Being the parent of a special needs teenager is fraught with uncertainty. As the loving step-parent of a 15-year-old boy diagnosed with autism, the kinds of questions that keep my husband and me up at night range from, “Will he ever eat anything besides peanut butter sandwiches?” to “Who is going to care for him […]
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You don’t get anything in life, unless you ask.This is the old, hard-edged version of what is still essential advice for any young person. There’s another phrase about a silver platter but let’s move on to modern times. The term is self-advocacy. It refers to a person’s ability to effectively communicate and assert his or […]
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You will read a great deal about the academics and life skills offered at a special needs school. The most important question remaining is how the school maintains an environment conducive to such training. Gateway School coordinates with organizations from the international level to the local level to ensure the safest setting for its students. […]
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Make no mistake about it. We could all use a strategy or two when it comes to managing money. Perhaps when you are done reading this, you will pick up some tips for yourself.These strategies, however, are specifically designed to assist special needs students with a crucial skill for the transition to adult living: money […]
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Gateway School recently posted about one of the most vital topics and primary goals of our schools: soft skills in the employment environment. These soft skills are the result of several decades of research that culminated in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) developing a special curriculum, entitled Soft Skills […]
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So many years are devoted to preparing our students to be young men and women that will eventually transition into adulthood..In addition, they could very well transition into an adult day program such as our PrimeTime Centers located right here in Carteret, New Jersey. What about teamwork, though? Our children are not alone in the […]
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One of the primary goals of Gateway and its’ sister schools is to prepare students for workplace success after graduation.Young adults with disabling conditions who turn 21 have many options to purchase services once they are assigned individualized funding through the state Division of Developmental Disabilities in the Department of Human Services. One choice of […]
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Special needs educators do not just take a course in teaching students with severe behavior problems, receive a certificate and then look forward to smooth sailing from there on in. 15 to 30 percent of special needs students struggle to learn due to psychosocial problems which affect attention to task and retention of material. For […]
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Everywhere you look, there are signs and screens. Forget about books. How can anyone be expected to function without being able to read?This skill is called functional reading and it is one of the life skills developed at the day habilitation programs offered at Primetime Centers. We begin to teach this and other life skills […]
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Since time and money are often the two most emphasized components of adult life, those tend to receive a lot of focus but first let’s discuss the foundation for functional math skills.Functional math is a life skill we teach our students that all parents probably wish remained in their typical child’s curriculum a little longer […]
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