Brazos River RDSPD

The administration and staff at the general education campus see this amazing teacher daily and recently honored her for her achievements as their pick for Wright Elementary 2018 Teacher of the Year. Everything you would expect, hope for, and never even dream of happens in Mrs. Schoonover’s room. This teacher establishes a positive foundation for all future learning. The challenges of hearing loss and language deprivation are immense, but during their most critical brain development age, the children have the best advantage to succeed and excel thanks to outstanding efforts and successes of their teacher, Chandler Schoonover.

Perfection is always a work in progress, but in Chandler Schoonover’s deaf education Pre-K classroom, excellence is a daily achievement. Through loving, educating and disciplined nurturing, the students in Mrs. Schoonover’s deaf ed preschool classroom are successfully developing the skills to become engaged learners and leaders.

Everything in deaf education is based in language development. At times in deaf education, the progress is slow and steady, but in this Pre-K classroom, non-verbal shy kids emerge with confidence, knowledge, and language that surpasses statistical norms. The whole child is the focus. One child has vestibular issues... “Let’s incorporate vestibular exercises for all and make the exercises into language lessons.” Out of the box ideas are implemented consistently when proven to produce results. This classroom is fun, encouraging, and engaging. The work expectations are apparent and the routines built into their learning are anything but routine.

The families are always involved and informed through a variety of formats. Facebook page, teacher created sign language videos, constant communication, and events that bring parents and families into the classroom to once again support and nurture the whole child. In addition, there is a transition program for deaf and hard of hearing 2 year olds to come into this classroom with their parent in order to acclimate to routines, gain language, and feel comfortable about the next step in their language development and education

Chandler Schoonover is the servant leader of the educational team in her classroom. The SLP (Kim German), OT (Shari Stahl), and PT (Susan Mey) specialists all use a push-in model of therapy because the team learns from each other and supports each other in order to give more to the students throughout their day. Chandler and Communication Assistant, Lindsey King, work hand in hand to insure each child understands everything they need to know to access their environment. Under CS’s supportive leadership, these adults work together in a collaborative manner with seamless transition to maximize student learning time and potential.

During the summer, Chandler Schoonover will work in the home of D/HH infant in order to develop language in the child and earn the trust of the family. The transition into Pre-K is made much easier for both child and parents. She develops the kind of trust that is earned from parents to put their non-verbal deaf children on a bus for more than an hour each way in order to have this exceptional teacher for their child.