Attendance: Julia Schoonover, Jennifer Alberto, Dr. Paula Manchester, Stephanie Roy, Lisa Bancroft,
Cristina Paulo, Jennifer O’Connell, Kara Wilkinson, Jessica Melo, Tammy Arruda
Notes from the President
Summer Recap: SOAM, big success! Extending community outreach by offering hands on Sensory experiences and increasing face to face communication. Huge Thanks to our principals, Vice principals and school administration for supporting us and being soaked with water by our kids. They loved it!!
Meeting suggestions/ideas: Offering smaller, sensory friendly events such as dances, bingo, etc for kids that may be having a hard time integrating into large social groupings. Sign language class, ADHD workshop, and homework help all wonderful meeting ideas, ? piggy backing PACE meetings to PTO meetings to increase attendance
Looking Forward: Continued appearances at SOAM. Small introduction at Back to School Night. Providing resource binder/manual for parents looking for external resources and agencies.
Guest Speakers: Julia Schoonover and Jennifer Alberto, teachers at North Elementary and South School respectively. Discussed the importance of routine and schedules for children with special needs. When children know what to expect, this reduces the anxiety and increases executive functioning. Schedules can be different for everyone, so building a custom visual board is one way to start the day/school week. Having a set schedule also allows children to handle “zig zags” which are unexpected changes.
Hands-On: After lecture, we broke into individual groups and created custom visual boards.
Next Meeting: Sept 25th
6-8 PM, location TBD. Potentially South School pending approval from Dr.
Hanneken.
Approved for publication on 9/12/18 by Stephanie Roy
