What impact has Tashiemia had on colleagues and students over the past month? Tashiemia demonstrates punctuality and professionalism daily. She takes excellent data collection on Catalyst and demonstrates strength in conscientiously implementing programs. Tashiemia implements targets as written by the teacher and gives thoughtful feedback on programs. In addition, she is quick to create new materials needed for a student’s program. Her data is always consistent with the performance seen by the teacher. Tashiemia cares about our student’s programming and wants them to get the most out of their time in school. She has a true passion [...]

One of our amazing staff members, Michael Shashaty, had the pleasure of traveling on the Autism Cruise over the summer. Prior to this summer, I had never been on a plane. Before that, I had visited only a handful of states. Traveling was not something I envisioned myself doing, and certainly not to another country. Autism has provided me with many blessings in life: a career, friends, colleagues and a purpose. A few weeks ago, I found myself on the most breath-taking island in the world, swimming alongside fish in crystal blue lagoons and conversing with people [...]

Melissa Dirzius, Special Education Teacher & Art Teacher I began volunteering with special needs students in my High School Child Development Center.  I had considered several other fields as I continued my education — psychology, Social Work, BCBA but found they did not quite provide me what I needed.  In the end, I found that the combination of the creativity of programming and assessing our students, along with the personal time spent educating each one individually, allowed me to see their little victories were exactly what I wanted. There is [...]

This month, we would like to put the staff spotlight on Ms. Ashley Kimbell! Ms. Kimbell joined the B.E.S.T. Academy in 2016 as a special education teacher. She received her Master's degree from Southern Connecticut State University in 2017. This is Ms. Kimbell's first teaching position and she has truly risen to the challenges of this job. Currently, Ms. Kimbell is the teacher in the Purple Room, which has some of the youngest students at B.E.S.T. Her patience and kind nature have helped the students of the Purple Room to make great progress both academically and behaviorally. [...]