School District: Volusia County Schools, Florida
Position: Special Education Teacher
Kristy Byers began using Rethink at the beginning of the 2014/15 school year. What she has found most valuable about Rethink is its capacity to facilitate collaboration: “With Rethink, my whole team–paraprofessionals, speech therapists, etc.–can easily keep up with each child’s progress and work with them on appropriate skills,” Kristy explained.
She has also had success collaborating with parents. By sharing Rethink’s graphs and reports, she has found it much easier to keep parents abreast on their child’s progress and encourage participation in their child’s growth.
Rethink makes collaboration so much easier.
In the relatively short time that Kristy has been using the Rethink program, she has seen significant progress in some of her students with the most intensive needs. For instance, at the beginning of the year one of her students came to her with severe echolalia–communicating only by echoing or repeating other people’s speech.
Using Rethink strategies and lessons, Kristy collaborated with the student’s learning team to set up a plan and began to work on teaching him appropriate greetings. “One day, after we’d been working with the student for about 2 weeks,” Kristy explained, “he entered the classroom, and when I said ‘good morning’, he said ‘hi!’ It was so exciting!”
Now, 2 months later, he is communicating independently with very few (if any) echolalic phrases and his whole world of communication has opened up to him. His parents are thrilled because his learning has carried over into the home environment as well!
