Sped Summit

"Sandra L. Aranda is a Licensed Speech-Language Pathologist who studied at and received Degrees from San Jose State University. Sandra has over 28 years of experience working with preschoolers through Junior High students. Currently, she is working with Extensive Needs as well as General Education students at Bernal Intermediate School and next year at Sakamoto Elementary School. Sandra is passionate about working with all of her students and helping them learn the skills they need to be able to communicate successfully in life as well as helping them to excel in their academics. Sandra believes in a data-driven approach and has used AbleSpace as her attendance and data platform for many years now. In her downtime, Sandra considers herself a ‘Gamer Geek’ and enjoys board games, role playing games (RPGs), and also live action role playing (LARPs). She also acted for many years in four local theaters in a variety of roles. Sandra uses these experiences to run what she calls a “Game Based Speech Program”. Her students practice a wide variety of Speech skills while participating in various activities. Sandra also firmly believes that many language and social skills can be learned through games and she created the Bernal Game Club this past year that was attended by over 40 students."

"Hello! My name is Samantha and I have always wanted to be a teacher ever since I was little. I first became passionate about working with people with disabilities when I joined the first-ever inclusive cheerleading team for students with disabilities (The Spartan Sparkles). This experience completely changed my life. I then started a collegiate inclusive cheerleading team called the UNI Sparkles. After college, I went on to teach high school special education (intellectual disabilities) and elementary (mild and severe disabilities). One of my favorite aspects of being a special education teacher was the creation aspect. I LOVED creating resources for my students and it was always a dream of mine to start a TPT store. In May of 2021 I woke up at 4am and told myself, today is the day! As soon as I started creating and sharing my resources with other teachers on TPT, I decided that wasn’t enough. I wanted to make an even bigger difference in the special needs community. I decided to start creating YouTube videos to help other special education teachers with classroom tips, support and ideas to make teaching and lesson planning easier. I got an overwhelming positive response to my Youtube videos which made me want to continue helping and inspiring other teachers. I brainstormed different ideas on how I could create a free community focused on teachers supporting teachers. That is when my Facebook support groups were born! My mission through my company ActiviTeach is to help you feel inspired and supported in your journey as a special education teacher! Feel free to follow along on my journey as I continue to try to make a difference and grow our special education teacher support community!"

"Lydia is a veteran teacher of Special Education for 15 years. She has taught various settings of Special Education: Resource, Co-Teaching, Self-Contained for ESY, and Virtual. Her dynamic caseloads range within grade levels of K-12 with students on the Autism Spectrum, Specific Learning Disabilities, Developmental Delays, Intellectual Delays, and Emotional Disabilities. As her school district transitioned into supporting Multi-Tier Systems of Support (MTSS), Lydia also transitioned to becoming Coordinator of building MTSS implementation, organizing intervention classes along with mentoring teachers. She has also help develop a virtual branch of learning for elementary aged students within her district. With the experience of virtual teaching, Lydia has continued to streamline collaboration with parents as they become a deeper part of the IEP and support process for their learners. Virtual teaching has been insightful to family mentoring along with including learning coaches in the IEP planning process. "