The Get on Board Skateboarding program provides children with autism and other special needs the opportunity to participate in an activity that improves gross motor skills, balance, social interaction and self-esteem in a non-competitive, healthy and fun environment. It is our belief that through empowering children with special needs we can help to enrich their lives and society as a whole.

We accomplish our goal by offering free skateboarding workshops. While the times and locations of these events vary, they all share important core commonalities:

• All skateboarding workshops are one hundred percent FREE. There are no signup fees or required donations for children receiving free skateboarding lessons.
• All necessary skateboarding and safety equipment is provided free of charge for children participating in Get On Board Skateboarding workshops.
• All skateboarding workshops use the same teaching method, providing consistency and familiarity to children and parents who participate in multiple skateboarding lessons.
• All children are welcome!

Our master instructors have a minimum of twenty-five years experience with developing and teaching skateboarding programs. Children participating in the program work one-on-one with competent, experienced skate instructors, each well-versed in the methodologies of successfully interacting with neuro-diverse children. This is accomplished through the Developmental Skate Systems™ SSP™ approach to instruction and empowerment.

The proprietary Developmental Skate Stages™ skateology teaching method developed by Ray Young, B.S.Ed. was inspired by Piaget’s stages of development. This blueprint maps out intellectual development in four stages but acknowledges that individual children will pass through the stages at different ages than the ‘average’ child, and that some children may show characteristics from more than one stage simultaneously.

Young built on this concept and formulated the Developmental Skate Stages™ system through years of extensive research and experience outside skateboarding, then brought his theories back into skateboarding to further hone the process. It has been fine-tuned through years of practical application to thousands of students of all ages and backgrounds in environments ranging from one-on-one instruction to skateboarding seminars to more organized, traditional lessons in skate parks, summer camps and skate facilities.

The key to the demonstrable success of the Developmental Skate Stages™ skateology system is our proprietary SSP™ (Safety – Spotting – Proximity) methodology.

Safety: All students are outfitted with appropriate safety gear and begin the program using longboards to facilitate balance in early stages of learning.

Spotting: Our instructors are taught to influence beginning students using a hand-over-hand technique similar to that used by gymnastics instructors.

Proximity: As students gain more familiarity with skateboarding, we move to an amorphous instruction technique that develops with the pupil. Instructors are always within easy reach and just out of sight during free skateboarding lessons, prepared to help students as they learn more advanced techniques. In this manner we help to instill self-confidence in our pupils, adding to the empowerment Get On Board Skateboarding provides to children with autism and other special needs.