As a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst who teaches students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD), Elizabeth brings exceptional skills to an expanding population of kids who are seriously at-risk. Her introduction to special education was in New York, where she taught 7th and 8th graders at a school near a prison. From those kids Elizabeth learned about some of the too common obstacles to learning: poverty, gangs, and abuse. What they learned from her is that somebody cared.
Fast-forward to today, where Elizabeth teaches EBD students in Oak Harbor, a Navy community with “another set of challenges.” Elizabeth strives to create community not just in her classroom, but among parents, families and caregivers too because parents of special needs children often feel isolated. Elizabeth’s principal praises her ability to build the kind of trusting and non-adversarial relationships that can be life-changing for both her students and the adults who care for them.
Elizabeth works daily with “some of the most challenging students in the district,” says one colleague. The issue that she sees as most critical, beyond all others, is the severe lack of mental health support systems in our public schools. Her students are autistic, bi-polar; suffer from PTSD, Tourette’s, OCD, ODD, and GAD. They’ve been beaten, sexually assaulted, taken into foster care, lost family, have addicted family, and family in prison— it’s no wonder her students have such “a wide array of issues.” The direct connection between the lack of mental health support and violent crimes is indisputable—and Elizabeth would like to see “much more funding and … adequate resources to make a real difference.”
With such a challenging group to teach, Elizabeth comes back every day, and that, she says, is perhaps why she was nominated for Teacher of the Year. “I come to work, smile, laugh, cry, raise my voice, whisper, share my apples, and talk in silly accents when I teach math.” And she shows up, because Elizabeth knows she may be the only person in a child’s day who makes sure that he or she feels “special and loved.”
