Other ways to learn

Fogel lauded for work with special-needs students

Friday, Nov. 6, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by REID SILVERMAN Anne Fogel, a special education teacher at Spring Ridge Middle School, performs a sound decoding exercise using the Wilson Reading Intervention Program with two eighth grade students. Fogel is the Learning Disabilities Association of Maryland's nominee for the Sam Kirk Educator of the Year award. See story on Page A-11. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Every school day Anne Fogel draws on her three decades of experience to find what she calls that "light-bulb moment" in her students.

Fogel, a special education teacher at Spring Ridge Middle School, pulls out students from class and works with them one on one or in small groups to help them learn to read.

"That's my strength and what I enjoy the most, working with students on reading interventions," she said. "You may not see anything for a while but all of a sudden when that light bulb goes on, boy, that's exciting."

Fogel is the Learning Disabilities Association of Maryland's nominee for the Sam Kirk Educator of the Year award, which is given by the Learning Disabilities Association of America.

Fogel sees her special education students in regular classrooms, special-needs classrooms and at their homes.

"I've worked with a lot of disabilities," Fogel said. Most of her students have had learning disabilities, though she has also worked with intellectual disabilities, autism, hearing and vision problems and physical handicaps. Many of the students with learning disabilities have other diagnoses, too.

Her career began almost accidentally while supplementing a job in fine arts and advertising with substitute teaching. She was called to fill in at a special education school in Jacksonville, Fla., where she lived at the time, and began working with low-functioning students. "I found my niche. I was very comfortable there," she said. Her background in art helped then, and now, as she draws pictures to help students with reading.

Fogel said she struggled in school herself. "I compensated like crazy" and took extra notes and studied longer than most while in school, she said.

She started teaching at Great Mills High School in 1976 and a year or so later was part of the team that opened what was then the new Leonardtown High School.

She later spent 17 years at Town Creek Elementary School before landing in her current job about eight years ago at Spring Ridge Middle, which has been much different because of the less-affluent population that the school serves.

Getting in touch with parents to sign forms or discuss their children's education is sometimes difficult. There are lots of phone calls and visits to houses; she even used to make regular visits to Walmart in order to catch up with a parent whom she otherwise could not reach.

"In order to teach the child you have to be able to reach that child," she said. It is a matter of learning about the child's life, what other issues affect their lives. Things like poor nutrition habits or abusive parents must be dealt with, or at least addressed, before learning can occur, she said.

"Kids come with a lot of baggage," Fogel said. "You have to hone in on what this kid's motivation is; what's this kids learning style."

Most need multi-sensory techniques, so she will work in touching an object or using music to associate letters and sounds with words. Repetition works, too, for students with learning disabilities. "They compensate, they learn to do it a slightly different way," she said.

The Sam Kirk Educator of the Year award goes annually to one educator in the nation who has made outstanding contributions to the education of persons with learning disabilities. The award takes its name from Samuel Alexander Kirk, who died in 1996. He was an early researcher and writer in the field of learning disabilities.

Fogel has tried to improve on that term. "I prefer to call it learning differences," she said. "You can teach them a different way because they're going to learn a different way."

Peggy Densford, president of the Learning Disabilities Association of St. Mary's County, suggested Fogel for the nomination.

"We nominated her to the state chapter and they agreed to submit her name on behalf of all of Maryland," said Missy Alexander of the St. Mary's County association.

Fogel called it and an honor to be considered for the Sam Kirk award; while in college she used a textbook he wrote. "I remembered when he died and I thought, ‘Wow, what a pioneer,'" she said.

Fogel has been the librarian and secretary for the Learning Disabilities Association of St. Mary's County and is now the vice president. She joined in 1987 about a year after the chapter was founded.

"Anne is a very experienced special education teacher," Alexander said. "She has seen a lot of changes in special education and sort of followed its evolution to where it is now."

There are more services and programs available to students now, Fogel said.

"We're identifying kids early with disabilities and can do early interventions," she said. "The early intervention has been very beneficial to students."

But there is also a lot more paperwork now that takes away valuable time from teachers, she said, and some of the creative techniques just don't fit into the schedule anymore.

Ideas on how to educate special education students have changed dramatically during her career, she said. Once these students were placed in an isolated school, or maybe an isolated section of a school. Now most of them sit alongside their peers in regular classrooms.

The local, state and national learning disabilities associations work as advocates for students and their families, Alexander said, and Fogel fits into that mission. "She thinks out of the box. Her goal is to meet the child's need," Alexander said. "Anne does what it takes." She is also encouraging and supportive of parents of disabled children, Alexander said.

Fogel has also been an instructor at the College of Southern Maryland and at Towson University. She has worked with disabled adults at the Center for Life Enrichment, preparing them to transition to the workplace. She lives in Great Mills and is married with three grown children.

The winner of the Sam Kirk award will travel to Baltimore in February 2010 for the Learning Disability Association of America's national conference.

jyeatman@somdnews.com