The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

This session will describe the ASD Nest Program, an inclusive New York City public elementary school program that provides a therapeutic environment utilizing a transdisciplinary team of therapists and educators. Evidence-based and promising sensory strategies are a key part of the program and are implemented within the classroom structure. This session will identify specific techniques that can be used to address sensory processing and self-regulation needs, and encourage social participation and inclusion. Under federal law, children with ASD are entitled to an appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. To meet that need, school districts are looking for ways to educate children with ASD that address their core challenges in least restrictive settings. 
This session will provide an overview of the ASD Nest Program developed by the New York City Department of Education to facilitate successful learning for children with ASD in a collaborative co-teaching classroom. New York City currently has 59 ASD Nest classrooms from kindergarten through eighth grade, serving 235 children with ASD in 15 neighborhood schools (14 elementary and one middle) across all areas of New York City.  These schools serve children from a broad range of racial, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.
The ASD Nest classroom consists of four children with ASD and 8 to 12 typically developing children, taught by two teachers. A transdisciplinary team of specially trained educators and therapists create a therapeutic classroom environment within a grade-appropriate academic framework. The ASD Nest model employs components of evidence-based models, approaches, and practices as well as promising intervention strategies. Essential to the success of the program are classroom modifications and a variety of strategies designed to meet the specific academic, behavioral, sensory and social needs of students with ASD. This session will describe the key elements of the ASD Nest model in an effort to demonstrate how such intensive and multi-disciplinary programming can work in a large, urban school district. A key component of the model is the utilization of sensory strategies and environmental modifications that encourage self-regulation and attention and promote successful inclusion for the child with ASD.  A review of the evidence will highlight the strategies that have been used successfully in the inclusive setting in an effort to utilize the classroom as a therapeutic environment.  Experts, both researchers as well as self-advocates have highlighted the need to attend to over and under-responsive sensory systems that may have an impact on a child's optimal level of arousal and resultant ability to learn and regulate his or her behavior.  This session will highlight the current taxonomy of sensory processing disorders, providing solutions that can be implemented in the classroom that addresses the impact of sensory processing disorders on learning and behavior.  A review of evidenced based interventions as well as those interventions that show promising evidence as a result of well designed pilot studies will be presented.  Participants will understand principles of fidelity of treatment intervention that can be modified to a classroom setting. Participants will be equipped with an array of strategies that can improve sensory processing and self-regulation in children with ASD.  By addressing these needs in inclusive public school settings, children with ASD derive the therapeutic benefits of the strategies and environmental modifications, and the typically developing children may derive indirect benefit from principles that support an optimal level of arousal for learning. This session contributes to best practice by focusing on inclusive settings for individuals with ASD, as well as by specifying evidenced-based interventions to meet the children’s sensory needs that may impact successful participation.

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