Profiling teacher Lyn Atkins
She’s known as the teacher who has everything- the fun teacher. Lyn Atkins is a teacher for children with special needs at Inglewood Heights Public School. The children range from ages of six-nine years of age.
Atkins has taught at Inglewood for the past eleven years, but she has been a teacher for 23.
“I didn’t actually apply for the job, but head office kind of dropped me here, since then I haven’t left, “ Atkins said. “But I’ve always wanted to be a teacher since I was six-years old. I loved my grade one teacher.”
Atkins attended school for childhood education, and got her degree in Early Childhood Education, finally finishing off her academic career with her teaching certificate.
“Then I had children,” Atkins said with a laugh.
Atkins has spent many years developing a program that caters to every child’s individual needs to the best of her ability. According to Atkins the program used to be called Mild Learning Disabilities, then moved on to Multiple Exceptions, and finally it’s presently called Developmental Disabilities.
Atkins continues to explain that teaching children with special needs has given her the ability to celebrate the small accomplishments in life.
“I’ve come to learn how much joy there is when they discover something they can do. It’s the awe of discovery that keeps me going,” Atkins said.” I also like being given a challenge and see how I can solve it. My whole day is spent planning something, doing something, evaluating it, and seeing how I can do it better to make it better for the child.”
Tying our shoes, a knot, or other habits that may seem second nature to most, can be big accomplishments when these kids learn to do it for the first time. Because there’s so much possibility and unknown potential in her students, Atkins takes her job seriously.
“I see my window of opportunity as relatively small. Their minds are still open and receptive to so much so I’m trying to cram in as much as I can being it academics, socialization, and vocalizations. I do this because once they leave grade six at our school, many of the programs are geared towards life skills.”
Atkins doesn’t necessarily feel that the other programs are so-called “giving up” on these kids because they don’t focus on academics anymore. What’s important is that parents and teachers continue to see windows of opportunities to teach the child more.
“Although I would like to see more academics, sometimes the bigger picture is getting them ready to live on their own if possible or getting employment.”
What makes Atkins unique to other teachers, is her interactive and hands on approach to educating. She never wears dresses because she’s always running around, jumping up and down, or on her hands and knees playing with the kids. Jaclyn, Atkins’ daughter, remembers her mom coming up with dances and songs in their backyard.
“She had a ‘divide, multiply, add, and subtract dance’,” Jaclyn said. “Some days I would see her jumping around all over the backyard!”
“I always come up with tricks to make stuff fun,” Atkins said. “I have a pair of crocs that are my odd and even shoes. So the kids would put them on; if today was the 21st, we would take turns with the right shoe first which is an odd number, then count up to 21. Whichever number they landed on was either an odd or even day.”
The most noticeable object in the classroom is a promethean board (an electronic white board), and there is where a large chunk of the learning takes place. There are interactive videos to help the kids with letters, and as it goes through the alphabet, the kids jump up and down as they air-draw the letters while sounding them out.
“We work as best as we can to structure the environment to facilitate success and it’s manageable to redirect [the kids] so that the task is enjoyable for them,” Atkins said.
Mariuvic Pham, one of Atkin’s Educational Assistants, also says that what they do is more interactive than most programs; they learn from visuals, and the tasks are put under receptive or expressive work depending on the child. A non-electronic example is a plush cube that’s covered with various actions; whatever task it lands on, that is the activity they do. Once they get the “heeby jeebies out they can go back to focusing on a more intensive task,” Atkins said.
“We’ve created this kind of program where intuitiveness and communication is important. What’s different here is there is no division between boss and EA, we each give 100 per cent,” Atkins said. “If someone came into the room, they wouldn’t really know who the teacher is.”
Everyone has a bad day on occasion, so when one of the kids is struggling, both Atkins and Pham have the protocols down pact.
“We have one boy where sometimes we’ll have to take him for a walk around the school and talk to him so he can re-group outside and come back,” Atkins said. “Other kids can be as simple as saying ‘stop that’, but it depends on the kid. We remove them for bigger outburst so they don’t upset the other kids.”
This one boy has progressed so much in Atkins class that now when he knows he’s had enough, he asks if he can go for a walk. He came from an autism program, so when he was first integrated into Atkins’ class he had very little self-control. But today he is fascinated with letters and can read.
Kimberly Dutton also works with the special needs students, one little boy in particular. She’s been working along Mrs. Atkins for two-years.
“I love working here,” Dutton said. “[Lyn] and I are kindred spirits.”
“Mrs. Atkins is a super teacher,” Pham said. “It’s fun here, we have ups and downs but we work so well together, we’re a super power! She’s also very creative and she brings tons of resources for the kids.”
