 2007 Award Winners
Bernadette Tomasik-Kelly Before a child is born, parents imagine great hopes and dreams for them. Those hopes and dreams can be shattered when a child is diagnosed with special needs. Bernie Tomasik-Kelly and her team in the developmental kindergarten class at Skokie’s Fairview School spend their days helping parents such as these to accept the professional perspective of their child’s challenges and develop a more realistic and productive view of their child—and new hopes and dreams, too—while simultaneously helping the children to realize their full potential. It’s a daunting task, but Tomasik-Kelly works with a team of professionals that she describes as “invaluable.” “They are a wonderful source of information and support,” she says, “and are paramount to my success with the children, and with their parents.” That team includes an occupational therapist, a speech pathologist, a social worker, a psychologist, and two assistants. “The expertise each has in her specific area helps us to focus on the whole child, and to devise intervention strategies that are unique and successful.” Tomasik-Kelly and her team work with seven children who have been diagnosed with a variety of special needs, including autism, mild and moderate cognitive delays, and significant emotional and behavioral issues. But for Tomasik-Kelly, this is like any other kindergarten. “Every class has great diversity and a wide range of abilities and disabilities,” she says, “and this class is no exception. Everyone is different, and we need to accept them all—that is what we learn in my classroom.” Although her students are emotionally and academically delayed, Tomasik-Kelly is doing what any good teacher would do: getting to know each as an individual, how they learn best and what will make them fit in. “Children should feel successful academically and emotionally,” she says. “At the end of the year, I want them to love reading, and love themselves.” Tomasik-Kelly finds creative ways to achieve those goals. When one child in her classroom belittled another for his inability to do something, she turned that into a learning opportunity. She asked the entire class what things were hard for them to do, and what things were easy. She surveyed the class, asking how many children found each activity to be hard or easy, and in so doing she demonstrated to the class that they were more alike than they were different. By writing the responses on the board, she added a literacy component to the activity. And by including with each entry the number of students who related to the statement, she added a math component. “Her creativity and innovative spirit are, without question, second to none,” marvels Donna Smith, the occupational therapist in Tomasik-Kelly’s team. She recalls one day walking into the classroom to find all of the students, and Tomasik-Kelly herself, flat on their backs on the floor, legs up in the air, pretending to be dump trucks. The children—and teacher—used their feet to grab and pass large wooden blocks, dropping them at the end of the line into a bin. The reason? “I had told her several of the children with reduced fine and gross motor skills might benefit from strengthening their abdominal muscles. And there they were on the floor, strengthening their core muscles, working on motor planning, coordination and visual attention, cooperating, and cheering on their peers. It was spectacular. And Bernie was right there with them.” |
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