My other identity is the father of an autistic child. We have invested countless efforts in the construction of "Also in", hoping to make up for our regrets. At that time, resources were too scarce to find a good institution with money. Many teachers can't tell the difference between evaluation tools, methods and strategies. I also hope to solve all these problems. However, the biggest regret is that the speed of construction always seems to fail to keep up with the growth of children. By the time the institution was built, my son had grown up and went to primary school, and he had not intervened in the institution for a day.
The field of autism has developed rapidly in the last five years, and it is actually an industry of consumption upgrading. When the wealth of social civilization reaches a certain level, it will attract attention, and resources and talents can keep up. Before reaching this stage, industry resources are very scarce. When I first joined the profession, therapists basically had no systematic training, let alone BCBA or BCaBA (registered behavioral analyst/deputy analyst). At that time, there were no more than 20 people in Chinese mainland, and few teachers could systematically solve the problems raised by their parents. Many teachers rely more on talent and exploration to support them.
In the first year of our establishment, we spent almost all our money on training therapists. At present, we also have full-time BCBA-D, with more than 45 BCBA/BCaBA/ trainees, while we only have 150 therapists, so this should be the highest proportion of talents in the industry at present. In addition to these behavioral (deputy) analysts, the new therapist will also have a three-month intensive training, basically taking exams every day and week. The side effect is that the elimination rate of new teachers (30-40%) is too high, which will give students too much pressure and be inhuman. Our supervision team and human resources team in IN have been optimizing the recruitment model, hoping to screen out suitable therapists as soon as possible.
Compared with general education, special education is much more complicated, especially the rehabilitation intervention of autism. Even children of the same age, each child has a unique ability level, development baseline, problem behaviors and obstacles, and the teaching methods and teaching environment suitable for them are also different. Therefore, the intervention of autism is actually a non-standardized teaching process, which puts high demands on the professionalism of the therapist in charge of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation therapists should fully understand children's abilities. Be good at paying attention to every project, be able to make a very reasonable teaching plan according to children's ability, and be able to deal with all kinds of problem behaviors. At the same time, through data analysis, always pay attention to whether their children's progress speed is reasonable and whether there is a better choice for teaching plan.
After all the theoretical training of "Yi IN" is passed, the therapist will go to the field to observe how the therapist interacts with children and how to teach, and write a summary feedback on what he sees and wants to see every day. Therapists will initially conduct a large number of simulation drills and assessments for the key points of the practical part, and apply more than two months of study to the actual teaching scene. Through such a slow integration process, the new teacher will become a qualified therapist.
In addition to the therapist's own efforts, each center will be equipped with more than two professional supervisors. The main task of the supervisor is to empower young therapists with their own experience and practical skills to help them make rapid progress. For each new child in the center, the supervisor will first make a comprehensive evaluation of the child's ability, formulate a training plan suitable for the child, and then guide the therapist to intervene in the child.
At present, it is still divided into two classes. One is one-on-one intensive intervention 180 minutes. For three hours in a row, a therapist will hold the baby. The teaching content will cover language, social interaction, cognition, big sports, precision and self-care, involving 30-40 goals. Basically, the intervention will start from the moment the child touches the teacher. However, this is not always a "class". We will arrange desktop class time, game time, exercise time and interaction time according to children's age and ability, so as to combine work and rest.
Another kind of class is interactive game class, usually two therapists. For children aged 4-6, group class is actually a step-by-step process. At the beginning, children should show good cooperation and basic ability in one-on-one teaching, and then gradually enter 1 Dui 2 (joint training class). When children can observe and imitate their peers in the group environment of two people, and show certain interactive social skills, they can enter 4. Group class should also make different training plans for each child, improve children's ability to pay attention to people in group environment, be able to obey collective/individual instructions in various group environments, and improve children's social skills in group games.
Every month, there will be a theme in the "Yezai" group class, hoping that children can improve their basic cognitive ability while socializing in the game.
Compared with traditional institutions, we attach great importance to the application of data, because many times children can't express to their parents: "I learned this" or "Mom, I like this teacher". It is necessary to judge whether the teaching is effective for children, whether the child's progress speed is ideal and whether the child's training plan is reasonable through data records. On the one hand, parents will harvest daily newspapers every day to check their children's performance and training in institutions:
On the other hand, we hope that families can join forces with institutions and intervene in parallel, so we will leave homework for each parent for the day, so that parents can help review and summarize what their children have mastered that day.
Through some small tasks at home, we can summarize and consolidate what we have learned during the day, so that parents can know what to teach today and how to teach when they get home, and children can also get medals for their parents after learning skills. We hope that intervention will be a happy, rational and fulfilling process for families. No matter how well it is done in the future, it is only a crutch after all, and we will throw it away sooner or later. However, through the days in the organization, it is a prerequisite to leave the organization to be able to clearly know what to do in every step in the future.
We hold an IEP meeting with parents every three months to discuss the children's intervention, find out the problems in the intervention process, and iterate and optimize the children's training plan. According to the data recorded every day, we can form a discussion opinion in a targeted way to judge how much progress the child has made after training in the institution for a period of time, how many skills he has gained in the institution, whether the progress speed has become faster, whether the rehabilitation efficiency has become higher, and whether the final rehabilitation result meets the original expected judgment.
However, it is still not perfect. In the process of development, there are many new problems, both internal and external-this is really not an easy task. Parents always want experienced therapists. Therapists are a profession that requires constant learning and great work pressure-but please believe that we have the determination to do this well, and the ALSO team never avoids problems. Once we find a problem, we will try our best to discuss and think about solving it.
It is difficult to do it well, but we are confident that we can do it well in the end.
Your life is also my life!