A Letter from the director of SKILDCenter
Dear Parents and Teachers
With the start of the new year, as the Director of the Center for Smart Kids with Individual Learning Differences (SKILD), I would like to focus on compassion and the sense of community building it inspires in us all. As has been shown, collectively, we can fight obstacles, including financial, social, and medical ones, primarily COVID-19, in these times.
This past year, we have been challenged. Suddenly, we had to come up with solutions to problems we did not foresee. Nevertheless, we remained focused on how to best educate our children.
Have you felt these same concerns?
Reflectively, I am grateful for how SKILD has laid the foundation for sound practice throughout its ten years of operation. … And often I hear myself wondering, how did we know that you would need additional support in this new way of learning without the privilege of face-to-face interaction and exchange?
I also feel a sense of gratefulness … especially when I think of our most recent achievement. Recently, SKILD has answered part of this challenge by providing short how-to films for you to implement in your virtual classrooms and homes. With our electronic library, accessed through Facebook, Twitter, and our Website (skild-edu.org), we reached more than 80,000 viewers.
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Additionally, SKILD is now launching a blog site, SKILD in Practice: Personal Experiences to Support You, featuring our own professionals as well as guest writers from Universities around the world. Our goal is that SKILD in Practice will become a safe place for you to learn. SKILD aims to support your children and to enable them to continue their educational journey despite differences.
I’m honored to introduce to you our SKILD in Practice team. Dr. Sheila Graham Smith, Masters in Educational Psychology, and Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction will be Chief Editor and Advisor. Sonia Fares, Masters in Psychology and Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), will be the Operational Director. Our Linguist and Research Specialist, Maysa Hajj, Masters in Social and Behavioral Sciences, will ensure that each post is translated for your convenience into English, Arabic, and French.
I’m looking forward to sharing with you, our community, the first blog post on January 21, 2021. Stay safe!
Sincerely Yours,
Hiba al Jamal, SKILD Director
MA, Special Education
“I am grateful for how SKILD has laid the foundation for sound practice throughout its ten years of operation”
