After 20 years of providing intensive, specialized, summer social skills programming, HI-STEP® is closing its doors permanently. As HI-STEP®’s Co-Founders and Executive Directors, we made this difficult decision after remaining closed the last two summers and recognizing the challenges of restarting the summer treatment program.
HI-STEP® began in 2000, originally named “Stepping Stone Summer Program”. We were a 10-day program located in Highland Park, NJ, supporting 24 children for 10 days, at a time when there were very few extended school year (ESY) options for children with social skills needs. We moved to the Princeton area, then to the Hopewell / Pennington area where we remained through 2020. Children throughout the state of New Jersey participated in the program, and it became clear that we needed to open a second location. We opened HI-STEP® in Fair Lawn (northern NJ), then moved that second location to Scotch Plains. In 2013, we opened our third location in Marlton (southern NJ), to further support students throughout the state. During the 20 years of programming, we enrolled approximately 1,000 students and employed hundreds of staff members.
Our goal always was to develop children’s social emotional learning in a supportive, supervised, structured, and enjoyable environment, while utilizing evidence-based practices. This was important when changing our program name to HI-STEP (Helping Improving Social Skills Through Evidence-Based Practices). We achieved our goal with the tremendous leadership, expertise, and dedication of our Program Directors throughout the years, including Dr. Rory Panter, Dr. Rebecca Schulman, Mike Darmstadt, Amy Golden, Elena Zaklis, and Stephanie Quigley, and through the support of highly skilled and motivated staff members. There was amazing collaboration with countless school personnel and private practitioners who referred students and ongoing collaboration with families who entrusted us with their child during the summer months. We are also grateful to the wonderful teams of professionals, paraprofessionals, and maintenance from the districts that leased us space throughout the years. All of these relationships allowed us to successfully provide specialized social emotional learning, individualized attention, creative arts, sports and recreational activities, charitable donations, special events, and various other learning activities within a safe, comfortable, and fun environment.
We had students attend the program from across the United States and several countries throughout the world. Families made significant commitments to have their child participate in HI-STEP® and we appreciate this dedication. We are grateful that we were able to donate our supplies to organizations that support individuals and families in underserved areas in New Jersey.
HI-STEP® also served as a foundation for the development of our comprehensive social emotional learning (SEL) curriculum: “POWER-Solving®”: Stepping Stones to Solving Life’s Everyday Social Problems”, which currently has been used throughout New Jersey and in 40 U.S. states and 10 countries (Australia, Brunei, Canada, India, Latvia, Republic of Malta, Netherlands, Nevis, Norway, and the United Kingdom). http://power-solving.com . We have also had the pleasure of disseminating information about HI-STEP® and POWER-Solving® at numerous local, state, national, and international conferences.
We encourage all of you to continue committing time to teach others important social emotional learning, regardless of their age and skill levels. Social emotional learning encompasses lifelong skills. It is important to practice these skills toward mastery and plan for generalization across natural situations. Remember that the acquisition and maintenance of skills does not occur overnight. It is an ongoing process that can be facilitated by patience, understanding, time, practice, and feedback, with a gentle heart and positive, compassionate approach.
We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the 20 years we were able to provide support to and collaboration with so many people. If our group practice, Behavior Therapy Associates, can be of any assistance to you moving forward, please feel free to reach out to us. Although HI-STEP® has ended, we will continue to guide and help countless others to serve as a stepping stone to “Begin the Path to a Brighter Tomorrow.”
Thank you,
Mike & Steve