Learning: ESP on the Team
Special Needs Kids Run Program with Star Power

Minnesota paraeducator helps special ed students run local movie theater.

Paraeducator Danya Troxel (right) and theater manager Sheri Wilson run through ticketing process.

Danya Troxel's classroom isn't what you'd consider "standard." It's got 18 screens, produces barrels of popcorn, and you need a ticket to get in--unless you're one of Troxel's students.

If you rate that honor, then you get free tickets anytime to her classroom, also known as the White Bear Township Theater, just north of St. Paul, Minnesota, in the suburban Twin Cities.

"To the kids, the tickets rate as one of the huge selling points for our program," says Troxel, a paraeducator and vice president of her local union.

Troxel started this unique program for special needs students at White Bear High School five years ago. Its success rate is enviable: Of 79 kids enrolled over those years, 78 have graduated.

That level of success has been attained with students ages 16 to 21 who have autism, Down's syndrome, emotional and behavioral disorders, mental retardation, or live with multiple handicaps.

The key to excelling, Troxel says, is "holding students accountable for their tasks. They must learn to stay on task."

Important qualities for special needs instructors include compassion and firmness. "You can't be too soft," she says. "Either they'll run you over, or you'll fail to realize everything they can achieve."

No student wants to risk "The Wrath of Danya," which is a good-natured reminder that they have work to do and better get it done.

These kids also quickly learn responsibility from the theater's general manager, Shari Wilson. "Shari holds these kids to the same level of accountability and performance that she does her other employees. That's exactly what they need," says Troxel. "Other people assume my kids can't do it. But Shari understood right away, and these kids rise to the level we expect."

One parent told Troxel, "My child can never do that. You're setting him up for failure." But like his fellow students, he succeeded. He learned to smile, and deal with customers.

The theater, notes Troxel, offers these kids the opportunity to learn social and communications skills in a way they couldn't in a traditional classroom.

Typically, kids in such programs work for one hour in a Goodwill or grocery store. Many of the White Bear Township students work a six-hour day. They set up the concessions, sell tickets, answer the phone, and clean the theaters. Some even helped a construction crew on-site last spring during a building addition project.

Some of Troxel's students end up taking full-time jobs at the theater.

One severely autistic young man who graduated last year made such strong all-around progress through Troxel's program that he even got dressed up for the prom, He now has a full-time cleaning job at a Twin Cities pharmaceutical company.

"The strides this person made are unbelievable. It's even remarkable that he can make eye contact with others," Troxel says. "He's just the cutest kid, and I adore him."

While in college, Troxel was tempted by the field of law. But then she worked for a while at Camp Friendship near St. Cloud, Minnesota. The special needs kids there touched her deeply, and she made this field her life's work.

"It's incredibly rewarding," she says, of the work she's done for 15 years. "To see these kids grow up and mature and achieve the things they do, it's just awesome. I'm so proud of them."

Team Player
A Giving Spirit

Custodian Phil Krueger has inspired a staff fund to help needy students.

Name: Phil Krueger

Job Title: Custodian at Park Lawn Elementary School in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin

What I do: I spend a lot of time in the cafeteria. It's there that I noticed some children weren't receiving hot lunches. I've been in the community long enough to know that these students' parents, even though both may work, were struggling financially and couldn't afford the added expense. So my wife and I decided to anonymously "adopt" a family with three children. We made sure their lunches were paid for each day the rest of the school year.

Then at a staff meeting, I asked everyone what other problems we might work together to solve and urged them to think of ways to help these working families. The response was so overwhelming from people who wanted to give money and help that we started a school charitable fund that staff named "Phil's Fund."

Impact: While it started with the lunch program, Phil's Fund is now allowing us to help families in a variety of ways, and it's all done confidentially.

In the last two years, we've donated more than $3,600 to families at our school. We've used the money to send gift certificates for the local grocery store to families with anonymous notes, buy and distribute new winter clothing to children who need it, and help pay for children's medical bills. We've also developed a network of dentists, doctors, and businesses that volunteer their time and resources, which has helped us adopt 25 families at Christmas and provide them with gifts and food.

There is an enormous commitment among our staff to help families who might have hit a bad patch. We see them as our family, so we use the fund to give them a leg up, not a handout. We even gave a computer to a father who lost his job due to a terrible accident. He was going to school to get retrained, but he didn't have any access to a computer at home, so we made sure that he did.

Throughout this entire process, we also discovered that some families who were struggling to provide hot lunches for their children didn't fill out their federal free and reduced lunch papers because they found them too complicated, like a tax form. So we now offer individual assistance to help them complete the necessary paperwork.

Special Concerns: Helping these children succeed in school so they can succeed in life. Phil's Fund is run by a committee of three people, including me, and we do everything possible to keep the names of the people we're helping confidential so students don't get embarrassed that they might be receiving help from us. At the same time, we want to be there for anyone in need.

I'm still overwhelmed by the incredible giving spirit that has taken over my school.

Resources

Safe Schools
"The vast majority of America's schools continue to be safe places." That significant quote, which bears repeating, serves as lead sentence to the 2000 edition of the Annual Report on School Safety. The joint report from the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice delves deeply into all facets of crime and violence in our schools. It notes that schools are becoming even safer, notwithstanding reports of school violence.

That doesn't mean the fears of students, school employees, and parents--real fears--should be discounted. The report examines the nature and scope of school violence; outlines collaborative, problem-solving models that 23 communities have put into service; looks at student discipline information; and adds a list of resources. You can read the full study at www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/SDFS/annrept00.pdf.

Working as a Team
Teachers and paraeducators have been working together for years, but very few teachers have been adequately trained to work with another adult in the classroom.

A Teacher's Guide to Working with Paraeducators and Other Classroom Aides, by Jill Morgan and Betty Y. Ashbaker, addresses this issue with concrete suggestions for improving the daily working relationship between teachers and paras. $18.95 from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Call 800/933-ASCD to order or visit www.ascd.org to read an excerpt.

What Am I Eating?
Who isn't concerned about food safety these days? First it was good or bad cholesterol. Then we heard about all those pesticides in fruits and vegetables. What's an educator to do?

One place to start is www.foodsafety.gov. In addition to plenty of factual information, this site includes interesting things for kids such as a word match and coloring book, news and safety alerts, and a search engine. And check out the links to other sites.

Going the Extra Mile

The Anacortes Educational Secretaries Association has used a community relations grant from the Washington Education Association to set up its own "Caring for Kids" program. The goal of the program, patterned after a similar one run by the Educational Support Personnel of Clover Park, is to provide back-to-school assistance to children.

At Anacortes's first fair last August, the local provided children with school supplies, clothing, hygiene items, and even haircuts to help them get ready for school.

Local leader Cathy Pitts first heard about the "Caring for Kids" program in the WEA Action, the NEA state affiliate newspaper.

After reading the article, Pitts thought, "What a great idea. We should do this in Anacortes."

Pitts and parent volunteer Christi Durfee got started by contacting every charitable group in town, receiving promises of support, including the $1,500 WEA grant.

By August, they'd collected $4,000 in cash and the help of 50 volunteers, more than enough resources to make the local's first "Caring for Kids" fair a rousing success. Planning for the next fair is already underway.

The Baldwinsville (New York) Educational Support Personnel Association is using a $3,230 NEA ESP Information System (ESPIS) Technology grant to better communicate with its members.

The grant bought a laptop computer, fax machine, scanner, color printer, and Internet access.

Lynn Romanick, a paraeducator, first learned of the grant at a national ESP conference.

Romanick shared her expertise with local members Karen Palmer, a secretary for elementary education and an NEA/NY Region 7 delegate, and Sharon Vining, a junior high school secretary and the local's treasurer.

Well armed, Palmer and Vining set about writing the grant application. "They did all the legwork. I input the information," says Romanick. And the rest is history.