by Karen Patterson
Gorenflo Elementary
Biloxi, Mississippi
In early August of 2005, I went to school to start
the second year in our brand new building. All of our beautiful new furniture
was in place and the computers were set up. My seven special needs students
are low-income and have difficult home lives, so school is always a happy
place to come back to with familiar faces and materials. When we left
school on Friday, August 26, Hurricane Katrina was no threat to us at
all. How quickly things changed and how horribly wrong things went for
us all!
When the storm was over, I made my way down to the school. I found my
emergency exit door open and the metal door frame bent. When I looked
inside I was shocked; everything in the classroom was everywhere, just
tossed around. My flooring had been completely lifted up and rolled.
There was still water in the room and a clearly defined water mark at
six feet. I found computer disks caked in mud and puzzle pieces out in
the parking lot. We were not allowed to go into the school to try to
salvage any materials because everything was contaminated – we
were told that it would all be thrown away.
When we came back to school at the end of September, our enrollment had
gone from 368 to 86. My class dropped from 7 students to 5. I realized
that I was in serious need of materials. We were receiving donated school
supplies daily but none that could really do much for my students.
I know the Laureate programs helped tremendously and they continue to prove invaluable to my students.
I had used Laureate software in the past so
I contacted the company about my situation. Bernie Fox, the Vice President,
said that Laureate would be happy to replace my lost items and asked
if there was anything else that would be helpful to my students. I
told him that I would be thrilled with whatever they could send and
I knew that I could make use of it. A few days later, I received a
wonderful surprise – a huge box of Laureate software!
Let me share with you what this unbelievable gift did for my students.
The Language
Activities of Daily Living programs are helping all of my students
learn community and life skills; now I don’t have to worry about
losing my picture cards because the programs have everything I need,
plus added motivational reinforcement. All of the Creature programs
are great for Mary Beth and Allison; they love the music and the colorful
creatures. Nouns
and Sounds has been very good for my student with visual impairments.
James has also done extremely well with First
Words and I know that he will do as well when he gets to First
Words II. Lizzy is working with the Words & Concepts and Concentrate! series.
She is very distractible but it is not a problem when she’s using
these programs. Roger is using some of the more advanced programs and
he is having so much fun with them that he doesn’t realize that
he’s working. I already see improvement in his writing abilities
from using Swim,
Swam, Swum.
I did not expect much from last school year after the storm
hit but I was truly impressed with the progress that my students made. I know
the Laureate programs helped tremendously and they continue to prove invaluable
to my students. The software is a great time saver too since you can set up
the programs for each child individually and is a real lifesaver when it comes
to data collection to show progress and weaknesses. I truly don’t know
what I would have done without these programs.
I am very grateful to Laureate for its generosity and support and happy
to share with all of you how much these wonderful programs helped my
students. In such a tremendous time of loss and sadness, it was very
uplifting to have received such a gift. 