JANUARY 5 • 2023 | 21

learning disabilities at the end of sec-
ond grade, early third grade,” Love said. 
“However, we felt it was 
really important to have 
somebody working with our 
youngest learners.” 
Vieder and Wasser, in 
these roles, are primarily 
working with pre-K 4-year-
olds through second graders. 
Several things can get in the way of 
students learning to read, write and 
develop strong literacy skills. Vieder and 
Wasser are there to address those specif-
ic areas.
“For occupational therapy, a lot of my 
role is helping kids to function as best 
they can within the classroom,” Wasser 
said. “It’s hard for little kids to sit for a 
long amount of time; we’re distracted by 
our environment. It’s helping them to get 
that input in a positive way so they can 
then focus their energy on learning. 
“Also, kids don’t always develop at the 
same pace,” she added. “So being able to 
strengthen where we need to strength-
en, strengthen our bigger muscles and 
smaller muscles so that kids are able to 
write, cut, learn to tie their shoes, open 
packages at lunch and all these little 
things we take for granted. Making sure 
we’re trying to even out the playing field 
for all these kids.”
Within Vieder’s domain of speech/
language pathology, an area she’s focus-
ing on in her role is phonemic awareness 
and early literacy. 
“That’s working with teachers at the 
way beginning of learning to manipulate 
sounds and lining, blending, segmenting 
and learning those foundational skills 
to help these little learners so they can 
become much stronger students and 
readers,” Vieder said. “I’m providing a 
preventative service to help these stu-
dents and teachers.”

EARLY INTERVENTION
In a dual-curriculum school like Hillel, 
the “preventative piece” can be extreme-
ly important.
“If there are students who have a 
diagnosis of dyslexia, for example, and 
have trouble mastering how to read 
in the English language, it might then 
be difficult for them to also do that in 
another language,” Love said. “But now, 

we’re able to work with students more 
closely to ultimately, what we hope, pre-
vent those sorts of diagnoses as they get 
to the later grades like third or fourth.”
Vieder added, “There’s all these sta-
tistics and readings about early inter-
vention, and we’re really focusing on 
doing universal screening and picking 
up these kids where if there’s a weakness 
at age 4 or 5, we’re addressing it right 
away.” 
With the universal screener approach, 
the team has their eyes one-on-one with 
every student to identify weaknesses in 
areas as it relates to early literacy. They 
then develop small groups and a plan 
for filling in those gaps. The team has 
been able to screen every ECC4 through 
second-grade student for speech and 
OT concerns.
“We’re working as a team with the 
teachers to say we see this kid and we’re 
going to address it right now and work 
with them,” Vieder said. “I’m not just 
seeing them once a week for 15 minutes; 
I’m seeing them a few times a week and 
in small groups one-on-one to help 
these kids so they become strong, inde-
pendent, confident learners.” 
It’s much easier and better all around 
to work with these kids when they’re 
younger and still developing, Wasser 
adds, to correct any habits that have 
formed. 
“If we’re able to address these issues 
in pre-K through second grade, then 
by the time the academic expectations 
increase, our students are ready for 
those expectations,” she said. 
The sessions take place in class with 
teacher collaboration being key. Part of 
Vieder and Wasser’s roles are not just 
direct service, but also teacher consulta-
tion and staff education.
The team is building its caseload after 
the universal screening. While still in 
the early stages and without much to 
work off of, progress monitoring will be 
a big part of their process, so they have 
actual data to determine how the stu-
dents are responding to the services. 
In many public schools, students have 
to have a “significant need” to qualify 
for these services. “Here that’s not the 
case,” Vieder said. “We are preventative. 
We’re going to jump in and provide that 
service.” 

POSITIVE FEEDBACK
The Student Support Team has seen tons 
of positive feedback from parents — 
grateful and thankful they’re thinking 
outside the box and able to provide a 
service they might not have access to in 
their local public schools.
“They are truly feeling we are look-
ing at children early and looking at the 
whole child, not just what they’re able to 
do at a given point in time or in a given 
classroom. We’re digging further, deeper, 
and we’re being thoughtful about giving 
them what they need prior to it develop-
ing into a significant deficit,” Love said. 
Vieder is a parent of Hillel students 
and echoes those sentiments. 
“I am so grateful,” Vieder said. “I 
think letting my children go to Hillel is 
the best gift I can give my children, but 
knowing they’re receiving the extra sup-
port, it’s just a cherry on top for me.”
Hillel was able to hire Vieder and 
Wasser because of a grant from the 
Jewish Fund, longtime partners of Hillel.
“Meeting with the Jewish Fund about 
these roles felt like both an honor that 
they were willing to consider the impor-
tance of having these roles filled at 
Hillel, but also going through the pro-
cess, it was clear they were committed to 
giving our Jewish children whatever they 
possibly needed to be successful, not 
only throughout their time at Hillel, but 
later in life,” Love said.
“It’s an honor to be in this position,” 
Vieder added. “Sara and I are both so 
appreciative, happy and grateful, and we 
want to give back to this school and the 
children.” 
Love’s goals for the team include 
seeing student achievement grow to 
where the learning specialists are more 
focused on the bottom 5% of achievers, 
while also seeing fewer children being 
diagnosed with learning disabilities all 
around.
“The goal of the team is to prevent 
early learning failure and remove any 
barriers that are there for our students 
to access the curriculum and all the 
goodness that Hillel has to offer them 
— both mind and soul,” Love said. 
“Sara and Heather were our two miss-
ing links. Now we can say we have a 
full multidisciplinary team to meet stu-
dents’ needs.” 

Kim Love

