Wayne teacher gives voice to the voiceless: Nonverbal kids have new tool on the playground

WAYNE - Joseph DeCarlo knows exactly what he wants to say.

But if he cannot sound out the words, there is an array of symbols displayed on a 3-foot panel on his school playground to help him. All that he has to do is point to one or more of the 96 colorful icons as he tries to talk, and his teacher will understand.

Joseph and verbally impaired students just like him are improving in their speech every day because of this innovation at Pines Lake School.

The core word communication station is viewed as a quantum leap in the field of speech therapy because it opens opportunities for children with special needs to learn in places that they share with typical peers.

"You can't have education without communication," said Catherine Fredericks, a speech pathologist who designed a pair of identical playground boards for the K-5 school.

Next month, Fredericks will present her custom design to international colleagues at a four-day summit in Orlando, Florida.

"Many of my students, who didn't talk at all, now talk," she said. "This has changed their trajectory in school because they were being judged on what they couldn't say."

That included Joseph, 10, who entered preschool as a nonverbal student. 

Louis DeCarlo said his son's skills are now much stronger and that he is proficient in email. He said the playground board allows him to show off those abilities and to feel confident. 

"We've been very fortunate with his educational journey," DeCarlo said.

Jennifer D'Acunto, the media specialist at Pines Lake, said her 3-year-old son, Zandi, is only learning how to use the playground board - that he "gravitated" to it when he first spotted it. "He went over to the board by himself," she said, proudly, "and he pointed to things on it."

The Record and NorthJersey.com first met Fredericks in March, a few weeks before the township unveiled a new board at its special needs playground at Rabbi Shai Shacknai Memorial Park on Greenrale Avenue.

Fredericks designed that apparatus, too, saying at the time that she wanted it to be the start of a trend in recreation.

Her wish inched closer to reality after she and a committee of other therapists published a guide for how to create a playground board on the website of the New Jersey Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Now there are plans to install boards throughout the state, including in Fair Lawn, Paterson and as far south as Collingswood in Camden County.

"Communication is a human right," said Donna Spillman-Kennedy, president-elect of the association. A playground board, she added, "promotes not only language development, but social interactions with other children."

Robert Guarasci, founder and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Community Development Corp., said it is "poetry" that a playground board will be put up at Lou Costello Memorial Park on Cianci Street in Paterson, only a few blocks from Public School No. 2, which serves many of the city's students with autism.

The park is currently undergoing $1.3 million in renovations, but Guarasci said the new board, which will include English and Spanish words, will be installed before the project is done.

"There are a lot of children in Paterson on the autism spectrum, and organizations like mine and the city government should be very sensitive to that," Guarasci said.

Barbra Seltzer, with a private practice in speech pathology, teamed with officials in her hometown of Fair Lawn to secure funding for a future playground board there.

The new installation will be at the playground at Berdan Grove Park on Berdan Avenue. It will have a large board, like Wayne's playground, but also three small boards inlaid in the existing equipment.

"I think that they're needed everywhere," Seltzer said. "The more that people see these systems, the more they're going to be accepting of them and people who use them."

José Celis, principal of Pines Lake, said the potential for more inclusiveness was a main driver when he agreed to two playground boards at his school.

"It's something that all students can benefit from," Celis said. "It takes down a barrier."

Dana Sir, director of student support services for the K-12 district, said the playground boards have been so well-received at Pines Lake that there are long-term plans to put them up at all elementary schools and the early childhood center at Preakness School.

"My vision is that a playground board becomes as common as a slide," Fredericks said. "It's an acknowledgment of the importance of communication."