A PRESCHOOL FOR ALL

Barrington’s Salem Methodist Preschool welcomes children of all abilities into their innovative classrooms.

When Corrina Milbrandt ’s son Mason was four years old, he was diagnosed with autism.

“It was hard to get that diagnosis, and even harder to figure out which school would best meet his needs,” Milbrandt says. Today, nearly 20 years later, as executive director for Barrington’s Salem Methodist Preschool, Milbrandt has created an educational opportunity for children with special needs that didn’t exist for her son.

Salem Methodist Preschool provides a safe and caring environment using a whole-child approach to teaching for 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. Their curriculum is developmentally appropriate, aligns with Illinois Early Learning Standards, and is grounded in Christian values. Salem aspires to become an exclusive early childhood program that provides an all-inclusive learning environment where children will have access to a classical preschool education that specifically meets their individual needs and helps foster enduring growth and development in all domains of learning.

“Preschool plays such a critical role in a child’s development,” Milbrandt says. “It’s where children develop their love of school and their love of learning. In our classrooms, we’re not just teaching typical students and we’re not just teaching students with special needs. We get to teach both. Our typical students are getting a good understanding of diversity. It’s teaching them that it’s okay not to be different and unique. Our special needs children are being exposed to how typical students are learning. In our inclusive classroom at Salem, you have the best of both worlds. All of our students are thriving. I want Salem to set the standard for what preschools should look like everywhere.”

After years of researching interventions, Milbrandt has reimagined what an inclusive preschool should look like. She applied for a local grant and received $5,000 to transform one of their classrooms into a sensory room, providing their students with an opportunity to regulate their bodies, interact with special lighting, music, and sensory stimulation. The preschool’s outdoor playground was transformed to be accessible for all of their students. In addition, the preschool’s programs have been redesigned so that every student has access to visual support systems and strategies to help foster independence, behavior management, and self-regulation. “These systems work for our students with special needs, and they also work for our other students, too,” says Milbrandt. “I’m in regular contact with the district to see how our kids do when they get to kindergarten to make sure that we’re addressing the right things. Over and over, the district tells us that they want children with strong social-emotional skills when they get to kindergarten. If these skills are strong, then they are ready to take on the tasks that schools require. That is the basis of what we do here.”

Julie Koob, a Barrington mom of three and a first-grade teacher at Barrington 220, has a preschooler who didn’t meet the preschool readiness checklist. “Salem doesn’t have that. They know that each child is different,” she says.

Koobs’ son William uses an AAC device to help him communicate with teachers and peers. Koob says William has significant delays, but Salem welcomed her son, trained their staff on how to use his device, and leveraged their partnerships with speech and occupational therapists to make sure they were offering William enough support.

“As working parents with multiple kids, it’s very challenging to have a child attend preschool and then go to outside therapies,” Koob adds. “The fact that Salem invites these therapists into the school to help meet the needs of their children, it’s so beneficial to families like ours.”

The Salem Methodist Preschool children are excelling in school. In addition to having classrooms that are uniformly designed so that children know what to expect from year to year, there is a well-stocked library with many childhood favorites, as well as books that address learning differences like autism.

“We’re at that point in the year where the children are comfortable asking questions,” Milbrandt says. “They ask about William’s communication device, and we are able to explain to them that just as we all learn differently, some of us talk differently, too. It’s great to have these conversations when they’re so young because it’s shaping how they view one another as they move forward in school.”

As Milbrandt gets closer and closer to bringing her vision of an inclusive preschool to life, the next step is getting the word out that this program exists and that her teaching staff is trained to tailor their curriculum to the individual needs of their students.

“I’m so excited about this program. We do our best to look at every child as a whole child,” she says. “Every school should be including students with special needs. They deserve to be in a classroom and learning like their typically developing peers.”