How Therapeutic Day Schools Benefit Students with Unique Needs

I am excited to introduce this week’s guest blogger! Brooke has held a variety of roles including paraprofessional, senior paraprofessional, substitute teacher, special education teacher. Her recent role is the Program Coordinator for a Transition program. Brooke is here to explain what a therapeutic day school is.

Explaining my role to others

“I work at a therapeutic day school for students with autism” is the answer I give when someone asks me what I do. People don’t really have context for what a therapeutic school is. They hear I work with students with autism. They usually respond by saying something along the lines of, “Wow, it takes a special person to do that” or “That must be really hard,” I then respond with a smile and a nod.

Is what I do and where I work for everyone? No, of course not. Are there really hard days that leave me physically and emotionally drained? 100%. But, for me, it is what I know. I love where I work and the students I get the opportunity to work with. It was my first job after college and at the time I knew next to nothing about autism. Nearly 10 years later it is the only school I’ve worked at and maybe to the surprise of many, I can’t imagine working in a public school. 

What is a therapeutic day school?

My school is technically labeled a “non-public therapeutic day school,” which is a fancy way of saying that we are accredited by the state’s department of education to provide educational placement and services for students in special education. All of the students who are at our school could not be supported at their home school/district for a variety of reasons and their district is paying tuition for them to attend our school.

We serve students Kindergarten through the age of 22 who have a primary diagnosis of autism, several have other diagnoses but all have autism as their primary educational diagnosis.

One of my favorite quotes said by Stephen Shore,

“If you’ve met one person with autism, you have met one person with autism.”

I love this because all of our students are unique and their needs at both school and at home are different, AND they do have things in common, other than their diagnosis of autism. 

Therapeutic versus Private School

By this point you’re probably thinking, okay but what makes it therapeutic and not a private school? Great question!

Every therapeutic day school may offer different services so I can only speak from my own experience. My school is able to offer speech therapy, occupational therapy, music therapy and social work services to all students along with behavior intervention support that is supported by a BCBA; students also participate in P.E. and have opportunities for S.T.E.A.M. throughout their week as well. These services are all in addition to typical academic requirements.

While many of these services are offered in a public school’s special education program, our school is able to tailor everything we do to each student’s unique academic and behavior needs, we are not a one size fits all type of school. Some of our students are working at or above grade level and some are well below their grade level.

We have some students who display maladaptive behaviors, which could include but not limited to hitting, kicking, biting, self-injurious behaviors, and property destruction and we have some students who may display repetitive and stereotypical behaviors. Again, all of our students are unique in every way, including their behaviors.

What do you focus on?

Although all students have to meet the academic requirements as their neurotypical peers, our main focus for many of our students is equipping and empowering them with the skills they’ll need to be as independent as possible in the future. To support this need, the school identified 15 “Essential Skills” as our main and top priority, which includes:

1. Possess and utilizes an identified reliable, spontaneous communication method
2. Demonstrates self-management of behavior
3. Safely participates in groups of 5+ individuals
4. Complets personal care routines independently (e.g. clean hands/face, brushes teeth, hair combed/brush, etc)
5. Follows spoken and visual directions
6. Respects and maintains appropriate boundaries of self and others (physical and otherwise)
7. Follows directions from multiple people
8. Manages  bodily functions independently (e.g. toileting, wiping nose, covering cough, etc)
9. Demonstrates choice making
10. Waits appropriately for 10 minutes
11. Possesses and utilizes skills/strategies to manage emotions and/or sensory needs
12. Demonstrates problem solving
13. Safely engages in a recreational/leisure activity for 15 minutes
14. Reads and writes functionally
15. Advocates for him/himself

We help our students work on these skills day in and day out and many of these skills drive what their programming looks like as well as their IEP goals. Using these 15 skills helps guide our team members in planning for their lessons and therapy sessions.

Providing differentiation and individualization

For some students it may not be as important for them to learn addition and subtraction as it is to learn how to participate in groups with other peers and tell us when they need to use the bathroom or need a break instead of using maladaptive behaviors to communicate those needs. As an organization we strive to meet both the academic needs and functional needs of our students through strategic and meaningful programming. 

Working together!

Another aspect that makes therapeutic day schools unique is the TEAM, every classroom is made up of a group that includes a special education teacher, speech language pathologist, social worker, occupational therapist, music therapist, paraprofessionals, other specialists and administration.

Their IEP teams also includes the student, the student’s parents/guardians and a representative from their home school district. It’s a lot of people with different experiences and backgrounds, but what we do and value is centered around the students. Unlike a public school these professional team members are in the classroom several times throughout the week and have relatively smaller caseloads, not only to best support our students but to support each other.

The environment in which we work is tough and there are days that my body and my brain are exhausted but what keeps me coming back after all these years is not only the students, they are just the best, but the team. I get to work closely with like minded passionate people every single day and I don’t take that for granted.

If you’re looking for more ways to prevent behaviors in your classroom, read this post!

Also, make sure to read How to Make Your Classroom a Safe Space!

You can also read about all the ABA Assessments here!