2010
Award Winners
Heather Madden
Bridge School, Chicago
Preschool For All
By day, Heather Madden is an inclusion specialist in two Preschool For All classrooms in CPS' Bridge Elementary, supporting all 120 children, many with special needs. By night, Heather is an education specialist at the Neuropsychology Diagnostic Center, conducting one-on-one play-based lab sessions designed to address individual neuropsychological needs. "Heather is a rarity—she's a neuro-educator," said Dr. Valerie Scaramella-Nowinski, Director of Pediatric Neuropsychology: Child Development Center. "She nurtures a child’s capacity for feeling and attachment that are the necessary steps toward the development of thought, language, and all learning. She knows how to understand the neuropsychological and neurophysiological studies of a child to determine which brain pathways need support to allow for the development of sensory, attention, movement, language, memory, mood, social, and executive/organizational functions. This type of learning goes beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic and embraces whole-child, whole-brain development. This is why she truly is a neuro-educator. Heather knows which interventions help to boost the weaker brain pathways and how to develop a child’s strengths. She cares about the children. She knows how to develop a child’s potential. A lot of people talk about the developing brain—Heather is doing something about it."
Why does Heather devote all this time to such rigorous work? "It feels more like a reward than it does like work," she explains. "Seeing a child with autism find her name in a pile of cards, or making a first friend—seeing her use her first word meaningfully—these small accomplishments are milestones in this incredible journey for the child, and I get to be a witness along the way."
Heather comes by her love of teaching honestly: she's the daughter of a Montessori director. Her mother's influence is apparent in her style, but her style doesn't end there. "Heather uses an eclectic approach to teaching," says Kohl McCormick Academy board member Jim Price. "Some attempts at 'eclectic' end up looking like a camel, but Heather’s implementation—which is a seamless integration of Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Best Practices, special education techniques, and traditional nursery school—has the elegance of a gazelle. It certainly looks like nothing 'off the shelf.'"
Her eclectic approach has won her many fans among the parents of her students, including Emily Hooper Lansana, who also happens to be the Literary Arts Curriculum Supervisor for CPS. "My son's first preschool experiences were extremely frustrating," she says. "He has expressive/receptive language disorder, and spent a lot of time playing in corners alone. But from the very first moment my husband and I encountered Heather, she went above and beyond what we had come to expect from teachers. She wanted to know everything that we could share about our son and immediately began to incorporate it into his learning plan. If I could replicate one aspect of her teaching practice, it would be that she has a unique ability to see each student as an independent thinker and to engage that child in a way that respects and values their thinking process."