I’ve been teaching for 29 years. I teach special education and did guidance in special education for 12 years. I’m from Sudbury originally and am fluently bilingual. After high school, I went to York University for a dance degree in teaching and therapy and then to the faculty of education at OISE at the University of Toronto.
I started teaching and paid off my OSAP loans, got married had two children. One is autistic and the other has a severe learning disability, so they both have learning and mental health challenges. I also have a learning disability.
In 1999, in the height of the Harris years, I wanted to take a break from teaching because I was disgusted. They were cutting back on teaching assistants and special education programs. A lot of harm was being done. Everything was being taken away, the kids were feeling stripped of everything, and I was feeling it by fielding phone calls to pick up my son. There was no help, and the teachers were frustrated.
At that point I was with the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board. I applied to the director of education to set up a program for high-functioning autistic students who could be integrated but needed a lot of support. He gave me permission, and I asked for a leave of absence to do my master’s at OISE from 1999 to 2002 in special education and adaptive instruction.
By the mid-2000s I was searching for education in higher-level learning strategies, but there wasn’t anything structured. Somewhere along the line I met the people at Cambrian College and signed up online for the applied learning disability specialist graduate certificate program.
The program matched perfectly with the work I was already involved in at Peel. You decide what strategy you’re going to use with children based on their more intricate profile, not their diagnosis. The diagnosis gets them access to accommodations mandated by human rights legislation, but learning disability, attention deficit and mental illness are a very heterogeneous designations. You don’t just say, “They all have anxiety. This is what we do.” You have a repertoire of strategies, and that’s what we were exposed to in the program.
For example, you might want to be a personal trainer and would be fantastic at the job, but you must complete an anatomy course, which is all about muscles, nerve endings and biomechanics. That’s a lot of memorization. If you’re not good at memorizing, you may never become a personal trainer unless you learn a strategy to help you memorize. The program at Cambrian helped us as facilitators become more strategic in terms of what students need.
It is a unique program. The courses are organized into four-week modules electronically. For one course, you do four weeks of intense study about software programs that read to you. You’re learning all the strategies and theories, and the assignments are based on how you would then apply that technology in real life.
In the future, I’d like to work with students at the college and university level or start private practice, as well as do presentations and teacher training.
I find this work incredibly fascinating. It’s almost like I’m solving problems. Working with people is definitely in my area of interest. I’m an individual with a learning disability and have seen my children struggle to work with people who don’t want to accommodate their disabilities, but I love this stuff.
I know it very well theoretically and practically, and I do well in it.
Where to study: Continuing Education
