Life Skills program serving entire district

(Editor’s note: The names of children used below were changed for the purposes of this article. The situations and successes listed are real.)

SANDPOINT — There was an educational breakthrough at school this past week. While all around him, children were learning to tackle more complex levels of reading, writing and math, Dallas reached a new and higher plateau of his own.

For the first time, the special education student managed to open the bag of Cheetos his mom packs as a snack for him every day by himself. Afterward, he glowed like a valedictorian speaker at graduation.

Earlier in the month, Tanja learned to pick up a pencil without dropping it from her hand. From here, it is hoped that she will make painstaking progress and learn to write her name by the end of the year.

“For Jeremie, it was opening the door by himself,” said Ben Wimmer, a special education teacher in the Life Skills program at Farmin-Stidwell Elementary School. “We worked for more than a year on that. Now he comes in off the playground, opens the door and makes it as far as his coat hook — that’s where the breakdown occurs. And that’s where we’ll pick up learning basic skills.”

Access to School

Until 1975, when Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, developmentally disabled children were virtually shut out of public schools. Several states had laws banning students labeled as “mentally retarded” from attending class, while other also excluded children who were deaf and blind.

Those children were either warehoused in state institutions where little or no instruction was available, or hidden from public view in “schools for the retarded.” As those children began to attend public schools, society also was educated.

“Before that, these kids were out of sight and out of mind,” Wimmer said.

Wimmer and the paraprofessional staff in his classroom work with children from all over the Lake Pend Oreille School District who have “severe and profound” disabilities. Students may arrive with autism, physical disabilities, severe behavioral problems, or a combination of the above.

Just before Christmas, Raleigh was enrolled in the program. His communication skills consisted primarily of screaming “no!” and hurling himself onto the floor when asked to learn any new task. He has since learned to wash his hands, use the drinking fountain and get ready to go outside for recess. Two weeks ago, he snatched learning materials off the table during a lesson and started to run off with them.

“Put those back right now, Raleigh, and say you’re sorry,” an aide told him.

Rather than hurling the items and throwing a fit, the boy walked back to the table, placed the materials where he had found them, looked up and calmly delivered an apology. For Raleigh, this was the educational equivalent of knocking the ball out of the park.

“It can be tough with our kids,” Wimmer said. “There can be lots of resistance and emotion — aggression, sometimes — when something new comes up. They’re working through huge cognitive blocks and their brains are not working like ours.

“It’s like taking someone with one leg who is on crutches and telling them to run five miles.”

Learning Curves

While the 12 students in Wimmer’s class work on the most basic aspects of personal hygiene and communication, other youngsters are pouring their hearts into the Life Skills curriculum in Diana Lucanto’s room. They work hard and, many times, they start from Square One.

“I have kids who, if you were to say, ‘Touch the floor,’ won’t be able to do it because they haven’t been exposed to the vocabulary,” said Lucanto, who has a Ph.D. in administration.

In reading, some of her older students are now scanning words and comprehending them at a first-grade level. They are working on learning to write their name, address and telephone number, as well as how to write a sentence. The math component involves how to use a calculator to tally how much money will be needed to buy groceries. Reading and math come up again as students practice using recipe cards to prepare a simple meal.

“We do a lot of cooking in my classroom and we really work a lot on independence skills,” said Lucanto. “We work on things like, ‘What would you do if you’re parents weren’t home? Would you know how to open a can or use the microwave?”

Teaching Independence

When Ben Wimmer, who holds a master’s degree in special education, took over the Life Skills class six years ago, there were several students there who scored low in math or reading, but did not have a need to learn fundamental skills. Those students have been “mainstreamed” into their grade-level classrooms and given the resources needed to improve academically.

“We’ve narrowed the enrollment down, but it feels like we have more kids because the needs are more severe now,” Wimmer said.

Across the district, there are 416 children receiving special education, according to program director Marta Katana. After classes at Farmin-Stidwell, where students may stay until they reach an age when they usually would attend eighth grade, they move to the Life Skills classes at Sandpoint High School, taught by Connie Johnson.

“It takes a very special person to do this type of program,” Katana said. “The goal is to help raise an independent and, hopefully, happy person to go forth into the world. And that involves believing that every child can learn and never giving up on a child.”

Based on the number of special education students who go on to enroll in vocational-technical programs, find jobs with local employers and move into their own apartments, Katana said the success rate is high in Sandpoint, in large part because of the visibility of these individuals in the community.

Realistic Expectations

“It’s hard for our kids,” Wimmer said. “It’s really hard. We’ve got a huge spectrum of learning disabilities, from responding to cues like, ‘Point to the ball’ to sounding out two- or three-letter words.

“We’re talking about kids who are counting to five and learning to count out the corresponding number of objects,” he added. “For some of them, it can take two or three years to learn that.”

And yet, there are parents who become frustrated that their children haven’t yet learned to read or do mathematical problems in Wimmer’s class.

“Parents can have expectations for their children that conflict with what they’re able to do,” he said. “But in my class, we rarely get those ground-breaking breakthroughs like learning to read, for instance. We teach routines — riding the bus, using the bathroom, washing your hands, going to the playground. The skills we’re working on can take incredibly long to develop.

“For one kid, our goal might be participating in a typical middle school classroom,” Wimmer added. “For another student, the goal might be to walk all the way from class down to the lunch room without assistance.”

When parents begin to understand the reality their children face, they must pass through multiple emotional stages to get to the point where they can become advocates for their special kids, according to Lucanto.

“It takes time for parents to realize that their kids aren’t going to ‘cut it’ in the regular classroom,” she said. “When they finally do have that realization, there are lots of tears and lots of guilt. I work to help them understand that there’s a different kind of satisfaction when your child learns to count to five than there is when you give a spelling test and a kid gets it right the first time.”

Educating Society

Since the mid-’70s, American students have gone to school with children who attend special education classes. Over time, they have developed increased comfort with being around them.

“Basically, what happened was that we de-institutionalized these kids and brought them into the public schools,” Katana said. “And that has been good for all students.”

Students at Farmin-Stidwell have a daily opportunity to interact with kids who have a variety of disabilities. Because of that, Lucanto said, today’s children are learning to take disabilities in stride and want to overcome the nervousness they feel when encountering people who are different from themselves.

“Children are now much more compassionate,” she added. “But so-called normal kids are still afraid of special kids — they don’t know how to act around them. That’s why I take my kids out for recess when the sixth-graders are out there, so I can ask a student, ‘Can you show him how to throw a football?’ They’re good about helping out.

“It’s also why I have students come in to be helpers in my classroom,” Lucanto continued. “One of my jobs is to educate them that, ‘Look — they’re just like you, but operating on a different level.”

Shennay is propped up on her elbows during “talk time” in Diana Lucanto’s room, sharing something that hurt her feelings. There are heads nodding all around her as the other students reflect on the things that make them different. Shennay, however, is not angry or vindictive. She seems content to wait until the person who made her feel bad can find a way to accept her for who she is, not how she walks or the fact that she struggles daily with learning.

“We work on how to function within school and outside of school,” Lucanto said. “They look to this room for protection and we talk a lot together. These kids try to be as ‘normal’ as possible and they are quite aware that they’re not. Yes, they do know that they are different.

“How do they handle that? The best they can.”

Giraffes Can Dance

It’s story time in Wimmer’s classroom and students are gathered around a crescent moon-shaped table to listen to one of their favorite picture books. It tells about Gerard, a giraffe who dearly wants to dance with the other creatures, but ends up with the lions, apes, monkeys and zebras laughing at him because he is simply too tall and gangly to move to their music.

Heartbroken, Gerard walks off into the jungle, feeling alone and afraid and — different. From a nearby leaf, a friendly musical cricket comes up with a solution that opens up a new world for Gerard.

“Excuse me!’ coughed a cricket who’d seen Gerard earlier on,” the text reads. “But sometimes when you’re different, you just need a different song.”