Bridges Learning Center

Bridges Learning Center (BLC) is a therapeutic education center that serves students with severe behavioral, emotional, and developmental disorders. Self-contained classrooms are located at BLC that provide services to students enrolled in grades kindergarten through high school.

The mission statement for the Bridges Learning Center is to

"provide a safe, caring, and therapeutic learning environment where students with emotional, social, and educational challenges can best develop the skills and character necessary to achieve at his or her highest potential and transition to a successful future."

Bridges Learning Center

226 Chicago Avenue

Centralia, IL 62801

(618)-545-0126

Cory Wisniewski, Principal

cwisniewski@ksed801.com

BLC Handbook

Based upon each child's individualized education program (IEP) a variety of approaches are utilized to provide the student with the opportunity to benefit from his or her education. Behavior management strategies such as but not limited to use of the point system with rewards for appropriate behavior and loss of privileges for inappropriate behavior, individual and group counseling, social work services, other related services, and individualized academics all combine to meet the BLC goal of returning the student to their regular class setting and building as soon as possible.

Should a student's behavior present a threat to the safety of others, self, or the environment, the student may be removed to a quiet room to allow for a safe period in which he/she can regain self-control. Depending upon the aggressiveness of the student this may require physical restraint. Therefore all teachers, assistants, and support personnel are trained in safe methods for restraining a physically aggressive student.

Bridges Learning Center currently provides multiple classrooms across the grade continuum known as STAR program rooms. These rooms are highly structured where the STAR (Strategies for Teaching Based on Autism Research) curriculum and PEAK System are used. These classrooms use the STAR curriculum to create a multiple level system that addresses the unique developmental and global needs of its students. The STAR curriculum is highly embedded with basic foundational practices of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and includes detailed lesson plans, teaching materials, data systems and a curriculum-based assessment for teaching in the six curricular areas of receptive language, expressive language, spontaneous language, functional routines, academics, and play & social skills. The classrooms also utilize the PEAK system to further address student's growing needs in the areas of Foundational Learning Skills, Perceptual Learning Skills, Verbal Comprehension Skills, and Verbal Reasoning, Memory, and Mathematical Skills.