Education | Day Treatment, Response to Intervention, GED

Reflections for Youth Facility School:

Now with 2 locations: Loveland and Brighton, Colorado.

RFY will open our second school site in Brighton for the 2011-12 school year the fall of 2011. Our Brighton School allows youth from northern Colorado and the front range to access our services, and also opens doors to students from the greater Denver metro area.

RFY currently operates a state-certified school for youth in crisis ages 11-18 in Loveland, CO. Students attend this school from all over Northern Colorado. Serving up to 45 students at a time, the RFY school provides very small classes with individual attention, specific attention to IEP's and other educational and behavioral guidelines for students and offers, at most, a 5:1 student to teacher ratio at all times.

The Discovery Program TM: RFY utilizes The Discovery Program TM with all clients receiving day treatment services. The Discovery Program TM, was developed by Eric Larsen, M.Ed., in collaboration with William M. Timpson, Ph.D. "The Discovery Program is a concrete, skills-based curriculum that creates positive change in students." (Larsen, Timpson 2001). The program has research proven success assisting youth in increasing academic achievement and learning positive social skills that help them succeed in school and life.
For more information please visit: www.sopriswest.com

The Nurtured Heart Approach TM: RFY utilized the Nurtured Heart Approach TM as a part of the cumulative classroom management strategy. Developed by Howard Glasser in the 1990's, the Nurtured Heart Approach TM works within the philosophy of rewarding desired behaviors with positive attention and not giving attention of any kind to undesired behaviors. This philosophy rewards and reinforces youth when they make positive chioces, thus enhancing their understanding of the power of positive choice. The Nurtured Heart Approach TM does not ignore negative behaviors. RFY staff assign specific boundaries and consequences from day one with clients and enforce appropriate, consistent, and natural consequences for negative behaviors. This reduces the attention given to negative behaviors and enhances the focus on positive behaviors.
For more information please visit: http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Nurtured_Heart
or http://www.nurturinggreatness.net/

It is the goal of Reflections for Youth’s school program to educate students in both a traditional and non-traditional manner by making certain each student receives core and elective classes needed to graduate, or by assisting students in earning a GED, and by offering community-based activities to enhance learning experiences. The Reflections for Youth Facility School gives students options for enhancing their educational needs while receiving treatment in a day only or residential therapeutic environment. Depending upon age/grade level and credit needs, high school students can earn credit toward a high school diploma through their home school district or study for the GED while receiving support in academic areas of weakness. Students not yet at the high school age receive assistance in core academic areas and a variety of elective classes for transition to higher grade levels.

Teachers are certified with an emphasis in special education and are able to work with both regular education and special education students. Reflections for Youth also employs one paraprofessional for every 10 students in the classroom, and a Title One reading teacher providing weekly services to students needing more intensive reading and written language support. Therefore, student/teacher ratio is no more than 5:1, which provides students with the opportunity to access true individualized learning opportunities and behavioral support. Upon placement, student records are obtained and students are placed at appropriate learning levels and in classes required for graduation or the obtainment of a GED, or for transition to the next grade level depending upon individual need.

Some local community resources utilized by Reflections for Youth School are: Larimer County Workforce Center, AIMS Community College High School Diploma Program and Front Range Community College Center for Adult Learning.

Response to Intervention, (RTI): Reflections for Youth School has begun implementing Response to Intervention. The main purpose for RTI is two-fold. In the past, students were referred for special education services through a discrepancy model based on testing. Students will now only be referred through special education after being provided with a variety of research based interventions and a team that decides that more services are needed. RTI also helps with students already placed in special education by dividing up services within that environment based on research based interventions. RTI identifies students into three tiers. The first tier contains students that need the least amount of interventions to be successful within the school environment, academically, socially, and behaviorally. If interventions are needed for this tier, they are basic interventions. The second tier contains students that have struggled a bit in tier 1 and in which interventions presented to them in tier 1 did not meet their specific needs. Finally, the third tier includes students in which interventions in both tier 1 and tier 2 were unsuccessful and more intensive interventions and strategies are needed to ensure success. Secondly, RTI is a way for teachers to implement interventions and collect data in a way that provides information to others such as parents, case workers, and other educators to let them know if interventions are working and what teachers are doing to ensure success.

Reflections is able to help students through smaller class sizes, more 1:1 support, a literacy coach, and a therapeutic environment that other schools do not contain. Teachers at Reflections are highly qualified, each holding a bachelor’s degree in teaching as well as a regular content area such as Math, Science, Social Studies, or English. Additionally, each teacher at Reflections has a master’s degree in special education. The environment in place at Reflections for Youth, as well as the qualified personnel help implement RTI more quickly and benefit students because teachers havebeen taught research-based interventions and have experience implementing those interventions.

Response to Intervention will be a positive component of Reflections and is more likely to ensure success as well as provide sufficient data to parents and others that are part of a student’s team. If there are any questions on the RTI model, please look at the following web site, www.rti4success.org.
 
For more information, contact the RFY Education Director at at 970-344-1390.