Mrs. Wood Is All About
Keeping Students Engaged
Kathleen Wood is a Physical and Health Impairments teacher at Clairemont Canyons Academy. She has a unique teaching job because her students have orthopedic impairments along with some learning delays. Some of her students are nonverbal. She uses a combination of approaches to best meet their academic instructional level and adapts the general-education curriculum and special-education curriculum to accommodate the learning style of her students. “The instruction is at a slow pace,” she says, “targeting each student’s individual instructional level.”
Kathleen grew up in Chula Vista and says she knew from a young age that she had a calling to be a special-ed teacher. However, she took a little detour to get there. After getting her degree in Design at San Diego State, she worked as an interior designer in her twenties. Then she went on to become a physical-therapist assistant with geriatric patients until she returned to her teaching ambition in her late thirties. That’s when she went back to school at National University to earn degrees in General Education, Special Education and a Master’s degree in Special Education.
Mrs. Wood was a Medically/Physically Challenged (MPC) teacher at Field Elementary School in Clairemont for fourteen years. Then she joined the Physically Handicapped Impairment (PHI) department and has been working as a PHI teacher for eight years. Five of those years have been at Clairemont Canyons Academy.
“The biggest challenge is keeping the students actively engaged in learning. Sometimes they just want to give up,” she says. “I keep gently pushing them to continue to attempt to learn, often switching up the approach I am taking in instruction. The biggest celebrations are when I see my students progress in their learning.”
Kathleen believes that every child deserves to have an adult in their life who believes they can learn and will take the time to help them, “no matter how many baby steps it takes to get to the end goal,” she adds.
When Kathleen is not at school, she enjoys going to concerts, hiking, snow skiing and
dining out with friends. She also likes to do home-improvement projects.
You can find Mrs. Wood in room 801 in the new building.