Our Educational Program
Program Highlights
Garden Academy is accredited to provide educational services to individuals with autism aged 3- to 21-years old. Our program is full-day, year-round and our 1:1 staff-to-student ratio provides each student with highly individualized instruction. We also utilize group learning to encourage interaction between students, creating a well-rounded, effective educational environment for our students.
Our treatment approach is based on applied behavior analysis (ABA) and our program emphasizes skills that promote independence and inclusion in the community, including communication, social interaction and play, self-help, and pre-academic/academic preparation.
We also place an emphasis on decreasing behaviors that may prevent students from reaching their fullest level of independence. While each student may face unique difficulties, our behavior analytic approach allows us to address these challenges systematically; our students have benefited from medical tolerance and feeding programs, as well as programs that address reducing disruptive behaviors more broadly.
Hands-On Leadership & Expertise in Every Classroom
Each student at Garden Academy benefits from a high level of clinical oversight from professionals with Masters- and Doctoral-level training. Our program emphasizes collaboration between instructors, classroom trainers, and the senior leadership team. Our Leadership Team and Classroom Trainers routinely publish research and engage with the scientific community to remain up-to-date on the latest findings in the field of behavior analysis. Learn more about our staff’s research on our Clinical News blog.
Our leadership team has over 40 years of experience in the field of behavior analysis. Our Executive Director, Dr. Laura Grow, has an extensive background in the field of behavior analysis and in addition to her role as Executive Director of Garden Academy, serves on the Board of Directors for the Association for Science in Autism Treatment. Our Clinical Director, Dr. Danielle Gureghian, oversees student programming and has trained young professionals on the application of behavior analytic principles on a national level.
Parent Training
Garden Academy also offers parents and caregivers the opportunity to benefit from parent training to work on helping our students generalize skills learned in school to the home and community environments. For our students, this can mean establishing a successful bedtime routine, being able to attend religious services, or going out to eat at a restaurant as a family.
Transition Support
Garden Academy recognizes the need for transition support for our students, whether that means transition into a less restrictive educational environment or transition out of school-based services into adult life.
Our vocational training program allows our students aged 16 years and older to learn important job skills by volunteering at businesses in the local community. We collaborate with our student’s families to establish vocational goals and objectives for each student, as well as evaluating the student’s preferences and skill mastery on an ongoing basis. We use this information to determine job placements in the community that will set our students up for success during their time at Garden Academy and beyond.
