School Staff Award Recipient
The Teaching and Administrative Staff Forest Hills School, Saint John
Forest Hills School was one of three recipients of an Inclusive Education Award in the School Staff category,
Comments from Marlene Munn, President of NBACL:
* This is a school that has made great strides in inclusion in recent years;
moving from a situation where nine children with autism were taught in a segregated classroom in the basement of the building to the point where now five of those students have returned to the schools in their neighbourhoods while the remaining four, all living in the Forest Hills area, are fully integrated in their classrooms.
* Credit for this great accomplishment goes to the school principal, Tanya Whitney, who took every opportunity to prepare her staff for the transition;
* and to that staff, especially Al Fequet and Vickie Beaulieu-Manuel and the many others who studied and worked hard to be ready to seize the opportunity to make a change
* Tanya Whitney and her team stepped up to the plate and bravely faced the challenges … for the students who they knew in their hearts would benefit from it (inclusion). And that includes not only the students with intellectual disabilities, but all the students in the school . . . and their families.
* This team has embraced NBACL’s changing lives/changing communities philosophy entirely. And they have achieved it. They have changed many students’ and families’ lives and they have changed their school community.
