Special Education In the Press/Awards

“This is tough work. It’s a lot of work but it’s the right work,” Phelps said.

January 2022 - Article linked here

Part of the challenge is to find the best ways that individual children learn and then adapt accordingly, she said.

On Jan. 20, Hillebrecht led her co-taught (two teachers in the same classroom) class in a game about natural disasters. Students had to communicate without using words to complete sentences with facts about natural disasters and then read them aloud for the rest of the class to repeat.

“Nearly 50 percent of that class is special ed and you’d never know,” she said outside of her classroom. “They love interacting with each other.”

 

At our recent “State of the District” event, PUSD leadership shared stories of success, innovation and challenges within our 39 schools. But one story that really stood out to me and our audience was the story shared by Associate Superintendent Greg Mizel about a young child. He described how the little girl’s mother came up to their principal one day at school and through tears, told him that for the first time in the four years since her child had been attending that elementary school, she had received her first-ever invitation to a classmate’s birthday party.

 

 

Learn how Poway Unified School District completely transformed their relationships with families, re-established trust, and even more importantly, improved students’ learning experiences. Their intentional efforts to engage parents as partners also helped save the district millions of dollars in attorney fees and settlement costs.  Their hope is that by continuing to partner with parents, staff can spend less time and energy embroiled in conflict and more time and energy exploring ways to continuously improve students’ learning experiences.