AlertSeats Make a Difference in Emotional Support Class Michael Stock was an undergraduate planning a career as a social studies teacher when he had the opportunity to volunteer at the Schuylkill Learning Academy, a school for special education students in Mar Lin, Pennsylvania. After just a few weeks there, he went back to school and…
It’s the brain, not the body, that is the basis for physical therapist Carla Reed’s practice. Her patients have suffered some form of brain injury that causes physical limitations, so the brain is where Carla goes to start their rehabilitation. They come to her practice, Movement to Wholeness in Sterling, Virginia, with diagnoses that include…
Teacher Cites Benefits on YouTube Teachers at a Pennsylvania school district like AlertSeats so much that they have launched a fundraising effort to purchase more of them. It’s called AlertSeat Campaign for Children and it’s getting exposure through a YouTube video produced by the Hatboro-Horsham School District in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. “AlertSeats allow them to…
Saltsburg Elementary School It might be a small elementary school in a rural Pennsylvania county tucked away in the central-western part of the state, but the teachers in the Saltsburg Elementary School have some distinctly progressive ideas when it comes to accommodating the special needs of their students. And that attitude helped them earn a…
Small Town, Big Ideas Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, changed the way people watch television. In the early 1950s, as Americans embraced TV, Mahanoy City was left out. Tucked between mountains in the eastern part of the state, it could not receive broadcast signals from television stations in the big cities nearby, so a local appliance dealer,…
Furniture Deemed Important The teenager found it uncomfortable to fold his large frame into a classroom desk, so he frequently asked if he could stand. That position helped him feel better, but made it hard for him to attend to academic tasks. In another classroom, a student needed time to pace the halls under supervision.…
Contemporary Issues in an Idyllic Setting New Hampshire: A world described in Robert Frost poems, small farms, picturesque New England villages where church steeples poke above autumn trees. It’s an idyllic image – and there is truth to it. But it is equally true that New Hampshire, like every state, suffers from the challenges of…
A Small School with Big Ideas Nobody is quite sure how it got its name because National Park, New Jersey is not a national park, nor is there one nearby. But the town of 3,200 people located on the Delaware River across from Philadelphia has an excellent elementary school with ambitions large enough to be…
Making Students Feel Included Children want to feel included, a special challenge for schools when some students are set apart by their disabilities. But thanks to an innovative desk that physically and visually blends in with traditional classroom furniture, three wheelchair-bound students in a Western Pennsylvania school district are now able to join their peers…
Accommodation in “the Sweetest Place On Earth” The student’s wheelchair was a complex piece of technology. The Derry Township School District needed to accommodate it in the least restrictive way so that the fifth grade student could participate in class despite the size of his chair. They turned to Howard Newman, president of Newman Adaptive,…