PROGRAM AND SERVICES

   
   
660 Davis Rd
Lawrenceville, GA 30046
678-442-6262

info@specialneedsschools.org

PROGRAM:

  • SNS provides both educational and therapeutic programming.  Our classes run like regular classrooms rather than like special education classrooms.  Our students are exposed to a regular preschool, primary, middle and high school curriculum. 
  • We have a maximum student: teacher ratio of 6:2 for toddlers, 8:2 for preschoolers and 10:2 for primary/middle/high school students.  This small class size allows us to provide individual attention to our students and to their parents.
  • We provide a highly structured environment to maximize learning for students who need external structure.
  • We manipulate the learning environment to ensure success.
  • Our teachers are trained and experienced in normal child development and education as well as special needs.
  • Our program includes lunch (which is sent from home) to allow for feeding programs as well as social and language experiences.
  • We emphasize ego and self-concept development to facilitate an “I can” attitude.
  • We work closely with public and other private schools when students transfer in or out of SNS.
  • Our classes are integrated with non-disabled and disabled students learning and growing together.  Our students are grouped in cross-category/cross–severity classes.
  • We facilitate the development of character traits such as patience, compassion, and an acceptance of human differences and similarities.
  • Our teachers and students receive input and programming from a speech therapist and on an "as needed basis" from physical and occupational therapists to ensure that each student is progressing to his/her potential.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE:

We at SNS believe in the value of group specialized instruction for nearly all young children with special needs.  It is during the early toddler and preschool years that ego development occurs.  The self-concept that children develop will affect their learning and interactions for the rest of their lives.  A young child with special needs in a regular classroom often finds him/herself as the only “problem” in the class; always needing extra help; always the different one.  At SNS, this child has classmates who do some things better then he/she does and classmates who do some things not as well.  The child is not different or special; he/she is just one of the kids – free to develop an “I can” attitude.

Mainstreaming assumes the children will learn from normal exposure to a stimulating environment.  We believe that our students would not be behind if they could learn from normal exposure.  In an SNS classroom, children receive special, carefully structured teaching in order to learn what they could not learn from exposure to their normal environment.  At SNS, students can attend a proven, consistent, sequential, highly effective therapeutic program without interruption, change of philosophy, or change of classroom model from early childhood through high school.

THERAPEUTIC INTERVENTION: 

In addition to being an educational program, SNS is a therapeutic intervention program with the goal of remediating children’s weaknesses while building on their strengths.  The therapeutic curriculum is individualized and facilitated through input from licensed speech/language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, recreational therapists as well as early childhood specialists.