The Specialized Opportunities for Academic Resilience (SOAR) program is academic, behavioral, and therapeutic in nature and is geared toward Students with Emotionally Based Needs that significantly affect academic, behavioral, and emotional progress. The program provides a safe, supportive environment where students will have the opportunity to mainstream with their peers and to make progress within a time frame that meets their needs and abilities.
Goals:
- To connect standard-based curriculum, social-emotional learning, and behavioral management for comprehensive programming toward maximized learning.
- To work collaboratively with students, their families, and community agencies to promote self-awareness and self-control, along with the development of productive interpersonal/social skills and necessary coping strategies.
Description: The SOAR Program is designed to assist those whose social-emotional challenges have adversely affected a significant aspect of their educational performance and who are unable to function or make acceptable progress with services and/or program options available in less restrictive environments.
Student Population: Students in grades TK-8 who are served through the SOAR Program are eligible for services under Emotional Disturbance eligibility, and in some cases Other Health Impairment and Autism, that is moderate to severe in nature. The students served by the SOAR program classes, generally fall within the low-average to above-average intellectual range. Therefore, the majority of students recommended for the SOAR program who have had poor academic success are generally intellectually capable of learning and completing assignments but have been hindered “emotionally” to meet expectations as would be predicted by their ability level.
Service Delivery Model: Students receive services in separate classrooms during the school day where they are offered highly individualized, supervised, specialized instruction with embedded behavioral, social-emotional structure and support as prescribed by individual IEPs.
Service Provider: The teacher provides direct instruction in a separate classroom setting and/or provides collaborative services with the Board Certified Behavior Analyst and Mental Health Therapist ensuring that students receive Academic Intervention, Behavioral Support, Social-Emotional Learning as well as Social Skills according to individualized needs.