Doug Finger/Staff photographer
Marie Trempe, director of Autism Oasis for Kids in High Springs, carries student Joshua Jackson, 8, recently at the school.
Then he shows another coloring. And then another, all of them on the same theme.
Jacob has a mild version of autism, which makes him focus on certain subjects and exclude others.
He is one of two children at Autism Oasis for Kids who communicates verbally. The other five children attending High Spring's new private school are non-verbal, even at 7 and 8 years old.
Autism Oasis for Kids opened in a small house right off Main Street on Aug. 23, just in time for the 2010-11 school year. While seven children currently attend the school, three more are expected to join in the coming months.
Marie Trempe and her husband, Rob Cecil, founded the school. The couple's inspiration: their 10-year-old son, Narottam, who has autism.
“It started with the idea to start a school for my son because he couldn't go to public school; he has immune (system) issues,” said Trempe, who got the ball rolling for Autism Oasis in March. “I kept saying, ‘I'm going to have a school in August.'”
Autism spectrum disorders, which include Asperger's Syndrome, Rett Syndrome and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, affect nearly 1 in 110 children nationwide — an increase of about 27 percent in four years, according to the most recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Trempe said most schools in Florida use a kind of behavior improvement plan when dealing with children with autism. But she and her husband didn't like that it was based on rewards.
“We're different,” said Trempe. “We use relationship therapy to figure out why they do the behavior.”
Learning what each child fixates on is the first step Autism Oasis uses to guide the child into a learning environment. Cecil said his son loves dinosaurs, so to teach his son geography, Cecil explains where each type of dinosaur lived and why.
“One child here wasn't using words; he would just grab and show you,” said Trempe.
To get him to learn words, Trempe would move items the boy wanted onto higher shelves to get him to point and use words when engaged in his fixation: playing horsey. “In three weeks, he has already said six words,” she said.
The four teachers at Autism Oasis, including Trempe and Cecil, have experience teaching, from Trempe homeschooling her son to the other teachers' years of experience substituting and homeschooling. Cecil has the most experience as he has been a teacher for about 10 years and is certified to teach up to 10th grade.
Every child at Autism Oasis pays for the private school's tuition through the McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities Program, which allows students who were previously enrolled in public school to attend a participating school that better suits the child's needs.
The most important thing about planning the education of a child with autism is to individualize it, said Greg Valcante, the director of the University of Florida's Center for Autism and Related Disabilities. Valcante said the public school system is required to meet the needs of every child enrolled, not leaving any child behind.
“It can be challenging, but it's the law,” Valcante said.
Trempe hopes her private school will eventually become a charter school and is looking to be in a new building of her own design by next year.
By Lauren Joos
Correspondent
Correspondent
