Community Education Council District 2 News

Linda Wernikoff ran an informative conference. The presenters of the work shops were the best and most experience in the field of Special Education. The keynote speaker Richard D. Lavoie fascinated the standing room only audience of 500 people. One of his most poignant comments was inspired by the African proverb- “When Elephants Fight, It’s the Grass That Gets Trampled. Consequently, he was alluding to the children getting hurt when the parents and the school fight, and do not work together.

As a parent of child that has a learning difference, I understand the denial we feel when we learn that our normal looking child has a learning disability. After much frustration and reading about learning disabilities, I accepted it and began my work of helping my daughter. As Richard Lavoie says, “We must come to the table with solution and not just the problem.” This conference supplied proven solutions and good ideas on how to help children succeed. To get these proven solutions and good ideas into the schools we need to come together as a team.

One of the workshops was Literacy at Home.(Presenter: Barbara Wilson, Director, Wilson Language Training Corporation). The Wilson Reading Program (WRP) is currently used in the NYC Public Schools. The WRP is designed for individuals who have difficulty with written language in the areas of decoding and spelling. The program is taught to students in the upper elementary students through adults. Many students who benefit from the WRP have deficiencies in phonologic awareness and/or orthographic processing which makes it challenging to learn to read and spell without an explicit, systematic, and multi-sensory approach. WRP specifically addresses the learning style of students with a language based learning disability; however, it is beneficial to any student lacking basic reading and spelling skills. It is appropriate for students with beginning literacy skills through grade six level skills if the student has not mastered the decoding and spelling process.

The System was developed for students in grade three and beyond. It is widely used with upper elementary students, adolescents, and adults.

The program will greatly benefit:

• Students with a language-based learning disability (such as dyslexia)
• Students unable to decode accurately
• Slow, labored readers who lack fluency
• Students who may know words by sight, but have difficulty reading new words and “nonsense” syllables
• Students who often guess at words
• Students able to speak and understand English, but not read or write it (such as ELL students)
• Poor spellers
• Students unsuccessful with other reading programs or who have gaps in their decoding and/or spelling

Barbara Wilson recommended using books on tape during her presentation. Another presenter was Claire Wurtzel, Director of Faculty Development, Schools Attuned Initiative.

In this interactive session parents gain insights into their learning strengths and weaknesses and those of their own learning strengths and weakness and those of their children. Useful strategies to support all types of learners and explored.

The conference also had a good Information Gallery of representatives from organizations that provide parents with resources and information. For more information check out the following websites.

Dr. Shirley Cohen (Hunter College)
http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/education/dept/specialed/index.shtml

Rick Lavoie
http://www.ricklavoie.com

Barbara Wilson
http://www.wilsonlanguage.com

Linda Wernikoff (special education page on DOE Website)
http://schools.nyc.gov/Parents/Essentials/Special+Education/default.htm

Dr. Claire Wurtzel
http://www.allkindsofminds.org

Deborah Jones-Riley, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/index.jsp

Paola Martinez Boone provided by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest
http://www.nylpi.org

New York Public Library
http://www.nypl.org

Medicaid information
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/disabilityresearch/wi/medicaid.htm

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.