Lori Kopasz named district Special Education Teacher of the Year

She spent 11 years teaching special education at Highland High School and even though she is no longer a faculty member there, her legacy remains in the program she reshaped from the ground up.

Lori Kopasz was recently named 2012 Special Education Teacher of the Year by Salt Lake City School District. Highland Principal Paul Schulte nominated her for the award last year, during her final year as the school’s special ed teacher, and she received the award for the 2011-12 school year over the summer.

“I was really honored,” Kopasz said. “It was great to know my principal supported me.”

Kopasz currently serves as the district’s transition specialist, helping 18- to 22-year-old students make the jump into the adult world -- essentially the next step after her work at Highland.

“I came [to Highland] fresh out of college and mixed it up a little,” she said.

Kopasz restructured the school’s special education program to focus primarily on developing students’ independence -- both short term and in their future adult lives -- and integrating them as much as possible into the mainstream student body.

“I’m a firm believer that they are part of the school,” she said.

In addition to teaching them academic skills, Kopasz worked on integrating her students into the rest of Highland by placing them in regular art and PE classes. She also brought them as close to being able to take control of their own lives as each student was individually capable of through community-based job sampling, and by teaching them many of the practical skills they would need to survive day-to-day.

The students would visit a local restaurant, grocery store and hair salon with Kopasz to try out some job skills, and find out for themselves what they can do and what they might like to do in the future. Kopasz worked closely with the families of her students to help develop individual skills the families wanted them to learn, from reading or grocery shopping to finding a safe person to help them when they get lost.

“She brought high expectations for all her students, which resulted in progress for them,” said Allan Young, Highland’s current special ed teacher. “It’s as simple as that.”

Young spent Kopasz’s last year at Highland with her as a student teacher, and was greatly influenced by the way she ran the program, he said. Now he expects much from the students as well, and has them participate in many of the same activities and more.

The class still does job sampling, but now takes lunch orders from the school’s faculty members as well. The students are taken to pick up all the orders, and pay for them with class funds that the students help track afterwards. They also have cooking projects that they do grocery shopping for, take trips to the library, and participate in mainstream arts and PE classes alongside “peer teachers.” Young has also continued Kopasz’s open communication with students’ families, he said.

Kopasz originally got into teaching special education almost by chance. After she graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles as a psychology major, she got a job working with adults with disabilities, similar to what she is doing now.

“I just loved it,” she said. “I knew immediately that was what I wanted to do.”