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2009 marked the first year that Nancy Miles worked as an aide at Dragon’s Wagon Preschool. Abraham Diaz, pictured at the May 2010 preschool program, and Blye McCallum were preschool students that year. Both are current students in Miles’ classes as well. — Johnson Publications file photo

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Inventive methods of communication play a large role in Nancy Miles’ classes. Blye McCallum, pictured at left, practices using a Pragmatic Organisation Dynamic Display (or a PODD book) with his paraprofessional, Sasha Lopez. Brandon Talich has a tablet he can similarly use for nonverbal communication. — Johnson Publications

It’s never too late to try something new

Asking ‘What next?’ drives Nancy Miles in new endeavors year after year

    The 2018 Innovator of the Year: a broadcast communications major with a history in the News 4 advertising department? That’s right. She may not fit neatly into the stereotype of a teacher, but Nancy Miles is one of this year’s deserving Emerald Awards winners.
    Working at both the elementary school and Holyoke JR/SR High, Miles serves as the special education teacher and the life skills teacher respectively. The thing that inspired her nomination was the new life skills classroom, which premiered this school year, but truthfully, Miles’ entire career in special education has relied on her innovation.
    With her work in communications behind her, Miles spent several years raising her sons Nathan and Dylan. In 2009, she saw an ad in the paper for a job as a one-on-one aide at Dragon’s Wagon Preschool through BOCES. She was open to trying something new, and that was the moment that changed the trajectory of her entire career. In that first year, she was an aide for Abraham Diaz, and she’s continued to work with him  in various roles ever since. In doing so, she discovered a job she’d never really considered and found out that she loves it. Now she can confidently say, “I wouldn’t do anything else.”
    Miles’ next “What next?” came when her students graduated from preschool and moved on to elementary school. Her response? Moving along with them, as she became a special education aide at Holyoke Elementary. The next year, she continued moving forward, as she assumed the role of teacher for the significant support needs students and became certified as a K-12 special education generalist.
    What comes next for a student who’s reached the end of elementary school? Moving on to the JR/SR high, of course. And once again, Miles moved along with her students. Now she has students ranging from kindergartners to freshmen, and she spends half of her day in the elementary and half in the JR/SR high. Not many teachers have the opportunity to work in both schools, and Miles said it gives her a unique perspective.
    Even fewer teachers have the chance to continue working with the same students year after year, building such long-lasting relationships. Miles has had a long time to get to know her students as well as their parents. “We’re lucky we get to build relationships with them over the years,” Miles said.
    Truly unique to her department, however, are the seven one-on-one aides: Yazmin Diaz, Tracey Cordova, Leticia Penzing, Sasha Lopez, Johana Nevarez, Maddie King and Ana Trejo. To have a paraprofessional assigned to every one of the students is a great asset, and Miles is quick  to acknowledge that she couldn’t do her job without them.
    From preschool to the point they’re at now, students’ needs have changed greatly. “I have to be innovative,” Miles said. “You have to serve where they’re at, and that changes all the time.”
    Miles has a talent for spotting her students’ needs and working to meet them, even when that takes her to uncharted territory. At one point, her students spent the majority of their days in general education at Holyoke Elementary with special education classes for a portion of the day. Miles recognized that the best way to serve some students was not in general education but in more self-contained classes.
    Now most of her elementary students focus on academics within her classroom and go out for specials, including P.E., music, computers and art. In both art and P.E. there is an emphasis on adaptive activities made to be more accessible to her students’ unique needs.
    When Miles noticed a need for more meaningful time with peers, they established a “lunch buddies” program with other elementary students.
    As students transition to JR/SR high, academics are still important, but a big part of their day is dedicated to teaching independence. That’s where Miles stood out as a “true visionary.”
    Angela Powell, the colleague who nominated Miles for the Emerald Awards, explained that Miles’ implementing a life skills program was a clear example of her innovation. According to the nomination letter, Miles saw a need, researched, planned, did the legwork and wrote grants to develop the program.

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