Educational Standards
St. Dominic’s Therapeutic Preschools, TORCH and TORCH Annex, located in the Bronx, is a New York State approved preschool program that provides a full range of educational and clinical services to general and special education children, 2.7 to 5.0 years of age.
Our bilingual staff efficiently supports children and families who have Spanish as a primary language. Our team of professional clinicians provides children with mandated speech, occupational, and physical therapy. Our students participate in a Music Enhancement Class and daily Dance & Movement. They enjoy field trips and farm visits on site, and they experiment during the science projects.
TORCH is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). We are 1 of 10 percent of the nation’s early childhood programs who receive the NAEYC honor.
The program learning routine is based on hands-on experience and speech development toward increasing child’s school readiness and self-help skills through developmentally age-appropriate activities. Thematic units are integrated into learning centers that offer a child plenty of learning materials for exploration and creative projects. We maintain a multidisciplinary approach to foster students’ age-appropriate skills across all developmental domains.
Teaching staff apply a wide variety of methods and educational strategies to facilitate children’s progress toward the students’ IEP (Individual Education Program) goals. Classroom instructions are based on the unit of study and student’s IEP goals, and the differentiated instructions are widely implemented across all classroom activities. Our teaching staff works with large groups, small groups, and one-on-one with each of the students.
We strive toward maximizing each student’s individual functioning across five primary domains (cognitive, social-emotional, expressive/receptive language, physical, and self-help/adaptive) based on the best practices of Early Childhood Education and Special Education. The approach to each child is individually crafted to meet student’s unique needs and the goals identified in a child’s IEP. We apply all endeavors to develop our young students’ social, emotional, and behavioral skills. Social-emotional domain and communication/language skills are of our highest priority.
