AchieveKids

Special education: Achievekids operates two non-public schools located in palo alto and east san jose. We serve over 110 elementary and secondary education students from four bay area counties. Achievekids provides dynamic and innovative education services for students in special education. Through a community of acceptance and respect, Achievekids specializes in creating learning for students with severe emotional, learning, and/or developmental disabilities. Our dedicated teachers, paraprofessionals, behavioral health team, and speech therapists work collaboratively to create opportunity and independence in the lives of our students. This interdisciplinary team becomes a skillful problem solving group that instructs and guides students toward greater independence and self-reliance, enabling a path to a brighter future. Wasc accredited, Achievekids is a learning organization, where all of our community learns and grows. Achievekids is a member of California association of private special education schools. For more information go to www.capses.com, or visit our website, www.achievekids.org.highly individualized and specialized programs: we use a multi-disciplinary collaborative approach, blending best practices from the fields of special education, behavioral health, speech and language, and vocational education to develop highly individualized curricula and teaching approaches. Our program is individualized to each student, and our approaches are focused on positive practices, skill development, enhancing communication, social-emotional learning, and community integration. We are a data-driven organization that makes curricular and instructional decisions based on data systems to help our students and community grow. Through this multi-faceted approach, the goal is to teach our students the skills necessary to return to find success beyond our doors. This can look different for different students, and includes returning to their public school or a less restrictive environment, or finding post-secondary options appropriate for that individual. Our goal is to create opportunity within the lives of our students, and help students find success in their communities.highly qualified staff: both schools are composed of experienced, highly qualified professionals from varying domains. Special education teachers, mental health therapists, speech and language pathologists, board certified behavior analysts, vocational and transition coordinators, and program counselors make up our professional staff and encompass our collaborative approach to helping meet the needs of our students.

Transition: transition starts from the day we meet a student and family. Helping prepare a student with the skills necessary to be successful within their communities is important for their life-long success. The Achievekids team approaches helping make successful transitions through a variety of means, including individualized academic instruction, a focus on enhancing needed hard and soft skills, and by helping identify and develop tools necessary to navigate challenges the student is experiencing. In addition, Achievekids has a well-developed vocational education program, which includes coursework, vocational training, job coaching, job placements, and integration into the community for experience.vocational program: the vocational education program provides pre-employment training to all of our students and work experience (California department of education - workability 1 program) for students from ages 14 to 22, regardless of their specific level of capability. As a vital part of Achievekids' curriculum, vocational education provides a positive, encouraging, and highly structured program affording students with opportunities to learn valuable work and life skills.coaching for success: students work closely with a job coach on a job. Their job coach trains the students, coaches and provides feedback at the site, works with the job manager around what skills may need refining, and provides feedback to classrooms for integration of skills. As a student begins to display mastery, job coaches phase out to foster independence in skills.skills for specific social situations: vocational education gives students opportunities to develop core job skills that will help them interact with the typical workforce; develop social skills; learn independent living skills and simultaneously raise awareness of how people with disabilities can thrive in a work environment.

Behavioral health: Achievekids is committed to a positive school climate designed for individual and community learning. To meet the needs of our students, we have a behavioral health department that has professionals from the mental health field (mft's, msw's, lpcc's) and behavior analytics (bcba's and those training towards bcba). This diverse set of professionals and expertise allows us to adapt and meet the individual needs of our students. Using a variety of evidenced-based therapeutic approaches, mh and aba therapists conduct individual, group, and family therapy. Therapists work collaboratively with classrooms to ensure a consistent approach with measured social-emotional and behavioral learning. Data driven, we inform our instructional practices and positive behavioral supports with the collection of a variety of data points, including academic, behavioral, and social-emotional.