring semester he had to wear house shoes in class because he got into the habit of kicking other children. Eventually the school would call me to pick him up on a regular basis, and I would immediate drive him to the day care early (instead of going home) just so I could meet deadlines at work (my employer was understanding, but still, it made things difficult for everyone, not just me). I began taking James on 15-minute walks in the playground right before school to do some "heavy work" (climbing, hopping, monkey bars, etc.) It seemed to help with his morning hours at school, but a lot of problems still continued later on in the day.
What was odd was that James was almost always well-behaved at day care. My theory is that (1) they didn't push him as hard in day care (a more relaxing environment), (2) day care was a change to his current environment, (3) the day care had a better staff-to-child ratio, and (4) the day care had more kids that would interact with him and had less kids that would respond to him negatively ("negative" from James's perspective means to ignore him, act afraid, or act annoyed). James knew better than to bother bigger kids or kids that would hit back or otherwise stand up to him. I noticed similar behavior in his treatment of cats and dogs when he was younger. Dogs and cats are simple: they either run away or they bite back. People, even kids, are more complicated, especially if you're autistic and trying to figure out how to interact with them.
Anyway, that was James was last Spring. James has calmed down somewhat over the Summer. Yesterday he did great in day care, even though he was there for the entire day. He also spent a couple of hours in day care today and did well again, despite the stress from the long bus ride; however, the teacher's log for his first day of school read as follows:
James participated in story time, calendar, math activities and social play. James did have some behaviors today including taking another students supplies (numerous times), throwing a chair, throwing puzzles off his desk, tearing paper off the wall, and many instances of not following directions.
Oh well, at least the Lifeskills program is designed to work on these behaviors, and I've heard that they've dealt with worse.
The SCORES program is designed to support the mainstreaming of autistic children. The program at Pleasant Hill Elementary has a full-time autism specialist dedicated to the school. He has a special room for autistic children. The autism specialist seems to be a likeable guy that can relate to children well, and the room is nice with computers and fun stuff, nothing like a detention area. The children can temporarily go to the room if they get overloaded or need a break from their mainstream environment--that way, they can still work on their curriculum. They also use the room if they need additional time to reinforce something they learned in a mainstream class, or (for older kids), have a study-hall kind of environment with an autism specialist there to help. Our goal is to get James a bit more "table ready" with Lifeskills, but then reduce the time in Lifeskills as needed while increasing the time in the mainstream classroom by using the SCORES resources.
Last Spring when James was still in PPCD/EC (Early Childhood Education for Special Education students) they didn't have this program for him. James got bored with the Special Education classroom and seemed ready to mainstream. The mainstreaming worked great for the first two or three months, but eventually his perseveration, obsessive-compulsiveness, destructive behavior, and outbursts got in the way. He also began hitting kids. Earlier I had problems with getting resources to support the type of Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) outlined in James's IEP. (I had to write a letter to the AISD Assistant Director of Special Education explaining that the school district was in violation of James's IEP--I might talk about that in another posting.) But even with a teaching assistant, James's behavior got so bad that I had to leave work to pick him up. At school he was throwing chairs, tearing up things, dropping down to the floor in tantrums, and regularly hitting, squeezing, and "gleefully" pinching kids--specific kids. Near the end of the Spring semester he had to wear house shoes in class because he got into the habit of kicking other children. Eventually the school would call me to pick him up on a regular basis, and I would immediate drive him to the day care early (instead of going home) just so I could meet deadlines at work (my employer was understanding, but still, it made things difficult for everyone, not just me). I began taking James on 15-minute walks in the playground right before school to do some "heavy work" (climbing, hopping, monkey bars, etc.) It seemed to help with his morning hours at school, but a lot of problems still continued later on in the day.
What was odd was that James was almost always well-behaved at day care. My theory is that (1) they didn't push him as hard in day care (a more relaxing environment), (2) day care was a change to his current environment, (3) the day care had a better staff-to-child ratio, and (4) the day care had more kids that would interact with him and had less kids that would respond to him negatively ("negative" from James's perspective means to ignore him, act afraid, or act annoyed). James knew better than to bother bigger kids or kids that would hit back or otherwise stand up to him. I noticed similar behavior in his treatment of cats and dogs when he was younger. Dogs and cats are simple: they either run away or they bite back. People, even kids, are more complicated, especially if you're autistic and trying to figure out how to interact with them.
Anyway, that was James was last Spring. James has calmed down somewhat over the Summer. Yesterday he did great in day care, even though he was there for the entire day. He also spent a couple of hours in day care today and did well again, despite the stress from the long bus ride; however, the teacher's log for his first day of school read as follows:
James participated in story time, calendar, math activities and social play. James did have some behaviors today including taking another students supplies (numerous times), throwing a chair, throwing puzzles off his desk, tearing paper off the wall, and many instances of not following directions.
Oh well, at least the Lifeskills program is designed to work on these behaviors, and I've heard that they've dealt with worse.
posted by Paul Short at 9:06 PM
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