Iradys Ortega was apprehensive when her son Joey was diagnosed with autism and placed in the North Bergen School District’s pre-K program last year.
She said he had “no vocabulary” and wasn’t sure what the program would offer him.
“His vocabulary has increased like three times than where we were, at least 100 words more,” said Ortega, who is a special education teacher in the district. Joey is now a kindergarten student.
“He knows all of his names, his addresses, his telephone number…,” she said. “He started learning how to communicate with us, asking questions, coming from a kid who wouldn’t even speak.”
Ortega said that he no longer has tantrums, enjoys math and reading, has gotten involved in recreational sports, and is being mainstreamed into regular classes for half of the day.
Kindergarten teacher Vanessa Treus said that one morning another student asked Joey to help him open up his cream cheese for his bagel. The teachers dropped what they were doing and watched, as Joey said “here you go” and handed the other student the cream cheese, who replied, “Thank you so much.”
“You don’t understand how hard we worked to get them to not ask us and work with their peers,” said Treus.
Growing program gets results
The North Bergen school district’s program for autistic students has grown over the last year. Many students are now able to communicate, and some are even being mainstreamed into regular classrooms.
During the 2009-2010 school year, the Board of Education introduced ACES, a program designed to save the approximate $65,000 per-pupil tuition cost of sending students to autistic-specific schools out of district, and to integrate students into regular classrooms with their peers.
The program started with 16 pre-kindergarten students, many of whom did not have normal social or communication skills because of the disorder. Some struggled with aggressive behavior and a failure to make eye contact.
Autism still has no known cause, but around 1 in 94 students in New Jersey are diagnosed on its scale, which categorizes children from severe to high-functioning. The national average is 1 in 150.
With those statistics, teachers faced two daunting tasks: Creating a successful Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) program, where data is collected and teachers’ aides individually redirect students constantly along the way, and expanding the program further.
Now there are two trailers designated for pre-K, one kindergarten classroom, and a first grade class at McKinley School.
Special Services Director Robert Kornberg said it cost an additional $100,000 to expand the pre-K program to kindergarten and another $120,000 for the first grade, which included staff and retrofitting classrooms.
‘It touches your heart’
Treus, who taught the pre-K classroom before becoming the kindergarten teacher, said that since the program has started she has seen remarkable growth.
“I have a kid that I’ve been working with almost four years in home therapy. This program opened up and he came to me and he wouldn’t even pay attention to us as a teacher,” she said. “We made video models for him, he needed separate instruction. Just this year he actually started imitating things that we do and waving to us and trying to pronounce words like ‘Hi.’ It’s amazing to even see that now we’re actually a part of his life, where before it was his way or no way. It touches your heart.”
According to Carolyn Gallagher, the autism and behavioral consultant for North Bergen, around four kindergarten students have already been mainstreamed into regular classrooms for half of the day this year and there is a list of students, from pre-K to first grade, they will target for partial or full mainstreaming next year, or place them in regular education classrooms in the future.
Treus said that eight of her students who started off attending a regular classroom for a half-day have been fully mainstreamed this year. She said a large part of their education plan is aimed at getting them to do just that. While in pre-K an aide used ABA and redirected their behaviors, she said that now in kindergarten two students work with an aide since they’ve already learned important social skills.
Expanding past expectations
At the beginning of this school year, first grade, which will have 6, 7, and 8-year old students unless they mainstream out of the classroom, was instituted at McKinley School.
Kornberg said that most of these students were brought back from other special education classrooms, as well as from out of the district.
Teacher Janet Mini said they work on a lot of first grade curriculum that they modify, such as including a song into a lesson to engage students more. They also have a “choice board,” where if they work toward earning all of the “pennies,” they can play with a toy of their choice for two or three minutes.
Students have individual lesson plans that teachers track. Mini thinks that at least three of her students will have mainstreaming options in their future.
A few weeks ago, she said that her classroom sat in on a regular first grade to hear a presentation by United Water. Afterward one of her students remarked on how interesting that classroom was and how he would want to be a part of it.
“So I sat and spoke to him,” she said, “and said that ‘If it’s something you want, it is definitely a possibility. We just need to work on some of the behaviors you have here in the classroom, because they wouldn’t be acceptable there,’ and it’s actually now something he asks about.”
Mini said that in the former special education school she taught at, there were no mainstreaming opportunities like this.
Kornberg said it is their goal not to hold students back.
Looking forward
Special Services District Supervisor Lynn Teta admitted that when they first set out to do this program, she wasn’t sure that their massive plan would work, but now she is overwhelmed with the progress teachers have made with students.
“I am okay if he has to stay with the program for another year,” said Ortega, Joey’s mother. “I have seen a dramatic change in him.”
Ortega said she was happy Joey had a “window of opportunity” and that the staff “brought him out of that little autistic world and brought him back into our world.”
She’s also glad he doesn’t take a bus for 40 minutes to some other school, but gets to be in this program where the teachers have gone above and beyond her expectations.
“He talks to me about his friends in school,” she said. “He loves his teacher. Before, he didn’t want to go to school, now he wants to go to school all day.”
Tricia Tirella may be reached at TriciaT@hudsonreporter.com.