Tuesday, August 4, 2009

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It takes a special person with heart By THEA RUTHERFORD ~ Guardian National Correspondent ~ thea@nasguard.com: At Bahamas Wisdom Academy students feel at ease. Settled into the languid pace of summer, with rambling, uniform-less school days, a handful of students, one of them as young as two-years of age, go through their lessons with an older instructor at the leisurely pace the warm weather demands. One young boy wanders into the principal's office and takes a seat in front of a computer where he begins a lesson on vocabulary software. The school's principal and founder, Michelle Wildgoose, seems to encourage free reign of the building — even of her office, making learning available at every opportunity. At the academy, a school Wildgoose established four years ago when a little flexibility was all she needed from the schools she had visited in search of a place for her special needs son Mikhail, patience and consideration of each child's learning needs go a long way. Since its inception, Bahamas Wisdom Academy has catered to average and special needs students by integrating the latter, when they are ready, into the general education classroom. It is a task that Wildgoose knows requires, not just special training, but heart. "You have to be so flexible and you have to be able to see what is going on with these kids and make an adjustment to the method of teaching so that we can get these kids to the next level," she said. You have to have a "heart for special children because you cannot afford to get frustrated when these kids act up. And each child is different." The mother of a now 12 year-old Mikhail, Wildgoose has first hand knowledge of such differences. Her son, a student at the school, has developed significantly since the evaluation at the National Association for Child Development in his kindergarten years that provided Wildgoose and her husband, Robert, with his first individualized education program. With all that was going on with her son, the youngest of four, Wildgoose eventually traded her office job for late nights in the school books. She earned her Bachelor's in Education from Sojourner Douglass College in 2001, and her MBA from Nova Southeastern University in 2004. She opened BWA the following year with a mission to provide a much-needed service for students with special needs. Years before when her own son was about five-years-old, Wildgoose knocked on the doors of nine preschools looking for a place for him. Each school turned down the special needs child, even though Wildgoose was prepared to send Mikhail to school each day with his own aide. "I thank God for the exposure and the resilience to get all those nos and not give up," said Wildgoose. "I'm seeing the fruit of it now because you never know what you're being prepared for . . . I was wondering 'what is happening with me why was I so persistent,'" she recalled of her initial search for a school. Eventually she found Hillcrest Academy, and later Well Springs Academy, where Mikhail attended with his aide. Wildgoose, who had already begun her studies, would train the aide to administer Mikhail's individualized program to him. By the time she opened BWA, she had the training and the firsthand experience with her own special needs son. She also had exposure to the classroom from the few years she spent at Bahamas Faith Ministries International's Seed Life Academy. Committed to improving the services BWA offers, Wildgoose also began a Master's in speech and language pathology, footsteps her youngest daughter, Remiska, who works with Mikhail in the summer and has assisted at the school, plans to follow. BWA is made up of nursery, preschool, elementary and junior high divisions. It also contains a special unit for students who are presently unable to function in the general education classroom, though the school has recorded success stories of special unit students making the transition into the general classroom. For those special needs students who are able, integration takes place on entry. Such students are taught, with emphasis on their weak areas, on a one-on-one basis for certain periods throughout the day in the school's resource room. "Our students do so well," Wildgoose smiled. "We miss out when we don't include them in the general education classroom." The school celebrated a successful graduation on June 10. Wildgoose highlighted the achievements of the grade one class, where six of the 13 students have special needs and the grade point average ranged from 3.75 to 2.33 on the challenging A-Beka curriculum. BWA recently hosted the seminar, "A Heart to Give," as well. The seminar brought together Wildgoose, Dr. Norman Gay, Arthurlue Rahming (Project Read), Michelle Ihrig (special educator), Carolyn Hall-Knowles (MOE special education unit) and special guest, Gary Reese — a diverse group of speakers who gave presentations on varying aspects of education, health and special needs considerations. The initiative borrowed its name from a student production the school had planned where the students would perform in order to give back to the community. That production, which is still on the drawing board for the coming school year, sprang from an outreach by Wildgoose's church, Bahamas Harvest, called "40 Days of Love." "We have to know how to love our kids," said Wildgoose. "We have to know how to give back into our community." The notion of giving back, particularly in the area of special needs, is one of the main thrusts of the academy. "It's difficult to give a piece of yourself, however, when you have a passion for something, no matter what happens, you may fall down for a moment, but we get back up because that passion is there." Monday, July 6, 2009