Community Forum is a rich opportunity for the young adults to work as a group on variety of skills including problem solving, perspective taking, maintaining mutual respect and fair rules of disagreement, and higher order thinking issues.  It is a fantastic way for the guys to work on emotional regulation, communication skills, interpersonal relationship building, empathy, listening and attention skills.

We have a predictable structure to each meeting.  First, we do a brief check-in to get the group aligned and settled.  We then move on to current events sourced from community, city, state, national and international news.  If the guys feel particularly compelled by a story, we may follow its progress over time, as we did when Libya overthrew its dictator or when Jerry Sandusky was arrested.  The bulk of the meeting is then devoted to a variety of topics that relate to transition, adulthood, or other important issues.  For material we use a wide range of sources, such as essays, articles, documentaries, media, scientific studies, Internet research, and books.

At the moment, we are watching a documentary about the food industry in America entitled Food, Inc.  It is approximately an hour and half long, so we are watching it in about three segments.  As a result, many of the young adults are starting to engage in dialog with the staff and their peers about information from the film and how it connects with the foods they eat on a daily basis.  We also have a basic nutrition segment in the curriculum to demystify food as it relates to health, which will add a practical side and augment the information provided in Food, Inc.        

The other running topic right now is 50 things everyone needs to know.  We are taking one item from the list at a time and expanding on it practically, such as how to change a tire and be prepared if your car breaks down.  We will periodically have guest speakers come in and share about their lives and work.  Last semester, we had a prison minister discuss his groundbreaking peace initiative work in maximum-security prisons.  The guys were very engaged and asked many poignant questions to further understand the lives of those in prison.  We also had a stock broker visit and discuss what the stock market is and how it works.  We have since begun a mock stock market game where we are investing fake money into companies and following our “investments” for the rest of the semester.  

Community Forum is both challenging and very helpful to each one of the young adults.

~Chrissy

TCS runs a model program; we are beginning to serve as a model to other programs and to train other professionals in our approach. We are changing the face of adolescent and young adult education in the world of autism. We are also working hard every day to meet the needs of about 25 individuals and their families. As you can imagine, this is expensive work. We ask our families to pay a lot, but the reality is that we spend far more on each student than the tuition we collect. That’s why we raise money; we need to raise over $175,000 each year to support a program this size.

This event is a major part of our fundraising strategy. We will ask people there to support us in every way that we can. We believe our cause is a noble and necessary one. I have personally invested much of my professional career in this project—financially, emotionally, and physically—and I feel comfortable asking people to help because I know how valuable our work is, and how unheralded it still remains in the larger world.

This event also serves as a giant Thank You to all the organizations and individuals who have supported us already. The TCS community has always loved a good party, and we believe this one will be no exception. We want all of you to know how much we appreciate what you do to keep us running! 

P.S. There will be dancing, so get ready!

~Dave

I received the following email last week. It was a forward from Jess Davis, the newest member on the TCS board.  Jess is an attorney at Davis Adams, LLC and has generously reached out to his contacts to invite them to our fundraiser. I thought it did a wonderful job letting people know about the school and why attendance at the event is so imperative.

This email also made me so thankful for our local connections and support. We are The Community School, and we do incredible work that serves the community surrounding our program. We are located in a community full of generous and supportive individuals and organizations, several of which will be a part of the event.  In my moments of stress and worry, I find comfort knowing that we are growing, and that people like Jess have our back. Please take a moment to read his email. It may help you in reaching out to those around you!  ~Whitney

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In the context of TCS, change is a monster, a tool, and a celebration.  As a monster, it scares our students and participants.  Change is the unpredictability of a loud noise, or a disagreeing friend, or a forgotten lunchbox.  For people whose sensory systems are uneven or over-reactive, these “little” changes can be catastrophic, leading to paranoia, extreme withdrawal, and fight-or-flight reactions.  Time and again have I seen students go to great lengths to make things stay the same.  I remember one student denying the reality of chance, insisting that dice should be made to roll in a pattern.  I have seen students engage in elaborate rituals, insisting on telling the same story over and over, or washing their hands in a certain specific way, or only engaging in certain activities with “that” teacher, and not any other.  For individuals with weak visual-spatial thinking, or challenged motor planning, or sensory integration difficulties, change can rip them apart, devouring their self-confidence and preventing them from developing any sense of grounded stability.

As a tool, change is an excellent way to help individuals to grow.  Properly managed and sensitively introduced, change helps us all to stretch our capacity for thinking and problem-solving.  Unexpected occurrences lead us to tolerate an ever wider range of emotions: frustration, anticipation, excitement, disappointment.  With the right amount of scaffolding and within the context of nurturing, playful relationships, change pushes us ahead.  This is one of the pillars of Floortime, that within the context of an accepting, affectively warm relationship, we can help people to handle surprises, or negotiations, or emotional reactions from others.  We do it a little at a time, with lots of warmth and playfulness sandwiched around the challenge; but we always think about introducing change and more change.

As a celebration, change is the best.  A new book!  A field trip!  An unexpected movie during lunch!  As our social-emotional systems develop, most of us love the unexpected, and it is a pleasure to experience the thrill of wondering what’s around the corner, or what might happen next.  For some of our students, the celebration of change must be small—a single new food, or a few minutes trying a new game before returning to the old, or meeting one new person, but only briefly.

Change as celebration can trigger all kinds of emotions.  I just got invited out to dinner, and I get to choose the place.  Do I pick old and familiar?  Or new and untried?  Or something in between?  How much change can I tolerate and still enjoy it?  We shall see, we shall see…

~Dave

In this post, I’ll focus on one aspect of their template: essential questions.

Essential questions are the fundamental, but often unspoken questions that lie at the heart of a discipline. I’ll share some of the virtues of essential questions for curriculum planning, and some examples of essential questions from TCS curricula.

Essential questions spark our thinking about things that matter.

“How do you create community?”

This question animates all of us at TCS. (It kept Plato and John Dewey busy, too.)  It is front and center in Rebecca’s Lunch Bunch class. She places the recurring activities of Lunch Bunch – how the guys agree on a restaurant and even how they decide who gets to ride shotgun – in this larger context. What makes a good group member? What is fairness? In a class like history, a focus on essential questions can help us resist the siren call of superficial coverage in favor of going deeper in a topic. 

Essential questions are accessible to a wide range of students.

What is an ideal society? What does it mean to be healthy? What is a portrait? Can heroes have flaws?  These questions are from our Western Civilization, PE, Art and Literature classes respectively. Essential questions are equal-opportunity-engagers; they are inviting to novices and experts alike. Also, by inviting a student to entertain the questions at the heart of a discipline we get a little window into his thinking. We learn not only how much background information he has, but how relatively concrete or abstract his ideas are. Vygotsky might say we get a sense of his “zone of proximal development.” Academic content can be built from there.

Essential questions elude easy answers.

An essential question has many possible answers and invite back-and-forth. Ask our guys, “Why do you think video games have ratings? If you were a parent, how would you use ratings?” You might get a recitation on the difference between American and Japanese rating systems. You also might wind up in a discussion about the role of parents and the vulnerability of childhood. The point is that whether the topic is video games, or the causes of the Civil War, or personal identity, essential questions can lead us (teachers and students) beyond fact-based, rote learning to the construction of meaning from multiple perspectives.

Essential questions can build rapport.

Exploring an essential question with someone – a student, a fellow teacher, a child or a friend – is delightful. Just be curious.

~Josephine

• Regular rules dodgeball
• Lee’s Dodgeball
• Dodgeball with points
• Dodgeball where different colors mean different things
• Dodgeball with a Frisbee
• bug out
• bug out baseball

Ultimate Frisbee became:

• Goaltimite
• gym version
• youth room version
• touchdown
• goal/ball-timate
• Gaelic soccer
• team handball

In the end, the purpose of so much tweaking is to have the interest levels and participation high within the group.  When both of these factors are present, the staff can shift their focus onto supporting the development of team thinking and team work skills.

Based on the progress we have seen and written in the Google docs, this formula is working very well. The staff is excited to see what other games are developed and how the guys grow from their participation in these creative games.

~Armann

I was first introduced to Yoga by a friend in 1999, right after college. It was during a stressful time in my life while I was entering the ‘real world.’ I took many things away from that first experience, like you should always start with a beginner’s class in Yoga (ouch!). Second, and most important in my journey, I learned that whatever Yoga was and whatever it did for me felt really good, and I wanted more. Since that first class, I came to understand what it was that my body and disposition were so drawn to and relieved by the practice of Yoga. Yoga is researched and has been proven to be great for anxiety and stress reduction, among many other benefits. I am a sensitive soul with a very sensitive nervous system. I struggle with anxiety. Do you know of anyone like this?

Yoga can help all kinds of people on many levels. It does not discriminate. And the good news is that one does not have to follow a strict traditional Yoga philosophy or change their whole lifestyle in order to experience the wonderful physical and mental health benefits it offers. This is especially good news for our students and children with special needs. Yoga works with the body on a structural level to help align the vertebrae, increase flexibility, and strengthen muscles and tendons. Research also shows that yoga may help with weight loss, increased fitness, stress reduction and the management of chronic health conditions. In addition, it has been shown to rejuvenate and tone internal organs; purify the epidermal, digestive, lymphatic, cardiovascular, and pulmonary systems of toxins and waste matter; balance and tone the nervous systems and endocrine systems; and nourish and stimulate the brain cells. The end result can be increased emotional stability, mental clarity, and a greater sense of overall well-being. Individuals with special needs who practice Yoga have shown improvement in their motor functioning, cognitive and communication skills.

I came into Yoga for a good stretch and workout but I received so much more. I deeply appreciate feeling more centered and peaceful in my daily life and sharing this with others. If you are considering trying it out for yourself, your student or child, I encourage you to stay open and curious as to what Yoga can do for you.

Anyway, I had a conversation, or rather series of conversations, with George today. He is just finishing up a stint as a member of the chorus in a high school musical production. It has been an incredible growth experience for him, and today it aroused in George a desire to talk about what comes next. We discussed various internship possibilities he might have, his preferences for how he spends his day at TCS, and his desire to get a new girlfriend. These conversations were, at times, difficult, since George sometimes struggles to pick the right words and phrasing. I used a storyboarding technique (drawing cartoon versions of actual events to help an individual organize thoughts and describe what was said and what was thought); we generated lists and wrote things on the board so we could refer back to them; I rephrased sentences and asked clarifying questions and went slowly. At times, I felt like we weren’t getting anywhere. But over the course of these conversations (about three, lasting a total of 90 minutes or so), we covered a lot of ground. I came to really understand what George was thinking about. I suspect that George picked up a few ideas about what was in my head. And for at least some of our time together, we were definitely having a dialogue around a shared idea (what some might call “being on the same page”).

At the end of our conversations, I wondered what we had accomplished. We hadn’t picked a new internship; we hadn’t changed his program very much; we didn’t figure out how to get a new girlfriend. We didn’t really get much of “life” done.

Or did we? Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. George and I were busy today. We discussed things, and we worked hard to understand each other. Those moments of connectedness, those “circles of communication”, those times when we both knew that we understood each other and could laugh together—I think those moments really do constitute life. George and I made plans. And we lived.

Community Shred Day!

November 5th from 10am-1pm…come have your confidential documents shredded and recycled on-site by Atlanta’s premiere shredding company, Eagle Secure Shredding!

 Event to be held in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church of Decatur located at 308 Clairemont Ave. Decatur, GA 30030. Paper shredding only.

Rain or shine, we’ll see you there!

 We have learned a number of really interesting things in this class so far. Did you know, that hip hop dancing as we know it today actually has its origins in the year 1925, when a man named Earl Tucker (aka snake hips) invented this dance style in Harlem? Or that the James Brown songs Funky Drummer and Sex Machine have a break beat that are now the most sampled break beats in all of hip hop music? we have also spent time learning about the social makeup and history of the Bronx during the 50s and 60s and how this influenced the culture- the dancing, the music, the topics that artists rap about, the type of graffiti they paint, and the parties that they had that brought hip hop to the mainstream.

As the class continues, we plan to build up to modern times and learn more about the hip hop artists that we enjoy today, the different styles of hip hop music, and the new kinds of hip hop dancing that have emerged in recent years. Using the time line has not only allowed the guys to see a physical representation of what we have learned, it also helps to strengthen their ability to sequence, visualize, and see how a series of small components can add up to one, constantly evolving, all-inclusive culture that has a huge impact on music and pop culture as we know it today. Being engaged with the guys around a topic of shared interest is when i get to see them at their best. They are lively, opinionated, and hungry for knowledge. We have a blast every week in this class.  The next time you see Tim or Taylor, you should ask them what we are learning about in our Hip Hop class. They should be able to drop some knowledge on you like only a true Hip Hoppa would

~Kim