Elizabeth J. Lord has been in the county for 25 years and she has been teaching students with disabilities here at WSHS for 11 years. She teaches in a class called PIT Crew, which stands for Peer Inclusion Team and has a great team of students that enjoy helping others, the PIT crew also helps in other classes of students with and without disabilities. She likes to make blankets and has a butterfly garden in her yard. She has a pet dog named Shadow, a cat named Coco, and a few 55-gallon fish tanks, and loves to travel.

What she’s excited for this year is working with new students and teachers, which is one of the things that she liked to do this year. She says that working with students that help others in PIT Crew is something that she enjoyed for several years. She quotes, “I teach kindness.  I like to interact with students that need help, struggle and are not sure how to be successful.  It is part of my job to help them navigate their disability and how to be successful with that problem.”

She started working in the cafeteria where she worked to put herself through college to get a teaching position. She said, quote “I was the one person in the cafeteria that taught the other people how to do things.” It was something that she enjoyed and knew that it would get her into teaching. After the cafeteria she worked in the media center, was a one-on-one paraprofessional with a blind student and then became a classroom paraprofessional and after getting her masters, she started teaching kids with disabilities.

And to those students who wish to follow in her footsteps: “I think that teaching students with disabilities is rewarding and a struggle.  It means a lot to students that have a disability to know that someone is on their side and can help them with learning. Being kind to someone else is one of the most rewarding things that you can do, and it does not cost a thing to help make someone’s day.”