This fall's classroom highlight is A Child's Garden program, located on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene. Teacher and Autism Consultant, Alicia Schneider has led the classroom over the past 3 years by providing intervention to preschool-age students using both naturalistic and ABA based strategies in a preschool setting. Teacher Alicia and her team are also working on incorporating iPads and other technology into the classroom in the form of communication tools, video modeling, story-based instruction, and educational software. Because of the classroom's affiliation with the University of Oregon, Alicia has served as a supervising teacher and host to practicum students from multiple undergraduate and graduate programs, including the Family and Human Services (FHS) program, the Psychology program, the Communication Disorders (CDS) program, the College of Education's Special Education minor program, and Early Intervention Program (EIP) graduate students. This provides the practicing students with exposure to, and experience delivering evidence-based interventions. At the same time they assist Alicia and staff with classroom set-up, prep, modeling/prompting of language, play, and routine-based skills, and providing direct instruction. Other benefits of being affiliated with the University include the ability to participate in research studies and opportunities to host visitors from other countries, including Laos, China, Saudi Arabia and India!

 

One exciting and unique component of Alicia's program is her parent training program, which meets weekly and instructs families in skills such as social/ communication strategies and providing positive behavior support. Alicia loves these opportunities to connect with her families and encourage them to support one another. She reports that the students clearly benefit from getting supported intervention at home and that "families in my classroom have been able to build friendships with each other and experience a sense of "normalcy" as they hear other parents sharing similar experiences. I see the stress level of many of our parents decrease when they attend parent chats. I also love that they have the opportunity to share ideas with each other, or set up play dates."

 

If you are interested in visiting A Child's Garden and seeing how the program integrates research-based interventions into their program, contact OrPATS for more information.