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I am a special educator at Northeast Center for Special Care. I come from a background of working with students who have special needs.

A few years back I had a close friend who suffered a brain injury and that was my introduction into what a brain injury is. Since I had to learn how to be a support for a friend with a TBI as well as dealing with the changes it brought, that gave me an affinity to want to work with other survivors.

I leaned from my own experience that people with an acquired brain injury had a sense of loss. I work with people who had lives in the past that were full, rich interesting and often very rewarding and whose lives changed rather dramatically because of a traumatic brain injury. A part of the work I do here at Northeast Center is assisting Resident-Neighbors with a brain injury to manage the change that occurred in their lives and becomes as successful as they can. That is my mission.

I spend most of my working time with Resident-Neighbors in class. The special educators here at the Center have classes that are held every weekday throughout the day. I facilitate several classes each day which are part of a track with two separate groups of Resident-Neighbors.

My particular favorite is the Basic Skills class which is essentially a cognitive skills class where the participants perform cognitive exercises. That class does a couple of things, it helps keep basic skills sharp, such as reading, writing, word finding, computation, problem solving along with basic socialization skills. It helps participants use their brain but I found it also gives Resident-Neighbors a deep sense of accomplishment. They like tasks where there are rules and the rules lead to an accomplishment of that task so in a sense it’s almost like winning at a game.

I also facilitate a Well-Being class with the same participants. This class is where I help the participants managed the change that has occurred in their lives. I assist them to create their personal life stories, going through those stories, helping them to identify what they have lost and finding strategies to compensate for that loss. They also learn to reaffirm who they are and they continue to hone socialization and communication skills.

After a brain injury there are common executive control issues that people deal with such as a lack of initiation, and follow-up so it is easy for people to fall into a pattern of doing nothing, or watching TV all day and a part of my job here is to get them interacting with me, interacting in classes and most importantly interacting with each other and I work hard to help accomplish that.

The classes I enjoy a lot are the ones where I get to step back and simply facilitate interaction between Resident-Neighbors and where they talk not through me but rather directly to each other. That is where the real socialization breakthrough happens and it is such a beautiful thing to watch survivors embrace socialization, develop relationships and support each other.

The Resident-Neighbors at Northeast Center represent a population with a lot of commonalities. To work with a population of survivors you have to be able to adapt, put yourself out there and facilitate their own individual processes. I try to help them make good choices in their rehabilitation that will help them to successfully reenter the community.

Alex Bird and Amy Britten, SLP.

My interest in working with people started early in my life. I was born in New Jersey. My dad worked for UPS and is retired now. My mom is an educator who is still teaching.  In my personal time I write poetry, I’m active doing readings and participating in the local poetry community and I enjoy hiking and wilderness skills.

My mom taught English and Spanish and I was fortunate at a young age to be able to observe the effect she had on her students. I remember being with my mom when she taught a summer school class and seeing her students come in and volunteer to help her set up the classroom - she had a positive influence on them. They would tell me that my mom was a great teacher and all that had a profound impact on me - especially now as an adult. Because of that when I was growing up I wanted to be a teacher. I attended college and have a bachelor’s degree in sociology.

Before I came to Northeast Center I worked as a teacher’s aide in special education classes for autistic children and later in an early childhood learning program and that encompassed second grade through twelfth grade students with special needs.

I found the teachers I worked with to be particularly inspiring. I thought that I could do the same and that is the attitude I bring with me to work everyday at Northeast Center. In a sense carrying on that inspiration with our Resident-Neighbors helps me to honor the teachers who inspired me.

I’ve learned that you don’t simply work with individuals you also have to work with their lives, their families, and their communities - so it’s not just the individual I work with but a person who is dear to someone else.  That helps me to keep the focus on how serious the work is that we do here.

I love being a part of Northeast Center for Special Care. it's a wonderful place to work and I feel likes it's a calling.  The thing that never ceases to amaze me about Northeast Center is how positive the staff always is, every day. Sometimes it is difficult to work with a population of individuals with brain injury; however, the staff never stops smiling, and they always have a kind or encouraging word to share.  I have great admiration to my colleagues for that.