Life Skills

We believe the ultimate goal for our students is to emerge as independent young adults with a solid understanding of their community. Students learn practical living skills and engage in learning opportunities in independent living, community involvement and career exploration. These experiences are integrated into many aspects of our curriculum and explored through our life skills curriculum, community field trips, volunteerism, and vocational exploration.

Mind/Body Workout

Teaching students sensory awareness is an important key in maximizing their learning potential. We teach our students the tools and vocabulary they need to regulate their own sensory needs and advocate for themselves.

Each day begins with yoga and cardiovascular workouts to get our minds and bodies ready for optimal learning. These physical activities create a sensory diet that increases self-regulation and improves physical fitness. The strategies learned through these activities become personal management tools for students to use in both their physical and mental health development.

Social Skills

We place a high priority on teaching and practicing social skills. This includes helping students better understand, accept, compensate and advocate for their own strengths and challenges. Our social skills program offers direct instruction in social skills development and practice through role play, and daily interaction with peers and adults. Social skills learning is reinforced throughout the day across all content areas.

Computer Skills

Technology is now an everyday part of our lives. It is also a gateway to communication and information that’s always evolving. To give our students an education that helps ready them for the world, we instruct them on how to make practical use of computers. TWLS provides education in computer skills through direct instruction in computer vocabulary and operating systems such as Windows XP. Students also learn keyboarding, word processing and how to navigate the Internet for research and studying purposes.

Each student has access to personal computers in school and all receive their own Dana, by Alphasmart; a wireless handheld computer with functions such as an address book, calendar and word processing, as well as other functions used frequently in daily life.