Teaching Society Model
- Special Education-
A model of education for people with behavioral problems.
In 1971, two years before Los Horcones community started, two persons* who studied psychology in Mexico city, opened a center for children with behavioral deficits.
* They, along with 4 more people founded Los Horcones community in 1973.
Dr. Sidney W. Bijou, a well known behavioral psychologist who has made major contributions to the field of special education and his wife Janet, encouraged and supported our enterprise. Dr. Ivar Lovaas another behavioral psychologist who has made major contributions to autistic children (from the University of California at Los Angeles) also helped us with our project. Dr. Francisco Montes and Dr.Maria Montes also supported our project.
A large number of children attended to this center during the mornings. Each child was taught what he or she needed (self-care behavior, verbal behavior, academic behavior, social behaviors) through behavioral programs carefully designed and applied by instructors.
In 1973 Los Horcones community was founded. It was then when we started new way of educating children and adolescents with behavioral problems which we called "Teaching Society Model". It was an extension to a social level of the "Teaching Family Model"*.
*Model of education for adolescents with behavioral problems, where behavioral programs were used to teach them academic and social behaviors within the family and school. This model was implemented in the University of Kansas in Lawrence Kansas.
The Teaching Society Model consists of providing the children not only with a supportive school and family environment, but with a supportive social environment -community- where they can learn the necessary behaviors in the natural environment where they occur (at home, work, parks, etc,).
In a Teaching Society Model, all adults of the society relate in friendly ways to the children included in the program and become important to them. Adults intervene as a team by interacting with the children in a variety of everyday activities like: play, work, fun, lessons, meals, talking walks, etc. During those interactions which take place in the natural setting, adults prompt and reinforce the children's desirable behaviors; extinguish or correct their undesirable behaviors. For example: when somebody is taking a walk with an autistic child, he asks her questions and reinforce appropriate answers or appropriate approximations to conversational skills. When we are eating with them, we teach them how to eat properly. When we work (e.g. watering plants) with them we teach them first how to do some simple tasks like holding the hose or opening the faucet and little by little how to do it completely by themselves, etc. In this way Los Horcones becomes a therapeutic community.
In a teaching society model, children and adolescents with behavioral problems are never isolated from social life, on the contrary, they are integrated to it.
In 1981, Los Horcones moved farther from the city. In our new place we continued offering especial education services now within a residential program. Thus our teaching society model became more effective having more time available for education.
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Last Update: 2001
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