Handle With Care

“The speech therapist teaches you
terms of speech,” George said. “My pre-
ple’s
perspectives, and since I met that
goal, we moved on to friendships and
conversations.”
George’s goal of building social
communication skills is an example of
pragmatic language development, one
of many focus areas of speech therapy
ical
thinking skills and receptive and
expressive language. As a speech-language
pathologist, Katie Bennett regularly
sets goals with her students, using
improvement. Though Bennett—in
collaboration with a Student Support
Team—ultimately creates a list of individualized
goals, she is open to the input
of students and their families.
“If a student is working on language,
we incorporate what they’re doing in
their actual classes,” Bennett said. “I begin
by asking my students, ‘Is there anything
that you need?’ They learn how
to self-advocate and then I can support
them that way.”
Although Bennett acknowledges that
growth is not always linear, she is always
ready to challenge her students,
readjusting their goals or adding new
her students’ skills in the same way,
Casey helps students with autism or intellectual
disabilities in the Educational
Life Skills course to build social aware-
therapy and Educational Life Skills
“We should not
put the burden on a
neurodivergent person.
It's all of us that should learn
about others so we can get
along and work together,
be more open, accepting,
empathetic.”
Katie Bennett,
speech-language
pathologist
programs teach strategies
for students to
communicate more
classmates and teachers,
providing a pathway to
accessible education.
Education department
like Casey and
Bennett work between
Stevenson
4.5%
and the Exceptional
in 1977
Learners Collaborative
(ELC), a special education
organization serving
school districts around the Lake
County area. Elizabeth Lamb, ELC
Coordinator of Programs, Services and
Paraprofessionals says that students
who take additional classes within the
Special Education department may take
them either on campus or at one of the
West, based on their needs.
“The continuum goes from general
education all the way through to pri-
schooling for students who wouldn’t
have their needs serviced at a traditional
four-year comprehensive high
school,” Lamb said. “We might have an
IEP meeting and determine that a student
would go to ELC West because
that would best serve their needs.”
While ELC East provides supplemental
courses to students of high
school age, ELC West acts as a transition
center, focusing on preparing students
ages 18 to 22—particularly those
who are nonverbal or need support for
daily living—to become independent
adults. In ELC West, students learn how
to prepare meals, do laundry and practice
skills that could be used in future
jobs, such as making candles and
testing batteries. The program
also connects Stevenson students
with other high schools to build
a sense of community among
neurodivergent students.
“Students work with other
transition programs—maybe at
Mundelein High School or Lake
Proportion of students in
the U.S. receiving special
education support
increased from
to
Source: National Center for Education Statistics
14.5%
in 2021
Zurich High School—where they come
together and do some social things together,”
Lamb said. “The ELC also put
out some programs for parents and
guardians in the community to talk
about how to best support their students
and some community agencies
that would help them out.”
ate
an accessible environment, students
like Lamba still see room for improvement.
Lamba believes that some
teachers—even those in the Special
Education department—need to spend
more time recognizing students’ educational
needs. While Lamba has adapted
in her own ways—employing strategies
like reviewing Quizlet sets and writing
study guides—she hopes teachers make
divergent
students.
“The teachers should be patient, even
if it’s a special education classroom,”
Lamba said. “Even though it’s a smaller
setting, the teachers still rush, going at a
really fast pace. They should slow down
a little bit and make it so that people can
understand, write and do the work.”
During individual or small group
therapy sessions, Bennett says that she
is able to match her students’ pace, one
of the ways she accommodates all learners.
For her, helping students progress