Coreen Prochnow

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Coreen Prochnow

• 2004-2005 Teacher of the Year
• Oak Park School
• Sarasota, FL

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Coreen Prochnow was selected as the 2004-2005
Teacher of the Year for Oak Park School in
Sarasota, Florida. While all of the students at
Oak Park have a variety of special needs,
Coreen's class was composed of middle school
students with autism, ranging in age from 12 to
14 years.
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Coreen stated her priority for students at this
point in their education was to make their
educational program more functional in nature and
to use the skills the students already have to
promote their independence even further. This
includes the use of daily schedules and personal
routines for all students.
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Coreen is always thinking of two things
individualizing the instructional activities she
creates for her students and promoting
self-direction in learning and completing
important daily routines. For example, when
describing a recent shopping trip with her class,
Coreen commented because we have such
different levels of students, some will be able
to count out the money to a cashier. For others,
it might just be understanding they need to hand
the money over, that would be great.
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As for using individual schedules, Coreen says
she wants her students to learn whats a Friday
all about, what do we do Friday, whats different
about this Friday or next Friday, not just
finding it on a calendar. For us, we go to music
on Friday and I want my students to understand
their calendar will tell them that, not an
adult.
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A third aspect of Coreens class is an emphasis
on functional curriculum. She feels its most
important for students of this age to learn
reading and math skills in the context of real
life activities. If were reading a recipe,
isnt that still reading and comprehension? Lets
focus on those things.
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Coreen acknowledges that maintaining this balance
for her students also requires her to work
together with other staff members as a team. She
depends on her paraprofessionals to take an
active part in student instruction, expecting
that they will conduct lessons or activities with
her supervision.
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As a way to support her team, Coreen has designed
a master schedule to accompany her lesson plans.
This allows each team member to know which
students and activities they are responsible for.
It also provides an easy way to keep notes or
data after the activity has been completed.
Coreen says its a real time saver. I think it
gives me and my assistants more independence
because we each know who were working with and
what were doing, but we can each gather up our
own materials and conduct the lesson how we want
to. Theres space on it for us to write down what
they did actually work on and how the session
went. We can also keep academic scores or
anecdotals about behavior with it.
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Its important to be a good team member and to
also be open to new ideas and situations. You
cant go in thinking you know everything and you
cant be single focused. You have to be a team
player, be willing to do things in a different
way.
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This is particularly true when working with the
families of students. Coreen feels she has a
good relationship with her students families
because, I dont act like I know all the answers
up front. I listen to them and ask How do you
work with it at home and how would you like me to
work with it here? That give and take really
opened the door so they could trust me. They
could see that whatever I did was in the best
interest of their child and for down the road.
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What advice does Coreen have for other teachers?
Expect it to be difficult at times. You have
to love the work, even when its hard. You really
do.
Theres so much more to teaching than just one
subject. Mind, body, soulits all a part of
teaching.