Path to Success

At St. Hilary School in Fairlawn, intervention services don’t always mean pulling kids out of classes for extra help.

Sixth grader Joey Towell, who has Down syndrome, stays with his peers in some classes while an intervention specialist helps him. This approach keeps Towell connected to his peers, which has been especially important following remote learning and isolation at the start of the pandemic.

Although he also bonds with classmates as an athlete who plays on the basketball, soccer and football teams, class time with peers remains important, and those subjects, including social studies and gym, are some of his favorites, he says. In social studies, he does supplemental worksheets with fewer questions than standard worksheets.

“When he feels engaged and involved with the class, because he is doing the work that they’re doing, it’s very important,” says lead intervention specialist Tina Scanlon.

He leaves the classroom for reading and math classes to work with an intervention specialist on individual goals like counting money. This happens in a dedicated intervention space that was created during a renovation in summer 2020 for students to attend before, during and after school hours. It provides a distraction-free area for students and the 20-person intervention team, which includes tutors, speech pathologists, occupational therapists and more. Nearly 100 students — about 18 percent of the school’s student body — use services including individual education plans and tutoring.

When Towell is working one-on-one with an intervention specialist, he enjoys it. He gets to visit an unoccupied science lab with a specialist to do hands-on lessons like learning about density by putting candy in water and learning about measurements by measuring the height of a door, which was Towell’s favorite part. He proudly shares that on a recent science quiz, he earned 100 percent.

“He still may be learning the same thing that his peers are learning. We just do it with all types of instruction,” says behavioral specialist Katie Towsley, “so visuals, auditory, tactile, anything that is going to make that information and the content meaningful for him.”

“They explain things,” Towell says. “It’s fun.”

“He’s happy when he knows he succeeded,” says Scanlon.