When my asd son went to preschool (he was not diagnosed then) they had
16 kids per class and 1.5 teachers. They also had one spot for a special
needs kid, who in this class was a kid with AS. He had a 1:1 person, 1
day a week but did really well most of the time. The school had tons of
sensory stuff sat up with him in mind and they did a good job with
transitions.
My girls have a boy with asd in their preschool class. He is verbal but has
does not really engage with other kids or activities and he also does not
seperate from his parents at all. It is a coop preschool with 22 kids and 5
parents and his mom is always there. She is doing a great job with
prompting him to engage socially and physically and she also knows
when to pull back and not to just take over for him. Since their son will
absolutly not seperate a coop preschool has been working really well and
their son has been making a lot of progress.
And I agree - you are not going to find something that is perfect. But you
might find something that works well.
What are the services your daughter's needs?
OMG 24 kids is waay too much.
My child's first year of preschool, be it was in a school for children
with special needs/autism so there wasn't any NT kids but his class was
10 kids, 1 teacher, 3 aids, 1 speech and 1 OT therapist that just
worked with the kids in that class. This years class will be the
same numbers of kids or about that and the same amount of teachers.
At your school district meeting did they settle on your child being in
an inclusion class which this sounds like or a self contained type of
class, which is what I just described. Is there any advice they
can give you maybe throw out some names of schools that are suited for
children special needs.
We found a local kinderkids class for Sarah..they offered two of them at our recreation center in town..The first one was for 3 yr. olds and the other was for 4-5 year olds..it had 8 kids with 2 teachers at all times and very structured and not a daycare whatsoever..
I felt is was perfect for Sarah because the other "daycares' wouldnt even allow her or our therapist to shadow her and this one was will to do both. Since the city offered it and I was resident it was very affordable...they taught her how to write her name and letters, cut with scissors and sit in circle time for a story..always did a craft..weekly theme ..show and tell..snack & lunch:) She loved it and it was short enough and small enough to not overwhelm her~only 3 hours a day for 3x a week so that we could still do ABA and speech therapy in between and some playgroups too:)
Check out the local city rec. center and see what classes they offer for your child..if the teacher is willing and open to helping your child it may be a godsend for you too:) it made her transition to kindergarten at 6 perfect and she was able to tolerate 24 kids all day long with no supports at all:)
Good luck!
Will try to keep this short.....Having lots of problems with dd's transition to preschool. We're basically still trying to find a suitable place since the one we wanted won't take her and provide all the services she needs. I just keep finding issue with every other school we look at. Hard to tell if I'm going overboard, but I know what I want for her. We visited a school on friday and all was OK until the woman told me there were 24 kids in one classroom! 16 are NT, 8 special needs. And when I asked if they had many other autistic children in the program she just said "um, we have a few". hmmmmm......Am I nuts here? For a child who gets totally overwhelmed by lots of people, I'm thinking 24 kids is just too much. And I didn't feel a lot of confidence that my dd's needs would be handled appropriately since there have only been a few others like her. Have one other school to look at this week but I'm getting really scared that we won't find a good program for her. There's 2 weeks until school starts and I still don't know what's going to happen! I REALLY need resolution to this......hi hun
its not about what we think is good for them
its about what is good for them
we has parents will never be 100% ok with theservices that our kids get
but i agree the class is way to big
there should be idealy 6 pupils to four staff why are the children with special needs not on there own anyway
ring the lea and tell them what your concerns if you have a statement you can ask for a review and ask for a one to one aid.
ask if you can revisit the schools you may see things differantly if you go again
ask if you can go and stay with your child on the first day so you have an understanding of what they will be doing.
and dont forget to breath lol
it will sort out on itself so dont worry
love shell
I agree that 24 children in one class seems too large, unless there's a lot of space, more small group work, and a good staff-student ratio. None of my son's teachers have had any experience whatsoever with autism, so to me, experience with even a few autistic students sounds like a luxury.
You probably won't find a perfect place, but will unfortunately have to do some prioritizing and balancing of pros and cons of each placement alternative. The checklists below might help with that. Good luck with everything.
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art44663.asp - a good one by an autism mom, with lots of comments.
http://www.autism-pdd.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13687&am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;PN=1 - from New Mexico Early Childhood Transition Initiative (also available at the following address: http://www.ped.state.nm.us/seo/preschool/90.day.transition.g uidance.doc
http://www.paulakluth.com/articles/schoolinclusive.html - is the school really inclusive or full of hot air?
http://www.speechteach.co.uk/p_resource/parent/whichschool.h tm - questions to ask to help you decide which school for your child
http://www.spedschools.com/Placementinfo/parentcheck.htm - from Massachusetts
Jessie needs OT 3x/wk, ST 3x/wk & PT 1x/wk. I know she'll be out of the room for those things but even the woman showing me the place admitted that it can get a bit crazy in the room. The room isn't significantly bigger than a lot of other classrooms and I think it'll be WAY to overwhelming for her. The school she was recently attending only had 10 kids in it.
I'm so upset about all this. I shouldn't even be having to do this now because I thought we were all set with a school we really loved for her. Had our CPSE meeting June 18th (we started touring schools back in april!) and thought we were set until we got a call about 2 weeks ago saying that it 'fell through'. Now we're scrambling and it's hard to get a good idea of what the actual classrooms are like when there's no kids or teachers in them. Still waiting to hear back from another place.
Thanks all for the good advice though, and Norwaymom for your links (as always!
For ECSE, there were 8 kids, one lead teacher, two paras and most often the SLP or OT were in there as well. Most often there were 4 adults in the room.
24 kids is WAY too many - I don't care if it IS spread out! Trust your gut - that doesn't sound like a good placement to me.