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THREE SPECIAL ED TEACHERS GET MORE THAN A PAT ON THE BACK FROM DISNEY

August 24, 1999

An asthma attack, a fallen grandfather and a handful of toddlers. These are the things that awakened three special education teachers to the value of their work, helping them conquer daily frustrations to become award-winners. Carla Woyak, from Phoenix Children's Hospital's "One Darn Cool School," Teri Lindner, from Pennsylvania's State College Area High School, and Maggie Keyser, at San Diego's Lafayette Elementary School, are among 39 teachers to win honors Monday by the Walt Disney Co. for their outstanding work with students.

Disney will salute the teachers at its Nov. 14 American Teacher Awards in Los Angeles, which will be shown on The Disney Channel the next day. The 39 were selected from 11,000 applicants nominated by students, parents, educators and community members across the country. Each will receive $2,500 for being selected, and Disney will donate an additional $2,500 to each teacher's school or organization.

Disney's American Teacher Awards, begun in 1989, have generated more than $2.5 million in awards to teachers and schools. "We're thrilled to showcase some of America's most innovative teachers who are using creative approaches in the classroom to help kids learn," Disney Senior Vice President Laurie Lang said in a statement. "The real impact of this high-caliber group of educators is reflected in the fact that 51 percent of this year's Honorees were nominated by students."

Woyak, one of those nominated by a student, found validation through a 15 year-old boy whose severe asthma attack required a medical procedure that left him paralyzed from the neck down. At Phoenix Children's Hospital, Woyak told Disney in her application, "physical and occupational therapists worked on his body, and I worked on his mind. It was up to me to show Gabe that he was still the same boy on the inside as he was before his severe asthma attack."

Setting out to show the boy "he was 'abled,' not disabled," Woyak said she accompanied him on outings beyond class work to help him become accustomed to the new challenges of paralysis. Despite questions from her peers at the hospital, she said, "Deep down, I knew that what I was doing was the right thing."

At the same time, the two reached their academic goal of getting the boy through his freshman year so he could stay with his class and start school the following fall as a sophomore. "This experience has inspired me to continue teaching children with the same passion that I taught Gabe," Woyak said.

Lindner, who runs a program called "LifeLink" to teach students with disabilities life skills, found out how important her work is when one student, Jeff, was stranded in the mountains of Pennsylvania with his grandfather. "His experience confirms the validity of what I had only sensed before: That life can be practiced and that despite my students' developmental delays, if their education is relevant enough, they are able to transfer and generalize to even the most exacting situations," Lindner told Disney.

When Jeff's grandfather unexpectedly died as they were out in the snow gathering firewood, Jeff used the skills he practiced in Lindner's class to find help. Though he could not save his grandfather, she said, "he had done everything anyone could have done to rescue him," including administer CPR. "Although terrified, he had held himself together, charted a course to save his grandfather and implemented that course impeccably. The fact that it ended sadly does not diminish Jeff's heroism," Lindner said.

Before starting the LifeLink program, Jeff was completely dependent on others for all of his daily needs, including using the telephone and preparing food. "All the problem solving, thinking and reasoning experienced while at LifeLink, during transition classes and at meetings with his parents resulted in lessons being internalized," Lindner said. "Without his LifeLink education, what could have happened to Jeff?"

Three toddlers in Keyser's pre-K special ed. class displayed similar progress against high odds. When one boy went from communicating only with grunts and gestures, due to four major surgeries by age three for a disfiguring syndrome, to a functional level two years later that enabled him to enter regular kindergarten, his father cried.

"The doctors had told [the parents] when he was born that he would be very retarded and deaf. He and his wife had been advised to withhold the feeding tube and let him die," Keyser said. "Because I had believed in him, he had believed in himself and his parents had come to believe in him also," the parents and teacher were rewarded with a child of "wonderful intelligence and wit," she said.

Another student, a severely autistic four-year-old girl, also made major strides in Keyser's class, with help from her teacher, parents and a one-on-one aide. After graduating to a learning handicapped kindergarten, the girl who had never spoken before meeting Keyser returned to her classroom saying "I am looking for my Maggie. I love you," Keyser said. A third won the admiration of his peers when, after two years of work with Keyser and an occupational therapist, he conquered brain damage and minor hearing loss to learn how to speak.

"These children taught me a very simple but often overlooked principle. Believe in a child's power to succeed and they will succeed," Keyser said.

The three special ed. teachers stand to win more money as Disney narrows its list of 39 honorees to 12 finalists - one in each of 12 categories. The company will donate an additional $2,500 to each of those teachers, and from those 12 will be chosen one Outstanding Teacher of the Year. Disney will award that teacher $25,000 and donate an additional $25,000 to the teacher's school and $10,000 to the school district.

In a new twist to the American Teacher Awards this year, Disney will also launch a new professional development program to share the honorees' creative teaching strategies with others. The honorees and their school principals will attend an institute next summer sponsored by Disney to learn how to share their techniques and create a professional development action plan for the 2000-01 school year.8