ACBDD Special Edition: Beacon School offers special services for all students

Below is an excerpt from the ACBDD’s 2026 Special Edition, which is produced in partnership with Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and The Post. The full edition can be found here.

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 The ACBDD’s Beacon School provides more than classroom instruction for students with developmental disabilities. It offers a coordinated system of therapies and adaptive physical education designed to help students build independence, confidence, and essential life skills. Through physical, occupational, and speech therapies alongside adaptive physical education, students receive individualized support throughout the school day that helps them make meaningful progress both in and beyond the classroom.

Melissa Lawless, a Physical Therapist at Beacon School, has seen firsthand how Beacon School’s support services can change a student’s life. Just last year, one of her middle school students began walking independently.

“He’s the perfect example of a kid who needs all the supports, and it is now showing how much he’s grown with all that support,” she said

Through repeated practice, strengthening and collaborative work, her student who previously required adaptive equipment to walk in the school environment, can now take his own steps to get to different locations in the building.

Beacon School is a specialized educational resource for students ages 3 to 21. The school offers a variety of ancillary services to help students develop not only academic skills but also life skills. Some of the services include occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and adaptive physical education. These services are an important piece to the school day for students attending Beacon School.

            Becky Martin, Principal of Beacon School, shared that these services have made a meaningful different for many students. Milestones that might seem small to others are celebrated as extraordinary achievements with the school community.

            “When a non-verbal student says their first words, when a student learns to write their name, or when a student takes their first steps – moments that may feel routine for a typical student – we proudly celebrate every one of them.”

            The school has many rooms where students can practice their everyday tasks. Hannah Rowan, Instructor in the Intermediate classroom, said her days are spent not only teaching the usual math, English, science, and social studies, but also collaborating with services to teach personal hygiene, life skills, cooking, and cleaning. Having a team approach is essential to helping students become as independent as possible.

            The school has a fully furnished mock apartment that has everything from a living room to a kitchen. The apartment serves as a space for students to learn life skills that could be applied to independent living.

            Beacon School offers a variety of therapies that many students participate in throughout the school day. Jennifer Brown, an Occupational Therapist at Beacon School, said occupational therapy focuses on looking at the whole person and how to assist with full participation and independence in work, play/leisure, and self-care tasks.

The students work on being in a classroom with many different distractions, including sounds, textures, and visual distractions, while completing classwork, learning to hold utensils and write, holding scissors and cutting, and manipulating various tools in their daily living tasks.

At Beacon, in addition to the model apartment and therapy gym, there is also two sensory rooms, one being a gross motor sensory room and the other being a calm-down sensory room where students can take breaks during their daily routine to self-regulate and refocus preparing for a return to classroom tasks.

Brown has seen the impact her services can have on students, as they develop these fine motor skills and sensory processing skills to become more independent in their daily routine at school.

            “I’ve been here 10 years now,” Brown said, “and it’s amazing seeing students advance from a younger classroom where they may need a lot of support, and then to see they’re able to walk down to therapy, sit at a table to do academic work, and then finally being able to take those skills into the classroom for increased participation and independence”

            ​Lawless said she enjoys working closely with the other therapists to achieve a similar goal. While she may be working on positioning through adaptive seating, another therapist may be working on cutting skills or use of a student’s assistive device.

By working together, therapists can provide the best support for the students to be successful in the classroom.

Sarah Kincaid Lovett, a Beacon School speech-language pathologist, explained that simple but engaging activities can enhance speech and language development in students. Just within the year, Kincaid Lovett aided a student in becoming a verbal communicator, now speaking in sentences when the student had previously been entirely nonverbal with little-to-no interest in communicating with others.

“Progress is a joint effort between therapists, families, staff, and most importantly, the wonderful students we serve,” she said.

Sensory supports including movement are incorporated into treatment to enable students to regulate their bodies as well as their abilities to actively participate in tasks.

Kincaid Lovett added that midline crossing activities, such as when the left arm moves to the right side of the body, promote communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This is important for speech and language development because it integrates duties of various areas of the brain including areas responsible for speech, language, coordination, motor planning, attention, etc. and enables students to more effectively access their abilities.

“Therapy sessions include fun and games where every activity is carefully curated with the student’s needs, interests, and brain development at the center of the plan,” she added.

            Adaptive physical education is also an important service provided at Beacon School. Ruben Arroyo Santiago, Beacon School’s Adaptive Physical Education Instructor, has expanded the program over the last six years. Part of adaptive physical education is the swimming program, which has helped many students learn how to swim. Santiago said swimming is a very vital skill for any student to learn, even in landlocked states. One of his students, whom he taught how to swim, saved his brother from a river flood a few years ago.

            Adaptive physical education is more than just tossing balls around in class. Many of the skills they learn, like raising their hands in the air to toss balls, translate to everyday tasks, such as brushing their hair.

            The services at Beacon School are important in helping students overcome many struggles that, without the help of the teachers and therapists, would not be possible.

“The value that is provided for the students here at Beacon School is to give them specific individualized learning and teaching for different gross motor skills,” Santiago said, “which translates to more opportunities to play outside of the school, interact socially with other peers, and opportunities that go beyond the school.”

Edited by doctoral student Khaja “Aziz” Azizuddin