The Lindsay Myers story
One girl’s life as a mainstreamed student



VOORHEESVILLE — In June, with just seven days left of school till summer break, 17-year-old Lindsay Myers dodged through the hallways of Clayton A. Bouton High school, meandering through the teenage crowd, occasionally putting her binder on top of her head and tucking her neck to squeeze through a small space between two students. In flip-flops with butterfly buckles, she zipped past a young couple kissing against a wall as if it were old hat and slipped into her earth-science class.

Navigating the halls by herself was not something Myers was able to do at the start of the school year. A petite girl, with shoulder-length light brown hair, pink toenail polish, and an Aeropostale polo shirt, Myers is a quintessential teenager — except that she has the cognitive ability of a second-grader striving to move her way up to a third-grade level.
"She’s advanced a half-grade level this year," her special-education teacher, Kille Lewis, told The Enterprise in June with wide eyes, emphasizing what a huge accomplishment this is.

Myers has also gained a new sense of independence. After the first few months of being led to her classes by an adult, she has now memorized the path and makes the journey on her own, which is a first in her educational career.

Myers has Down syndrome, and has been a part of the Voorheesville community all of her life. The syndrome, documented by British physician John L. H. Down in the 1800’s, is the result of a congenital disorder, caused by the presence of an extra 21st chromosome, in which the affected person has mild to moderate retardation.
The hall monitor watching the entrance to the school building looked at the sign-in registry to see the Enterprise’s destination. "Oh, you’re visiting Lindsay," she said. "I’ve known her since she was a little girl."

This close-knit extended family community is exactly what Lindsay’s mother, Lisa Myers, did not want her daughter to be pulled away from.

Two years ago, Myers was forced to go to an out-of-district BOCES program.

After Myers grew past middle-school age in the spring of 2004, that next year, the Voorheesville School District, under the recommendation of a committee for special education, deemed that Myers would receive the best education in the least restrictive environment in a special-education class located in Guilderland High School, run by the Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

Myers had been mainstreamed at Voorheesville Elementary School with a one-on-one aid, and then attended a BOCES special-education program housed in Voorheesville’s middle-school wing. But, as she moved into what would be her ninth-grade year, Voorheesville did not have an in-house program to offer her, and the closest BOCES program appropriate for her needs was in a neighboring town.

The Enterprise told Myers’s story two years ago in June of 2004, as her parents, Lisa and Jeff, challenged the district’s decision to place their daughter in a BOCES program for high school. They wanted Lindsay to be more mainstreamed and to remain within the district where she grew up — with the people she knew.

Myers spent the 2004-05 school year at Guilderland, and returned to Voorheesville for the 2005-06 school year. (See related story on options.)

The district created an individualized education program for Myers that included being mainstreamed into regular high- school classes accompanied by an aid who is also a certified special-education teacher. For some class periods, the teacher works one-on-one with Myers in a small workshop room to teach reading, writing, and math skills at Myers’s level.

By the conclusion of the school year, school administrators, Myers’s teachers, and her parents all had great things to say about how well the arrangement worked. It was so successful that another Voorheesville child with special needs graduating from the middle school will be joining Myers next year, in this new high school program that was created for Myers. Lewis, Voorheesville’s new high-school special-education teacher, who was hired last September to teach Myers, will teach them both.

Following Myers in June for a half–day at school, The Enterprise discovered she had been learning a range of life lessons as all teenagers do: geological eras, the best death-by-chocolate cake recipe, and how to identify who are your true friends. (See related story.)

Mainstreamed
"I like all foods," Myers said with a smile. Her favorite class is a foods class taught by Judy Zielenski. "You make the food, you eat the food," Myers said, licking her lips.

This elective, a class of about eight students, was split into three tables, which were the three cooking teams for the semester. As an end-of-the-year project, the kids were organizing a recipe book of all the foods they had made that year. The class brainstormed together how the chapters would be organized and what food categories to have. Three particular students dominated the conversation. Myers remained silent but listened intently, and her teacher, Lewis, offered suggestions as a member of the class would.

As Myers’s table began setting up the recipes to be cut and bound into the cookbook, Myers meticulously opened her school supplies zipper pocket on the inside of her binder and pulled out her own pair of scissors and glue stick, while other students scampered about the room, collecting supplies. Lewis offered up Myers’s glue stick to be shared, which Myers didn’t object to.

With a reporter watching this unfold from the corner of the room, Myers, a shy and quiet girl, often smiled and blushed, as she made eye contact and adjusted to her guest in the classroom.
Her cooking-team table included her in the exercise, being sure they got a "yes" or at least a nod from Myers, as they handed out the recipes to be cut and pasted.

While most of the students dove in, quickly assembling the pages, Lewis first drew a pencil line around the recipe for Myers to follow as she used her scissors. Then, after Myers cut along the line, she would pass the recipe to Lewis who would then re-cut it again more accurately, in a smoother line closer to the words.
"Don’t cut too close to the words," Lewis told Myers.
When a peer, 12th-grader Casey Sheridan, came across a recipe that she knew Myers liked, she said, "Here’s the old-fashioned chocolate cake, Lindsay," and handed it to Myers.
"Oh, yummy," Myers said as they reminisced together. "That was a good one," they all agreed.

A few minutes later, when The Enterprise asked what she normally does in this foods class, Myers explained, in the order of the days, what was done. Since the classes are 45 minutes, the students would start out on one day choosing a recipe and looking on a map to see what country it came from. Then it would take one or two days to actually cook and finish making the recipe. On the third day, the students would get to eat it.

When asked whether her favorite part was eating the food or making it, Myers responded that she likes them both. She also helps her mother make dinner and desserts at home, she said.

Myers is considering becoming a chef when she grows up, and getting a job in the food industries, she said.

When The Enterprise asked Myers a question, sometimes Lewis would slightly re-word it or help Myers organize her thoughts.
"What do we do first, Lindsay"" Lewis asked, putting the event in chronological order so that Myers could verbalize.
"Use your words," Lewis encouraged her; you can’t just move your head to respond, she said, coaching Myers.
When Myers was asked about her class schedule, Lewis split it into a series of questions. "Tell her about the two different days"There are P days and —"" "What changes on the fourth day""

Throughout the day, as Myers became more comfortable with the reporter following her, she answered more on her own rather than with assistance from Lewis.

Science

In earth-science class, Myers was one of the more focused students. Nine other special-needs students were in the class, too, taught by Mary Kelly. It’s a Regents-level course, but is considered a supported class, Kelly told The Enterprise. She prepares everyone to take the Regents exam, and some students pass, but not everyone, Kelly said.
Myers is not required to take the final exam, her mother said, but, she said, "She’s so included with everything."

A number of the students had a hard time staying on task in the 45-minute class, taking breaks to go the bathroom or water fountain. Another student kept trying to read the newspaper’s sports page until Kelly confiscated it. Not all of the students came to class prepared with the correct materials, either.

The class uses the same charts and textbooks as a regular Regents class but has fewer students than the average class in order to offer more individualized instruction, Kelly said.
"I try to hit everyone’s needs level," she said.
Kelly teaches earth science a little bit differently to this group of students by the phrasing she uses, she said. Instead of asking "A is to B as B is to —" type questions, she will be more straightforward, she said.
New York State likes to use a little more sophisticated language and thought process, Kelly said. "It’s a higher language."

Another way Kelly modifies the class is that, in her quizzes and tests, she includes fewer math questions. In the regular Regents class, she includes eight challenging math questions while for this supported class the test has three difficult math questions instead, Kelly said.

An additional advantage of the smaller class size is that it offers more hands-on learning, Kelly said. In a regular class, for example, there are two to three students sharing one model; in the supported class, each student gets his or her own, Kelly said.
"I have a better sense of what their individual needs are and have more freedom to meet those needs," Kelly said.
"And Lindsay does amazingly well," she went on. Ninth-graders in general don’t love earth science, but "it really seems to click with her," Kelly said.
"I can call on her for a question and it’s not just mimicking back words, but looking at the table"being involved," Kelly said.

On the day of observation, Kelly was reviewing with the class radioactive decay. A chart up on the board displayed mathematical equations. The class also reviewed the geological eras and how fossils help to date an outcrop. Myers followed along with the chart at her desk, and collectively the class found drawings of various organisms on the top of the page and then matched them up with the correct time period. If Myers got lost, Lewis re-guided Myers’s finger.
"What’s the half-life of carbon 14"" Kelly asked, calling on Myers. Myers looked up at the chart, which listed the answer, and, after Lewis leaned in and whispered something in her ear, Myers responded "Five point seven times ten to the third."
"She is very bright and very pleasant...and has been very well received by the other students," Kelly told The Enterprise after the class let out.

Kelly said she has never had to urge the other students to sit with or include Myers; they just do so on their own.
"They’re very fond of her and tend to look out for her," Kelly said.

Myers has particularly enjoyed the labs.
When Myers enters the classroom, Kelly said, she often hears the other girls say, "Nice sweater, Linds," or, "Oh, you got a haircut."

On this particular Friday, the teenaged girls in the class, before the lesson began, were talking to Lewis, a young stylishly-dressed woman, about her shoes, asking her where she got them and whether or not they hurt her feet, while Myers sat upright, facing forward, waiting for class to begin.

The girl sitting directly behind Myers had brought scented markers, and a cluster of girls sitting around Myers began passing the markers around to try to figure out what they smelled like.
"Hey, Lindsay," the girl sitting behind her called out, and then proceeded to invite Myers to smell one of the markers. Myers turned around, sniffed, and made a face, then tried another one. "It’s root beer," the girl said. "Oh, my favorite," another said.
Kelly said, if anything, when she hears protests over assigned groups, it’s gender-based: "Oooh, do I have to sit with him!"

Special education

Myers is an auditory learner rather than a visual learner, Lewis said. It took Lewis two months to really learn what level Myers was at, she said. Lewis is a special-education teacher who is now finishing up her master’s degree as a reading specialist.

The tricky thing about special education is that teachers are not specifically trained for one individual disability, Lewis said. Teachers have to learn from their students what their needs are and the best way to teach them, she said.

This was Lewis’s first time being assigned one-on-one to a child with Down syndrome and her first experience working for the Voorheesville School District.
"We really focused this year on sight words — reading skills," Lewis said of her work with Myers.

Covering the left wall of their small one-on-one classroom were strips of paper with three- or five-letter words on them. Myers started out knowing only 25 words and now knows 150.
"She has really progressed in her speech and reading skills," Lewis said, by about half a grade level.

Myers told The Enterprise one of the first lessons she does each day is "putting words into sentences and spelling."
"Say it and spell it," Lewis chimed in.

For math, Myers is more at a first-grade level, Lewis said. She teaches Myers life-skills math, like how to tell time and how to make change, she said.
Lewis had to modify the earth-science tests Kelly created. "I modify them very little," she said.
"Her knowledge about that science is good," Lewis said, but math is more difficult for Myers, so Lewis has to modify the questions involving math, or reduce the complicated language even more then Kelly does for the other students in the supported class.

Since Myers’s reading comprehension is fairly low, for the earth-science review book, Lewis will assign fewer questions to Myers. She’ll use the same text and basic question content but include more direction, such as telling her on what page the answer can be found, while the other students are expected to read the whole chapter.

Myers said, in her interview with The Enterprise, that at times earth science can be difficult and sometimes she has a hard time understanding the teacher in class.

Myers is learning about rocks and minerals, though, Lewis said. She’s learning the minerals and where they can be found, such as having come from out of a volcano.

Myers takes her own notes and does all the labs, Lewis said. She often gets 100 percent on her earth-science quizzes, Lewis said.

Next year, her third year in high school, Myers is going to take mainstream chemistry. Asked why she is skipping over biology, usually the next level of science in New York State public schools, Lewis whispered over Myers’s head that is was because of dissecting frogs.
Often children like Myers aren’t given "the attention I’m giving her," Lewis said. The intelligence of children with Down syndrome is often overlooked, Lewis said.
"I try not to look at their IEP," Lewis said of the individualized education program. She first acquaints herself with a student.
"The test scores don’t mean anything to me," Lewis said. She said she did her first thorough reading of Myers’s IEP in December after she had developed her own sense of Myers’s needs and abilities.
For a person with Down syndrome, a third-grade level of reading is high; the brain at some point isn’t able to grasp, she said. She finds an "IEP almost kind of demeaning," or discouraging, talking about what that student’s ability is or probably will be, Lewis said.

But the IEP is good because it sets goals to be accomplished, Lewis said. She wants to remain Myers’s special-education instructor throughout her high-school years. She concluded that you really don’t know a student’s limitation until she is pushed up to it.

This first year together, Lewis said, was very demanding on both herself and Myers, since they had never worked together before.

Myers is getting more academics this year, Lewis said, while her curriculum before being mainstreamed was more life-skills based.
"Lindsay really wants to learn," Lewis said. "I and Voorheesville have given her a chance."