Amy Deason, hired July 1 as Director of Special Education for the Vicksburg Warren School District, says she is dedicated to making special education as efficient for the students as possible.
Deason has a strong commitment to make sure students reach their potential.
She still has students tell her that she made an impact in their lives.
“This (job) allowed me to do that on a greater scale,” she said.
She still has contact with many of her students from her time as an Inclusion teacher at Terry High School and they tell her how they are doing in school and college.
“What we do is believe in them and make them believe in themselves,” she said.
She hopes her passion transfers to the teachers that work with special education students.
“It’s important they see it as more than just a job.”
She believes she needs to let the children show teachers what they can do instead of telling them what they cannot do.
She became involved in special education because she has always had a heart for children that need extra support.
While working as a secretary in 1991, she started working on a degree in special education, but was not able to finish it.
“I already had a family, but when my daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia, I finished my degree for her,” she said.
Deason received her undergraduate degree in Special Education from Mississippi State in 2000. She then received her Master’s degree from the University of Phoenix in Instructional Technology in 2006. She is currently working on her dissertation to complete her PhD in Leadership in Educational Administration.
“Hopefully I’ll get it in the next six months to a year,” she said.
At one point she did stray from the field slightly and became an eLearning teacher. She co-authored a coarse on inclusion for special education, which is a program in which the student in special education is involved in general education as much as possible.
“For two years I did Teacher Support Team,” she said.
That was the process of identifying children to see if their skills could be remediated without the need for special education.
She said there are many reasons why a student may be behind. Some factors could be that a teacher did not teach them all they needed to learn or family dynamics.
“Foster settings also cause deficits. TST helps identify that,” she said.
Before she came to Vicksburg, she worked as the Special Education Director in the Natchez-Adams County School District.
“An opportunity came about in Vicksburg, I found out about it and applied,” she said.
Deason’s oldest son lives in Brandon, so she said, moving here was good because she could be closer to home.
“I love it, it’s great. I have an 8-year old at Beechwood and he said this is the best place he’s ever lived,” she said.