The center!

Educate

The Center is a serving school to the 14 districts in the cooperative. Students are referred to The Center based on an individual district need for a student. At The Center we offer speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, interventions for social and emotional needs, and a low student-to-adult ratio. We strive to provide our students with opportunities that they would receive if they were at their home school. We have basketball games, prom, homecoming, graduation, and field trips that come to The Center just to name a few.

The Center can utilize BHASED's two Board Certified Behavior Analysts. The BCBA's are able to provide behavior consultation services as part of a programmatic-level initiative. While they do not provide direct services to individual students (i.e. IEP minutes), they support student growth and learning in the special education setting by training school personnel in procedures rooted in the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis.

The Center uses a variety of research-based curricula. Each curriculum is consistent with research on how children develop and learn. Specifically, it promotes interactions, teaching practices, and learning experiences that research has shown to be effective in supporting children's learning and development.

We use modified Structured Teaching in all classrooms. This approach leads to improvements in the development of functional skills, social-communicative abilities, autonomy, social participation, emotional and coping abilities, and reduction in behaviors of concern. This program is also useful in bringing about improvements in social skills, social play, motor skills, cognitive skills, independent skills, and communication skills.  Structured Teaching strategies and practices are also research-based and result in increased independence and access to all areas of the curriculum.  

Other curriculums we use are Read180, Reading Horizons, PEAK, Functional Academics, and Big Ideas Math

Vocational Workshop

The Center offers a vocational program. The Vocational Program at The Center provides pre-vocational and vocational training for students  at 14  years old through 22.  These support services are available for students based on their individual needs and skill levels. A comprehensive skill test is given to the students along with observations in collaboration with our vocational developer, teachers, parent input, special education coordinator input, and student input. Students  are identified and matched to jobs according to their needs including individual ability levels, and future job interests. Some students will be sent out in the community to a jobsite with a job coach that fits those needs.  Some of these job sites include several local churches, Hy-Vee,Fareway, Hair Affair,Transmissions Plus, and East Moline Fire Department. The Center also has a Vocational workshop where students are able to cook, do their own laundry, package, sort, do some custodial work, and work on their social skills. The integral piece of the Vocational Program is to prepare our students to become participating members of their communities.  The goal is for them to achieve post-secondary success.