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The White Clay School
Navigating individualized instruction today for an inclusive community tomorrow
Emotional Support / Complex Comnunicative Need
Phoebe's Pachyderms
"Learning first occurs as a part of emotional interactions; It involves the split second initiatives that children take as they try to engage other people, interact with them , communicate and reason with them."
Dr. Stanley Greenspan
White Clay understands that a developmental relationship approach to learning, such as the DIR/Floortime, is key to helping children build healthy foundations for relating communicating and thinking. This naturalistic approach (learning through interaction and discovery) tends to improve critical foundational skills such as engaging, relating with others and reading social signals. Through this FEDC (Functional Emotional Developmental Capacity), framework we tailor appropriate structured behavioral interventions into the child's program to build a comprehensive framework designed to grow each child's ability to relate, communicate and think.
Our Emotional Support- Complex Communicative Need (ES-CCN) Nests are based on the DIR/Floortime model. We rename our classrooms nests, because it is only in such a nurturing and safe setting that authentic emotional healing and growth can occur. We believe that our non to low speaking students need a high level of child- led, emotion- based programming in order to capture their interests and attention. We believe once this attention and interest is captured, we can continue to develop and integrate the child's language , sensory motor, and visual spacial needs. This is accomplished in part through daily: occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and if necessary, physical therapy. This development will then enable our children to form a sense of themselves as intentional, interactive individuals and further develop their cognitive, language and social capacities.
Within Phoebe's Pachyderm Nests, we have two classrooms:
ES-CCN 1 (ages 6 to 10)
ES-CCN 2 (ages 10 to 14)