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WEST VALLEY VIEW NEWS | FEBRUARY 23, 2022
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Avondale student finds success with ACCEL BY LAUREN SERRATO
West Valley View Staff Writer
A
fter struggling in a traditional school setting in 2017, Avondale student Kallie Cook and her family sought a different academic environment that would provide oneon-one learning. Fast forward five years and 12-yearold Kallie is thriving at ACCEL, a nonprofit special education day school in Phoenix. Kallie is one of three students out of the 250 students in the program who has achieved and is working on modified independence, which allows her to leave the classroom and move throughout the building. “Slowly we’re building in more and more opportunities for her to find success,” said Jonathan Evans, ACCEL principal. “Her teacher and I are pretty sure that this will lead to an independent status pretty soon. Kallie is wonderful, she’s fantastic. Her student behavior is wonderful, she’s engaging. She’s interested in the program. She’s interested in people. She’s such a kind soul, and she’s really just come a long way and just fantastic to be around.” While the sixth grader has found success with the ACCEL program, Kallie’s mother, Kayla, said it hasn’t always been smooth sailing at home or at school for her daughter.
Kayla credits her daughter’s progress in all aspects of her life to the ACCEL program and its teachers and staff. “There’s definitely been a change in her confidence. She doesn’t have to ask for as many things anymore, which is really cool,” Kayla said. “She kind of does her own thing at home — obviously with supervision — but even little things like taking showers on her own, which is huge, because we used to have a lot of problems. Now, she’s really good at letting you know what she needs, which has been great.” Kayla said ACCEL has developed ways to deal with her daughter’s emotions. She was once worried that wasn’t possible. “Aside from her independence, the biggest change in her has been her getting mad,” Kayla said. “She used to be very angry because she couldn’t express herself well enough to let us know what she needed. So that’s been a huge relief for all of us, is how well she’s able to explain what she needs and her ability to do a lot of things on our own.” Not only has the school benefited Kallie, but the program has provided her parents with necessary tools to continue the growth and development at home. Kayla added that navigating through Kallie’s autism diagnosis and witnessing her growth would have
been tremendously more difficult without ACCEL. “Her progress definitely would have been slower,” she said. “We’ve been given a lot of tools that we’ve been able to use at home with her. I don’t think we would have grown as much as a family, honestly, because we’ve all grown together through this. And I really think ACCEL has been a huge part of that.” Kayla added that one of the top benefits since Kallie started at ACCEL has been the supportive and understanding community, one that she admitted her family didn’t know they needed. “We had a basic understanding of how to handle some things, but we didn’t have people who actually understood Each school day, Kallie Cook wears a homemade necklace covered with pictures of her favorite peoautism,” Kayla said. “She’s the first autistic per- ple. (Photo courtesy of ACCEL) son I’ve ever met in my life. We had but we weren’t as patient as we should a very basic understanding of it, a di- have been through a lot of it, so ACagnosis really; we didn’t have anything CEL has really taught us all a lot.” that we could use to teach her and teach Evans said Kallie’s success has ourselves how to be more patient peo- stemmed from the smaller class sizes, ple. It’s just been a huge transition for as she transferred from a school with my husband and I, especially because more than 25 students in a classroom we didn’t understand it. I don’t want ACCEL...continued on page 28 to say we were completely impatient, Carpet • Tile • Grout • Upholstery • Air Duct Cleaning • Commercial & Residential Cleaning
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