A few weeks ago Dorothy Siegel, who is a member of the panel on Autism Intervention for the Celebration of Teaching and Learning conference, as am I, described the ASD Nest program on this blog site. That program was developed in response to a need for a better option within the public school system for higher functioning children on the autism spectrum. About two years ago another need was delineated by the NYC Department of Education, Office of Special Education Initiatives. This time the targeted population was children on the autism spectrum entering the school system who were not likely to function well in a class like the ASD Nest kindergarten which expected students to function in groups and meet mainstream kindergarten standards, albeit with a variety of special strategies and practices.  The newer focus was on the children who with some extra initial support were likely to be able to function in ASD Nest kindergarten class after one year, but who were very unlikely to be able to do so at age five when they entered the school system.

Working with Dorothy Siegel as I did in developing the ASD Nest program, as well as with Terry Feuer of the Office of Special Education School Improvement, and with support from Linda Wernikoff who heads the Office of Special Education Initiatives, I designed the Intensive Kindergarten (Intensive K) program model to address this second population. The Intensive Kindergarten is a one-year transitional program. It serves as a partner to the ASD Nest kindergarten program, and its goal is to enable children to move into an ASD Nest kindergarten class after one year.

Unlike the ASD Nest, the Intensive K is not an inclusion program, although it is structured to support interaction between children in the Intensive K and those in the ASD Nest kindergarten  in several ways, e.g., with easy flow-through for visitation in both directions, with some joint activities, and with selected children from the Intensive K participating in activities in the ASD Nest kindergarten class after November or December.

The Intensive K was instituted on a pilot basis in one school during 2007-08. A second site was added in fall 2008. What the Intensive K has to offer is a small class (6 children), with less pressure to implement the academic curriculum of the kindergarten, and with lots of instruction in the areas that made it unlikely for a particular child to function well in the ASD Nest. Those areas include self-regulation, language development and communication, and extreme anxiety.

In summer 2008 a draft version of a manual for the Intensive K was completed. That manual is undergoing expansion and revision based on increased understanding and development from the second pilot year. We now see the ASD Nest and the Intensive K as a package, with two ASD Nest kindergarten classes plus one Intensive K class at a site. We hope to be able to institute that package in additional schools during the coming couple of years. That will not be easy as this package requires three classrooms the first year and two additional classrooms each year as the program ages up; and the Intensive K requires highly skilled support. Without such support, and without very strong teachers, the Intensive K will not be successful.