LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

Jessica Clark was nominated by her area coordinator, Rachel Byma.

Ms. Clark has been a teacher in one of the Self-Contained MoCI Classrooms for the past six years at the Rudyard Area Center. She has had the opportunity to work with a variety of students in this setting, including those with Autism, Cognitive Impairments, Severe-Multiple impairments, and specific learning disabilities.

One of Mrs. Clark's many strengths is her excellent classroom management. She understands that busy students who are on a good routine perform better in school. She has high expectations for her students and has developed life-long relationships with them and their families. Mrs. Clark has gone above and beyond the expectations of a typical classroom teacher to make sure parents are included in the educational process with their children.

Mrs. Clark has completely revamped a somewhat outdated program. She believes whole-heartedly that students who have access to their typically developing peers will make much larger gains than those who are stuck in a self-contained setting all day. She has developed a peer-to-peer LINKS program that pairs students with their same-aged general education students in a local school district. While this program was initially developed for students with ASD, she has been able to increase the participation to almost every student in her classroom.

Mrs. Clark also has experience managing a large classroom staff. She has three to five classroom aides in any given year, and managing this many adults can certainly be a challenge. She has worked hard to make sure her team is on the same page and working on IEP goals for each of her students.

"I am constantly in awe of her time management and organizational skills," said Byma. "When you have multiple students going to multiple inclusion settings, it can be overwhelming, but Mrs. Clark handles it with ease."

Mrs. Clark has also been very involved in the School Improvement Team (SIT) process for her school. In addition to this, she serves as the teacher-leader on the Parent Involvement SIT subcommittee, the Autism Building Coach through the START project and has also recently completed a train-the-trainer series for CHAMPS.