LaSalle Summer Camp Helps Kids and Grad Students

by KYW's John Ostapkovich

LaSalle University runs a summer camp program with two benefits, one for special needs children and the other for grad-student teachers. The students come with a variety of special needs including attention deficit and autism spectrum disorders. Often they are accompanied by what program director Professor Carole Patrylo calls neuro-typical siblings all in the same group, so the challenge is to reach everyone:

"The key to this is differentiation instruction. We can take a generic lesson. Now these graduate students here have to modify that lesson to meet the needs of all the children in the classroom and it's all through differentiated instruction."

Mary Jo Wasson's autistic daughter has been coming for years:

"I know the night before camp she seemed extremely excited in her way of happy humming."

The grad students get an inclusion classroom certification for this course.