Happiness is graduation and moving up.
Transition Criteria
Nearly all of the students who attend Children’s Workshop acquire the skills that permit them to benefit from instruction in less restrictive school settings. We consider the skills they have acquired, how rapidly they acquired those skills, and the programs that are available when we recommend a transition placement.
Transition is a team decision
Transition is always a decision of the student’s team and we collaborate closely with the student’s parents and other members of the team to arrive at a placement decision that is optimal for the student. Whether the transition placement is to a program of the COOK Education Center or to a classroom in the student’s public school district, we work hand in hand with teachers and other personnel to develop a plan for transition, ways to measure the success of the transition, and a plan to fade our support.
We have identified certain critical skills that help to predict the student’s likelihood of success whatever the transition placement. These include, but are not limited to the following:
- The student attends to instruction involving new skills for at least 10 minutes without displaying problem behavior or disruptive behavior
- The student follows multiple step instructions that include moving away from the teacher and subsequently returning to the teacher
- The student requires only social and/or token reinforcement to acquire new skills
- The student attends to the lead teacher when in a moderate sized group
- The student engages in independent activities for up to 5 minutes without teacher prompting and reinforcement
- The student is toilet trained at least to the level of voiding on a time schedule
- The student displays problem behaviors, if at all, at frequencies and intensities that are manageable by the transition school personnel
