In 1975 the US Congress passed Public Law 94-142 in which all public schools that received federal funding were required to provide access to a free and appropriate education for all children with mental or physical disabilities.  Over the four plus decades since the passage of Public Law 94-142, schools have continued to grow in their mission to educate ALL children.  Special education programs, speech pathology, physical therapy, and occupational therapy are all programs that are common place in schools today.  While Public Law 94-142 compelled schools to meet these needs, it is also an ethical standard that all schools should strive to meet.   We all do better when we all do better.  With that in mind, I would like to share some of the exciting things going on in our schools.  

Public Schools are not perfect, but we strive to be better everyday.  Our teachers learn new strategies and techniques to allow them to reach more kids everyday.  We accept all students into our school and occasionally we run into problems that we don’t always know how to solve.  The number of students diagnosed with autism has continued to increase nation-wide.  That increase is consistent with our district as well.  Students with Autism present a unique set of challenges across a broad spectrum of needs.  Some of these students are non-verbal.  As our special education program has identified several non verbal students that are about to enter our district, we saw a need to train teachers with the techniques to help these students lead productive lives and function in school so as to get the most out of their education. Mrs. Lovelace, Alva Special Education Director, has attempted to preempt this problem by sending some of our speech language pathologists to PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) training in the last year. 

PECS is a communication system that helps non-verbal students not only communicate their needs, but also develop verbal language.  We can’t communicate if we don’t have the pictures in our head that unlock the words in our head.  Just imagine trying to communicate your needs if you didn’t have the words.  Simple tasks like going to the restroom would become very difficult to convey.  Non-verbal students become very frustrated when they can’t convey their thoughts.  That frustration leads to behavior issues.  Behavior becomes a way to communicate for some.  Students using PECS are taught to approach a person and hand them a picture of something that they want or need in exchange for that item.  This is the beginning of building verbal language for these types of students.  

Our students are introduced to the system in small steps.  Mrs. Hattie Potter, a Speech Language Pathologist in our district, has trained on PECS.  She introduced me to the system.  She is very excited about the progress of her students using this system.  Students “work” for a desired item. The student will show the Speech Pathologist a picture of something they want, i.e. a goldfish cracker or a toy car.  The next step is to help students build sentence strips, i.e “I want goldfish cracker.”  The pictures for these sentence strips are kept in a binder with velcro strips on various pages.  The student pulls the necessary pictures to build their sentences; then the student gives the strip to the teacher.  The teacher models the verbage for the strip.  The student models the verbage of the strip.  The process and complexity grow as the student grows.  The ultimate goal is to build verbal language, but in the meantime, it allows students to learn to communicate their needs.  

PECS is a research based program that has proven successful.  Teachers modeling the language with PECS has proven to increase student language skills.  Mrs. Hattie Potter has the most experience with PECS in our system.  She uses the system daily and has seen great progress.  There is no doubt that this program is helping our students.  Giving students the ability to communicate, gives them the ability to thrive at school, home, and in their communities.