Pacific Learning Center NW

Consistent, Predictable, Accepting
A positive environment for students with Asperger's Syndrome

Fitting in is an issue of major importance to all teenagers.  Understanding one's place in the world and relating to others is a goal of all people regardless of age or ability.

At Pacific Learning Center, students with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders feel welcomed, accepted, and are contributing members of each classroom and the student body as a whole.  The Pacific Learning Center environment is designed for students who are easily over stimulated or overlooked and for students who have poor organizational skills or focus.

Though students with Asperger's Syndrome (AS) do perceive and process social messages differently, most have superior skills in some areas and undeveloped skills in others.  Vital to the AS student is a schedule that reflects those skills and offers work that is challenging but not frustrating in each academic area.  By having a staff that is qualified to teach a variety of subjects, PLC strives to provide tailor-made schedules for students in each subject area.

By offering a school with a social-skills component, students with AS are helped to interpret the meaning behind others' comments and are helped in framing their own responses to others.  It is far easier to be accepted and to fit in when communication is understood.

PLC offers consistency and predictability -- from a class schedule to a homework schedule to routines in the classroom -- that brings comfort to students who struggle with unexpected change.  As a result of spending less energy adapting to the unknown or new, students with AS have more time to spend on academics or social interaction.  By providing cues to transitions, students with AS can prepare themselves in advance and learning adaptive skills as they progress.

Students with AS do not feel harassed for their differences, pressured to conform to expectations they are not ready to meet, or punished for sensory or processing differences.  Instruction is clear and concrete and students are free to discuss their opinions and feelings, and their sense of fairness is taken into account,

Pacific Learning Center has a history of success of assisting the High-Functioning Autistic student transition to general education (where several have become student of the month in large high schools) and college more sure of and comfortable with themselves.