Self-Contained Autism Classroom: Preparing for a New Student Mid-Year

We are 3 weeks into school and I am already getting a brand new student. If you are like me and you teach a self-contained classroom, you know getting a new student isn't just putting a name on a desk and putting a cubby tag on a cubby. There is so much more that goes into it. So I thought I'd bring you along as I prep my room tonight for my new student tomorrow. I am going to be super transparent and let you know that I don't know a lot about the student, and that's okay. I don't have to know a lot about the student in order to make the student's day successful. In the morning, I will get access to medical things and just make sure that there's nothing that I need to be aware of. But in the meantime, what I know is name, gender, gen ed, class, and that they're with me about 98% of the time. And so that's really it. I've got an email into the parents, and outside of that, we're just gonna set it up to be a really fun, successful day. This is super tricky, right? We as teachers, we always want all the information, and Unfortunately, this time I just don't have it. I don't know academic level, I don't know cognitive ability, I just don't have a lot of information. I do have a medical diagnosis that is also the educational diagnosis, but for confidentiality, that's going to stay private. But I am going to share what I'm going to do to try to get my hands on as much information as possible. First things first, I always prep an extra set of everything, so Thankfully, I have extra just about everything ready to go from where we are right now. I'm not talking about academics. Again, I don't know where this child is academically, and I'm not gonna know for a while, but what I do know is the child needs a folder, the child needs a communication book, the child needs independent work at some point, so I'm gonna pull that out and have just the buckets ready to go. The child needs reinforcement buckets that I will fill once I kind of know what they gravitate to tomorrow, so I'm gonna get those ready. And the child needs a morning work bucket. And we're gonna start simply with just name recognition, plain and simple, just because I don't know where the child is. So I'm gonna have a couple different variety sheets that we can pull from with name recognition, and we'll start with that. I color code my classroom, and so this is just a little tidbit of my color coding system. Every child in my classroom classroom does have a color, and that color correlates to literally everything that they do in my classroom. And so because this is my 8th student, um, I already have that color picked out. I actually have students 8, 9, and 10 ready to go just because you never know when that's gonna happen. So when I prep something for my whole class, I do it in 10 colors. That makes emails like tonight a little more tolerable. I've already pretty well set up. Because this is such a brand new environment, even though I'm not going to actually ask for any academics tomorrow, I am going to pull a visual schedule for the student so they can get used to checking their schedule and moving from one rotation to another. So what does tomorrow look like? Well, honestly, it's going to be a lot of play, and I've pushed all of my academics and all of my instruction to the side tomorrow so I can really get a feel feel for the student. I want to know if they can play, if they can parallel play, if they can play with a peer, what happens in a large group like our morning meeting, what happens in a small group, does that student just want to join in, is that student hesitant, how does the student do with a demand or a transition. Those are the things that I'm looking for. There's enough transitions in our day just from things like lunch and recess an arrival that I'm gonna get a good feel for that outside of academics. I don't want to throw academics in yet because I really just want to work on that relationship building piece. And to give me a hint, I've emailed mom and asked mom to share all of the child's favorite things. That way I've got a heads up tomorrow. It would definitely help if I had some of those favorite things at my fingertips ready to go. And don't worry, we will get to academics. The thing is, I can't tell you when though. It will probably be in the next few weeks, that's my goal. Um, but I am a firm believer in having a relationship with a student and working hard to be able to anticipate that student's needs and meet that student's needs in the classroom, as well as being reinforcing before putting demands like, um, assessments on students. Really, if I were to come in tomorrow and ask this child to do an assessment, I would get an inaccurate view of what the child could do. Then my goals for that child would be inappropriate. Then nobody wins. So really, it's my job to build a relationship, build rapport, figure out what makes the kids tick, and go from there. And eventually then I can ask for the academic measurement that I'm going to use to write IEP goals. It's a goal and I'll get there, but I need a minute. Basically, it's a whole lot of informal assessment and just observation, and that's okay. I'm okay with that. In order to get to the point where I can get good quality measurements of where this child actually is, I have to gain the child's trust, I have to build a relationship, and I have to be reinforcing. Then I'll get a true measurement. I don't want to give the child assessment tomorrow on their very first day and then say, oh yeah, that's their baseline, and use that to write IEP goals. Because in reality, the child's not comfortable in their environment. They don't know the expectations. They don't know the staff. It's all brand new. It would be awful of me to write my assessments from that first encounter, and that wouldn't be fair to anybody. So we have a cubby, we have a folder, we have a communication book, we've got independent work stuff pulled for later. We're nowhere close to that yet. We've got bins pulled for later. I've got morning work with the name prep ready. I've got an email to mom to try to figure out the child's favorite things and ask some independent functioning things. I've got visuals pulled, and I think I'm as ready as I can be for tomorrow. Really, we're just gonna take it easy. It's gonna be a huge adjustment. Anytime you've got a self-contained classroom, you bring another child into that classroom, it's a big adjustment not only for that child but for the other students. Students in the classroom. So it's going to be an all hands on deck. We're going to put academics kind of off to the side for the week, and we're going to see what happens. So I think that's it for tonight. I've got everything that I need ready to go. Well, as much as I can. I would love so much more information, but the fact is, is that we teachers don't always have all the information that we want. And so we really have to do what's in the best interest of the child and the best interest of our classroom. And that is simply sometimes dropping academics and dropping the expectation to be able to do that in the future. And that's my goal tomorrow. I will definitely keep you updated as we go. I am super excited to welcome student number 8.