Focus on TUSD - November 2007

Empathy Comes Easily
Long Wins Client of the Year Award from State Rehab Office
Karen Long has no trouble empathizing with students in the Steele Elementary School classroom where she's an exceptional education aide.

She's adapted to her lifelong hearing impairment by wearing hearing aides and reading lips. Now, at the age of 44, she helps children from kindergarten though second-grade deal with their disabilities.

For this work, she won the Client of the Year award from the State Vocational Rehabilitation Offices. Steele, at 700 S. Sarnoff Drive, was chosen as the Employer of the Year because of its outstanding work in hiring and supporting staff with disabilities.

Long has been one of three aides for two and a half years in the classroom. Classroom teacher Shirley Duffy said, "She works very hard and has been a big help."

"I love the kids," Long said. "I can understand their disabilities more than most people. I have patience with them. I feel like I'm accomplishing things when I help them with reading and math."

In her classroom, Long works with children who have learning disabilities; orthopedic, hearing and health impairments; Down's syndrome and mild mental retardation. She said discipline is always a challenge in this unpredictable environment. "Sometimes the kids need to be quieted down," she admitted. "Their attention span is shorter. A couple of the boys don't make eye contact. Sometimes the kids have a meltdown and we let it pass because it's temporary."

She said she's had to wait for things all her life, so she understands the children's frustration. She was a special education student in kindergarten in her home state of Massachusetts. Her lip reading classes lasted through her senior year in high school. She started speech therapy in the fifth grade, an event that she called life changing.

She still wears the hearing aides she received in the seventh grade. Recently, she felt disabled again after her Yorkshire dog, Hannah, ate one of her hearing aides and she waited for months for a replacement. "I don't let the dog in my room anymore," she said.

Long earned a bachelor's degree in administration of law and criminal justice from Lowell University in 1984, but her impairment prevented her from working in the field. Instead, she worked for two decades in development disabilities, in Massachusetts and Arizona. After she came to Tucson in 1989, she managed a group home and worked at various agencies.

Now she's doing preliminary work on pursuing a teacher's certification so she could teach in a regular classroom or an exceptional education classroom.

"Anything you can do to improve someone's life is important work," Long said. "Some of these children will be able to live independently as adults and I like to think I had a hand in that."

-- By Sharon Dunham
Communications & Media Relations

TUSD - Proud Supporter of Small Classes

Photos in the November issue by Jes Ruvalcaba of Communications & Media Relations, unless otherwise noted.

The deadline to submit material for the December Focus is Friday, Nov. 7. The Focus will be published Monday, Nov. 17. Email submissions to Chyrl Hill Lander or Sharon Dunham in the Communications & Media Relations Department or use the online Tip Sheet.