pathways new website

[Guest guest]

Hi Everyone,

Happy New Year! Attached is the newsletter for January 2011. Please also

take a look at our new website at www.PathwaysKids.org. It is really

beautiful and does such a great job of letting everyone know what Pathways

is doing and where we are headed! The " Include ME! " t-shirt design contest

has been narrowed down to three finalists. Please cast your vote for the

design that will end up on the t-shirt for 2011. You can find the survey on

the homepage of our website.

Best Wishes for a Wonderful 2011!

Melinda Jennis,

President

!

rolling the training out this year and helping

school districts and townships to become

independent in training their own mentors and

replicating the leadership component of the

mentor program. The challenge is not just to

appropriately train our youth, but teach them to

become leaders in the next generation who can

take inclusion to new heights. After having

worked with so many young adults and children

over the past eight years, I believe they hold the

keys to answering so many of the issues we as

adults cannot seem to resolve or refuse to accept

about inclusion. It is exciting to see the vision

children have, and to see so many of them

gaining an interest in leading the " Include ME! "

movement. What makes the mentor program

with Pathways unique, is the way it teaches

people to take ownership of inclusion in ways

that can change entire cultures of schools and

communities. Although the mentor training is a

sensitivity training, it challenges children to

problem solve and to think critically about what

to do in a variety of situations. It also challenges

them to become a role model or mentor for

inclusion and how they can do that. The mentor

training was never meant to be taken as an

assembly line approach to see how many kids

can be trained or just a source for community

service hours. It is meant to be a leadership

program that develops the potential in children

to become genuine leaders who will live and

teach inclusion. We must prepare our children to

be the next teachers, administrators, and

legislators. Pathways will be announcing how

we will be rolling out the !rst formalized " Train

the Trainer, " sessions so stay tuned!

- Melinda Jennis, President

Bringing in the New

Year 2011

The Monthly Publication from Pathways for Exceptional Children January 2011

Committee who served all of last year in 2010.

Thank you to Debra Casha, Board of Trustee

Member for Pathways who chaired the Education

Committee in 2010 and led the group toward

achieving such success!

The new website will also serve as a place where

children will be able to voice their opinions and

showcase their talents. The Lead Mentors now

have their own section dedicated to their work.

The young adults in the " Project Win-Win "

employment program will be learning about social

media, website design, photography, and graphic

arts, and will be posting their work to the program

web page. The Project Win-Win disc jockeys will

be recording the music they mix and posting it to

the website so everyone can hear their " radio

station. " Pathways will post a " Dream it Forward "

story each month where people can submit

examples of " best practices " for inclusion. So if

you have stories or programs to share, please send

them to us. These stories can be about individual

people, school projects, or community programs.

Pathways wants to hear about the positive things

people are doing for inclusion, especially when it

involves kids!

Finally, to begin the new year, Pathways has

!nished the " Introduction to Mentor Training "

guidebook and training module. We will be

Pathways for Exceptional Children received close

to 200 t-shirt designs that came in for our

" Include ME! " contest. The Lead Mentors met

over the holidays and selected three !nal designs.

It was a very tough selection process because so

many of the artists that submitted their projects

did such a wonderful job depicting what " Include

ME! " meant to them. The three designs are

pictured on the front of this newsletter and posted

on the home page of our website. Please go onto

our website and take a quick survey to select

which design would be the best choice for the

front of the " Include ME! " t-shirt for 2011.

Pathways would like to thank all of the artists who

submitted their " Include ME! " designs and the

support they received from teachers, parents, and

friends who encouraged them to submit their

work to Pathways.

Pathways is also beginning the new year with

some more very exciting news. We have our new

website, www.PathwaysKids.org, that went live

just in time for the new year. The website is larger

and has more features that will help everyone

understand the many things Pathways offers, and

where we have set our vision for the future. The

website features four new videos that Pathways

worked very hard to complete in 2010. The

videos highlight; a) Include ME! 2010, " Project

Win-Win " Employment Program, c) " High

Expectations " featuring a panel of parents who

share their personal experiences about raising the

bar for children with special needs, and d) " High

Expectations and Improving Outcomes " featuring

administrators and teachers who share their views

on keeping expectations high. Pathways would

like to thank those who served on our Education

!

Appreciation for Talents Through Inclusion

Recreation Programs: Upcoming programs are posted at the beginning

of each month. You can visit www.PathwaysKids.org and click on " Children's

Programs, " or the Recreation Department's website: www.montvillenj.org.

Click

on Municipal Services, the Parks & Recreation, then Forms & Flyers.

Rede!ning the future for people with disabilities

For the latest news and information about Pathways for Exceptional Children,

visit www.PathwaysKids.org

C 2010 Pathways for Exceptional Children

It was Christmas Eve. My family and I were eating dinner at a restaurant we

know we had not been to in quite some time. As if it were second

nature for us to do this, my mom asked my brother " When was the last time we

were here, Nick? " and with almost no hesitation he replied " August

22nd. " Then, he thought, but just brie " y enough. " 2003. " We all knew he was

right. He is always accurate when it came to years, dates, the

weather, and especially the day of the week. " So.what day was that? " I ask

him. " Friday, " he effortlessly !res back. " , check the calendar

on your phone, " my mom ordered, as I furiously thumbed my way through my

phone calendar all the way back to 2003. He was right. August

22nd, 2003, indeed was a Friday. Deciding to see how far we could hone this

special talent of his, we then proceeded to ask numerous questions of

that nature, almost all of which required minimal effort on his part to

answer.

Now, many people might !nd this quirky and quite special talent very

bizarre, but to many of you, I'm sure you !nd this somewhat the " norm " --I

know I do. In fact, while mentoring in Pathways I don't feel as though I'm

in a room full of " disabled " people but rather one full of extraordinarily

diverse, clever people--gifted musicians, people who !nd entertaining

effortless, vibrant personalities coming out of their shells (at different

paces,

of course), geographically savvy individuals, those who can !x game consoles

I cannot even fathom to maneuver, and some who can remember my

birthday better than some of my closest friends. All different people, all

with palpable distinctions, yet all impersonally dubbed with the same term:

" disabled. " And what does that term even mean, anyway?

Pathways tries to collaboratively bene!t and include everyone and it

advocates that we are all greater than the sum of our parts and diagnoses.

Just

as the kids that I mentor are bene!ting from the mentors academically and

socially, the other mentors and I are bene!ting as well. A foundation is

set for friendship and inclusion, and for every person who is a part of

Pathways to apply it in all aspects of life, thereby challenging everyone to

push

aside their de!nitions of what it means to be " normal " and socially reach

out to the people who need the interaction most of all. If nobody with

people who did not fall under their de!nition of " normal, " no one would take

notice of these talents.

I plan on a future in which inclusion everywhere comes even more naturally

than it does now for

the people who are a part of Pathways. Everyone is different in their

abilities in talents, but we all

need some sort of social interaction and we all need to be constantly

learning from others. As a

sibling and mentor of people with special needs, becoming a mentor of

Pathways has helped me

better understand the truly special people that, as parents, you allow me to

work with every week.

Quite honestly, if I had only been learning how to teach through Pathways

and not how to learn

from each individual, I would not be ful!lling my duty as a mentor. Sharing

knowledge with each

person is one thing, but comprehending and learning from all of their

talents is a completely

different, more thrilling process.

- Buonauro, Lead Mentor

A Special Day at Montclair

State University Recreation

Over 30 young adults from " Project Win-Win " had their overnight trip again

this

year! The kids went out to eat, to a movie, and back to Hammond Inn for a

night

!lled with swimming, card playing, and social festivities. The next morning

they

boarded a bus and took off to the Montclair State University (MSU) Special

Friends

Day. Our Disc Jockeys played their tunes. Everyone else had a great time

with the

college students at MSU who volunteered their time for an afternoon of

sports,

dancing, artwork, video games, swim-ming and more. The MSU event had about

100

children with special needs of all ages in attendance on December 12, 2010.

Each of

the kids was matched with two MSU students. Thank you again to MSU for such

an

organized and fun !lled event. We look forward to next year!