USD Magazine, Spring 1999

Wick knows how to take action, too. As a teacher in Los Angeles County, Wick embraced a 1984 mandate that special ed students be included on cam– puses with their peers. He initiated the first high school community-based pro– gram in Lancaster, Calif., and seven years later recognized the need to serve

special educator ACAREER SPENT

handicapped gradu– ates. Two years of lobbying the board of education paid off with the young adult program at Antelope Valley College. Wick's enthusi– asm for his work is not lost on his col– leagues (his peers voted him 1999 Los Angeles County Special Education Teacher of the Year), nor those who call him dad. Three of his

TEACHING, COACHING

HANDICAPPED STUDENTS

S everal of his 10 students are still learning to read, yet there are no colorful ABCs above the chalkboard or Dick and Jane readers in Dennis Wick's classroom. Instead, Wick's desk is piled with folders stuffed full of grocery store ads and menus from local restau– rants. The 19- to 22-yea~-old special education students don't need to read cute stories about kids and dogs. They want to learn how to make their own shopping lists, order a hamburger at Denny's and read a bus schedule. "We want them to be with people their own age," Wick says. "At the same time, we want them getting used to being out in the community on their own. We try to make them as independent as we possibly can." Wick, a 1965 USO alumnus, is just the man to teach those things. Gentle in demeanor and spirit, he pioneered the Community-based Instruction Program for mentally retarded young adults in Los Angeles County's Antelope Valley, and has headed the program for the last 15 years. Last semester, his fellow USO alumni honored Wick for his humanitar– ianism with the Bishop Charles Francis Buddy Award, presented annually at December's Alumni Mass. The award is given to an alumna or alumnus who per– sonifies the human values of honesty, integrity, loyalty and fidelity, the com-

Dannis Wick '65 and students

munity values of peace, justice and free– dom, and the spiritual values of faith, hope and love. Those values are evident each morn– ing at 8, when the door to Wick's class– room swings open. Students are greeted by their teacher, who shuns morning cof– fee for a mile walk around the Antelope Valley College campus. Some of the young adults leave immediately to work at nearby jobs. Others stay with Wick for a day of practical lessons. A teaching career that started 30 years ago with second- and third-graders took a turn toward special ed when an astute principal thought Wick would be a natural for the job. Not one to scoff at advice from his elders - Wick attended the seminary at USO, studied theology in Rome with the intent of joining the priesthood and took a year's sabbatical only to discover teaching, all on the advice of respected advisers - he accept– ed the challenge of working with mental– ly handicapped students. "The students are so positive," he says. "They truly give 110 percent. I am an enabler in the best connotation of that word. They're the ones to take the action."

five children teach special ed.

"I sent my dad a birthday card this year that said exactly what I feel," explains daughter Heather '94, '96. "The card said, 'People tell me I act like you. And I say, Thanks!' " Perhaps nowhere does Wick live the values noted in the Bishop Buddy Award better than on the playing fields with Special Olympics athletes. Twenty years ago he volunteered to be area director of the Antelope Valley Special Olympics. Today, he's still in the same post. "He never gets tired of it," says Heather, who started coaching Special Olympics when she was 16. "He always says, 'What can we do next year to make it better?' " A fan of the Olympics since he was a boy in Colton, Calif., Wick attended the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and marched with the United States delegation in the opening ceremonies of the recent Special Olympics World Games. His description of walking into the Yale University stadium sur– rounded by athletes and screaming fans could be words readily applied to his career. "It's the real thing," Wick says.

- }ILL WAGNER '91

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