Professional Development

2007 Heartspring Award for Innovation and Creativity in Special Education

Sue Woods, Wamego, KS
Sue Woods is a special education teacher with the Special Services Cooperative in Wamego, Kansas. She currently works with younger students in her classroom whose disabilities range from cerebral palsy, to learning disabilities, to autism and other developmental disabilities. Her classroom budget is limited to $200 a year so she has to be creative. For the last 10 years Sue has regularly traveled to Wichita in order to attend Heartspring seminars. She is grateful for the opportunity to learn from the national experts that Heartspring brings to the Kansas community.

Respected among her peers, Sue has assisted colleagues as a staff development resource, helping them identify intervention strategies for students in their classrooms. She also serves on the Pervasive Developmental Disability Consultation Team for the Special Services Cooperative, and she serves as a speaker at in-services regarding instructional strategies for students.

Sue aims to find highly motivating activities specific to each child and then allow that child to make more decisions throughout the day, building that activity into the schedule. Sue’s passions for her students, their parents, her colleagues and herself are: to choose happiness, a glass half full, to be positive, to have fun, and to respect yourself and others.

Sue’s building principal feels she is an “excellent and deserving recipient of this award." We join her as we recognize Sue Woods with the 2007 Heartspring Award for Innovation and Creativity in Special Education.