The Spotlight Program is a drama and theater-based social pragmatics program for adolescents with Asperger’s Syndrome and other related social and developmental disorders. The idea for Spotlight came out of the realization that there exists a segment of the high-functioning Asperger’s population who do not necessarily respond to traditional methods of social pragmatic intervention due to motivational differences and greater functional awareness. As such, the Spotlight Program Director and Northeast Arc Autism Services Clinical Director worked to create a program that could meet the needs of this population by teaching social pragmatics, social cueing, and relationship development while still being motivating and affectively engaging.

What emerged from this effort was the Spotlight Program, which integrates techniques of theater games and dramatic training with highly motivating and age-appropriate activities (such as video games, knowledge-based trivia games, etc.), as well as a positive social reinforcement-based environment to foster skill development in core deficit areas. Spotlight was originally envisioned as primarily a summer program, but, due to overwhelmingly positive response from families and schools reports gains in children who had not had success with previous pragmatics program, now runs year-round as an after school, weekend, and vacation program. Spotlight offers a high 1:3 teacher to student ratio and provides ample communication with schools and families to ensure that individualized goals are being met. In the future, Spotlight intends to offer in-services to schools wishing to incorporate the new methods into classrooms, create satellite sites running the program in its current configuration, and continue its phenomenal growth rate as more families are made aware of this new and exciting program.