New Ways to Learn
By Savannah Lira, Program Officer
PVF’s Special Education Resource Grants Program has brought numerous benefits, resulting in resources to teachers to maximize the skills of their students – teaching them to read, write and even speak, for the first time.
Iris Wong, a Speech Language Pathologist at Mission San Jose High School, was awarded one of these $500 Special Education grants towards a membership to Gemiini.org, an evidenced-based video modeling website that promotes language learning, behavioral support, articulation models, and life skills knowledge. Read about how she utilized the funding in her report back to PVF:
“Thanks to your grant, I was able to cover 5 months (February – June 2021) of monthly membership for my caseload of speech/language special education students and allow students, parents and teaching staff to access this valuable learning tool at home for review and preview of skills and content. Your grant has directly supported 50 students at Mission San Jose High School in the Fremont Unified School District this 2020-2021 school year, 33 of which have moderate-severe disabilities and require multi-modal supports particularly during distance learning, to access social and academic opportunities. As our special education students are placed across the district at the programs they need to access their education, a good portion of my student families are residing in Title I low-income communities and would not otherwise have the supports to access a program like Gemiini.org on their own.
Since February 2021, we’ve been using the Gemiini.org platform daily in our speech/language lessons over the Zoom platform. I’ve attached a few screenshots so you can see what some of the stills of the video models look like. I’ve gotten very encouraging feedback from parents who have shared that their high school aged students are making language gains they haven’t seen in years, and others asking if I could help them continue to use this tool over the summer and into the next school year.”
“Thank you again for your generosity towards special education and our students and families. Your support made a true difference in the lives and learning of our teaching staff and our student families this unprecedented school year!”
