An innovative graduate program in special education has received a four-year, $793,000 federal grant to train teachers to work with middle and high school age students with autism. The program has prepared scores of Georgia teachers to work with elementary-age students with autism over the past several years.
Autism is a complex developmental disability that is part of a group known as Autism Spectrum Disorders. Today, one in 150 individuals is diagnosed with autism, making it more common than pediatric cancer, diabetes and AIDS combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“There’s a need for specialized training on how to structure the classroom, how to respond to these kids when they behave inappropriately and how to design instruction that will facilitate the learning of new skills,” said David Gast, a professor of special education who co-founded the Collaborative Personnel Preparation in Autism program at UGA in 2003.
Gast will co-direct the new program, called the Collaborative Adolescent Autism Teacher Training project, with Kevin Ayres, an assistant professor of special education. It will use much of the U.S.
Department of Education grant to fund fellowships for up to a dozen graduate students a year to learn how to work with secondary-age students with ASD.
CAATT will work largely with teachers in three diverse school districts in rural, urban and suburban areas of Northeast Georgia.
“Our primary efforts will be in Gwinnett, Clarke and Madison counties as those are our partner districts. But if we were to get an applicant from Cobb (County) who may be a current teacher wanting to complete their M.Ed., they would be eligible,” said Ayres. “We are really recruiting statewide as well as out-of-state people. We feel we will be best able to supply Gwinnett, Clarke and Madison with new teachers when we recruit folks fresh out of their undergrad programs who are not currently teaching anywhere. These are the folks then that we can work with to get into the partner systems.”
Gast and Deanna Luscre, who coordinated the ASD program for Gwinnett County Public Schools from 1996-2003, developed the COPPA program with a grant of $894,000 from the U.S. Department of the Education in 2003. The program received a second grant of $793,000 in 2007 for four more years.
The second grant allowed UGA to offer additional training in ASD to interested teachers in Clarke, Cobb and Forsyth county schools. Teachers from other school districts also have participated in some of the courses.
“Preparation and specialization in teaching secondary-age students is distinct from that of elementary-age students,” said Ayres. “This expansion is significant because it provides for the development of three new courses and two new practica addressing the unique needs of adolescents related to transition planning, community-based instruction and academic content.”
The new program will help put more qualified teachers into Georgia schools, which like other schools nationwide face increasing numbers of students with ASD. One Georgia school system reported eight classrooms for students with autism in 1994; today, Ayres said, they have 180 classrooms serving those students.
ASD is defined by significant impairments in social interaction and communication and the presence of unusual behaviors and interests. Nationwide, the number of children diagnosed with autism has grown about 17 percent a year.
