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Learn More About Pat's Experience:

ESL/ESOL During my tenure as a Special Education teacher for Niles West High School, I had the pleasure of working with an Asian student whose family had recently emigrated from Korea. He spoke almost no English and yet was expected to function in regular freshman classes taught in a language he did not know. To improve his chances for success at our school, I was assigned to work with him for a 50-minute period every day for one year. I used an approved ESL workbook and a variety of age-appropriate language materials to facilitate his language progress but ultimately, our one-on-one conversations were most beneficial in improving this student's English language skills. I'm happy to report that this young man continued to do well and earned his diploma in four years. After I left my full-time teaching position, I received community referrals from my district. My first referral was an elderly Middle Eastern gentleman who had received sanctuary in our country after fleeing the turmoil of his native land. He had been a successful doctor in his country but U.S. laws required him to repeat his internship here. He was self-conscious about his English and believed that he needed a language tutor to improve his prospects in this country. I found him a delight to work with and more fluent than he believed himself to be. When I questioned his need for tutoring given his current skills, he told me that his English was passable but that we wanted to speak the language like I did. And that's when I learned how important one's perspective is when dealing with an ESL student. It was his choice to make not to settle for his current skill level and thus began an 12 month program that was enormously satisfying to both of us. His progress was remarkable. photoshop About 12 years ago, I developed an interest in Desktop Publishing and began taking courses in Adobe PageMaker and Corel Draw at a local community college. While I found these classes interesting and beneficial, they were not targeted to my new part time work for a Photography Studio. It was during my consultations with other photographers that I learned about Photoshop and the amazing things one could accomplish with this program. I have since become an avid fan of Photoshop and use it almost exclusively in the photographic end of my work. My early photography work required me to shoot slides exclusively with the admonition to err on the side of underexposure as that could always be corrected but overexposure could not. This technique has resulted in thousands of slightly underexposed slides that have been revitalized utilizing Photoshop’s contrast, lighting and color adjustment tools. Of course both the scanning and adjustment processes introduce unacceptable amounts of noise and artifacts into many photos but Photoshop has the answer to that too with a host of blur and noise reduction filters. All of the images at http://www.ccicards.com have been photographed and Photoshopped by me over the past 10 years. I have been able to save, restore, embellish and recreate all of the photographs at this site. Photoshop is the one program I am certain to use everyday, nevertheless, I am constantly learning new and better ways to use it. special needs During my first year as a high school English teacher, I was assigned to a class with an inordinately high number of students having trouble with the curriculum and educational environment. As the semester progressed, I discovered that I enjoyed working with these “special” students and in fact, seemed to have special bond with them. Mid-year, the head of my department recommended me to the director of Secondary Special Education, to work in a pilot program off campus, where three teachers would provide for all the educational needs of a select group of students. For me, that was a great year, a year of discovering a new direction in my teaching career. I subsequently returned to school and earned a MA in Special Education. My next teaching position was part of a mainstream program called the Individualized Instruction Center (IIC), administering to the needs of a variety of “special” students whose challenges included everything from dyslexia to behavioral problems. Students were matriculated into regular high school classes with the ongoing support of his or her IIC instructor who served as a mediator, tutor, confidant, and cheerleader. After my stint in the classroom, I worked for the Homebound Program for District 219. I tutored students, who for physical or emotional reasons could not attend regular classes. In every instance, I had the good fortune to get to know these “special” youngsters on a personal level and experienced with them, the joys of their remarkable accomplishments.