| “STEPPING AROUND” IN STEPS |
| As suggested by research , sometimes a great therapist for your child can be another child who has properly developed his social skills. This information gets us into the eternal discussion of what is better for the child, a classroom with less children and distractions that is specialized on working with children who are in the spectrum of autism, or a larger classroom whose children are more social. The law in the United States is clear about this question. If the child can handle a ‘less restrictive” classroom, meaning a classroom that has a higher ratio of children per adult, then, the larger classroom is the place the child belongs to. What should be the placement for a child who gets too distracted in the large group, but who would benefit from a more social group, though? Or, what about the children whose Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) sets him at the ‘less restrictive environment”, but who could benefit from the structure on a smaller classroom? And, what about those little fellows who do not have autism spectrum disorders but whose disabilities or behaviors could be better addressed within the structure of the small structured classroom? As we feel that these children should not be on an either/or position, we have created our “stepping” program. Once a team/parent recommendation for a child to visit another classroom is in place, a plan is made to generate the conditions of an on-going visitation, and of an evaluation of the impact of this activity on the child. The child will then be “shadowed” by a familiar person from his or her mother-classroom to the visiting-classroom. If a child from our STEPS program is moving to an out-of-STEPS classroom, we say that he is “stepping out”, but if a child from the non-STEPS classrooms visits STEPS, we call it “stepping in”. If a child from STEPS is selected to visit another STEPS classroom, we use the “stepping within”. Some children end up leaving for good their STEPS classroom of eight children and four adults, for a classroom with twelve children and three or four adults. As we say, there is some stepping-around going on in STEPS. |