2003 Annie Sullivan Award Winner: Patricia Filak

This recipient has a significant history of working with children with disabilities. She has touched the lives of many students, parents and colleagues and her compassion and caring ways will be forever embedded in their hearts. She has helped others in the schools and communities to understand and accept students with disabilities by providing instruction, inservice and supervision to special education teachers, regular education teachers, administrators, parents and college graduate students. Some of her activities include direct services to children; supervising student clinicians at the university level in the delivery of therapy; diagnostics, parent conferences and report writing. She has also participated in preschool evaluations in the transition of young children to preschool programs and to school-aged programs.

This recipient has served as an interagency coordinator; provided on-site technical assistance training and "best practices" in Early Intervention and facilitated parent training for the local Task Force and Served as Public Awareness Chairman of the Local Interagency Coordinating Council.

This recipient has provided assistance in developing curriculum for the hearing impaired, maintained a resource library for professionals; trained staff in the proper maintenance of hearing aids; served as a reporter for the state Speech / Hearing Newsletter; attended MDT meeting and IEP conferences for young handicapped children in a variety of settings. She has assisted in developing mini grant proposals, speech and hearing screenings for kindergarten students and served as a local Augmentative Specialist for nonvocal students. This recipient has served as local chairperson for Annual Better Hearing and Speech Month and provided services to districts on the mainstreaming of students with disabilities. As a Case Information Manager for Child Alert, she provided public awareness of preschool disabilities through radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, brochures, letters to parents and personal speaking engagements.

This recipient's pre-service training enabled her to accomplish the previously cited activities. She began her training when she entered California State College in the fall of 1963 where she earned her Bachelor of Science in Education in the area of Speech and Hearing Handicapped. In 1967 she enrolled in the graduate program at California State College to continue her education. She earned her Master's degree in 1971 in Speech Pathology. Four years later she earned her Special Education Supervisor's Certification from West Virginia University.

Her career has evolved over the 37 years she has devoted to the field of education. Her teaching experience began in September 1966 as a Speech Clinician with the Fayette County Public Schools. In 1969 her assignment changed and she became a Hearing Clinician for the same agency. With the inception of Intermediate Units in Pennsylvania in 1970 the county school system was dissolved and this Recipient began working for Intermediate Unit I. She continued as a Hearing Clinician until 1975 when she was moved to the position of Title VI Program Specialist. In this position she handled referrals on pre-school children with handicaps and initiated follow-up testing and programming. She held the Program Specialist job for 7 months before being reassigned as Support Teacher/Instructional Advisor in Speech and Hearing. Her responsibilities included helping and supporting the speech and hearing staff per direction from the Program Supervisor or by request from individual clinicians or teachers. In early 1992, this Recipient was assigned to the Statewide Support Initiative as the Early Intervention Consultant. In this position she assisted the Early Intervention Supervisor with the day-to-day operations of the program. Another change was just around the corner. In June 1993, she was elected by the Intermediate Unit Board of Directors to the position of Supervisor of Special Education. This time she embarked on unfamiliar territory. Her first assignment included supervising staff in the Life Skills Support, Multidisability Support and Physical Support classes in Fayette and Greene counties. She worked very hard to understand these programs and made many changes that provided more age appropriate programming for students with severe disabilities. She continued in this position until a paradigm shift occurred at the IU during the summer of 1997 and the Regional Team concept began. She became Program Supervisor for a portion of the Speech, Hearing and Vision staff. In this position she was instrumental in starting the HOMES program, the Local Assistive Technology Consultant positions, a prereferral screening process for speech problems and many others too numerous to mention. She continued in this position until recently when she made the decision to retire. This decision was a very difficult one for her but she felt it was time to move on with the next phase of her life. Before she moved on though, we were able to convince her to provide her expertise one more time. She is currently serving as the Co-coordinator of this inservice program.

I would be remiss if I did not mention her involvement in other professional organizations and activities as well as in the community. She was a very active member of the Pennsylvania State Education Association where she served as Secretary/Treasurer and Membership Chairperson. She was also a Delegate to the state and regional House of Delegates. She is a life member of both PSEA and NEA. She is a member of the Pennsylvania Speech and Hearing Association, the American Speech and Hearing Association, the Council for Exceptional Children, and the Pennsylvania State Speech Supervisors Association. She serves as a Compliance Monitoring for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. For several semesters she served as an Adjunct Professor at California University in the Speech and Language Department where she is also on the Advisory Council. Her community involvement include: (1) the Frazier Boosters while her children were in school, (2) the Long-Range Plan Committee in Frazier, (3) Curfew Grange, (4) Perryopolis Community Chorus, and (5) the California Community Orchestra. Even though this recipient is committed to everything she does in her life, one of her strongest commitments is to her church, St. John's. She either serves or has served on the Parish Council, the church choir, the Education Committee, and the Liturgy Committee. She is currently the Choral Director for the church choir and Cantors for many worship services. She also serves as a Eucharistic Minister.

As involved and dedicated as she has been to her career and community, she could not have been any more devoted to her family. She was born and raised in Perryopolis, PA where she eventually settled and raised her three children with her husband. Her children are all grown and she is now the proud grandmother (Nona) of four. I'm sure she will have no difficulty keeping busy as she embarks on the next phase in her life.

Without further ado, it is with great pleasure that I announce the 2003 Annie Sullivan Award winner from the professional staff, Mrs. Patricia Filak.