Excerpted from the Future Horizons newsletter.

The Carol Gray Award

The two top award winners are:

Ms. Mary Couger of Lawton, Oklahoma. Her accomplishments with children are many, including writing social stories for 53 students with autism; establishing a transition program for students moving from elementary to junior high; piloting the Oklahoma Alternate Assessment program; assisting one of the students who is blind and also diagnosed with autism by studying Braille in order to better help the child; completing a state assistive program; writing grants for the autism library; active in Special Olympics; nominated for Lawton Distinguished Teach and Special Olympic Coach awards; taught a non-verbal student to play the piano, communicate in sentences, sequencing sign language and to use the computer. In addition to the above, Mary has devoted her life to helping her students improve and grow in many other ways.

Ms. Sandy Lewis of Morgantown, West Virginia was nominated by not one parent, but eleven, for her outstanding contributions to the lives of their children. Sandy has ten children in her pre-school class who all have autism. She has taken all ten children on many field trips; instilled discipline and structure in the class where there was none; dramatically increased verbal, emotional, and social skills in her entire class using innovative techniques; communicated with all parents on a daily basis, instilling a continuity between home and school; worked many hours on her own time to create new ways to teach and motivate, etc. In their nominations, parents used terms like "she should be nominated for sainthood," "a defining moment for our child and family was when Sandy came into our lives." "She has truly touched our lives." Sandy has listened to my concerns and, literally, let me cry on her shoulder." "She is absolutely wonderful."

The toughest challenge for our judges was that many other nominees were of this general caliber, making the final selections very difficult. Also, we were shocked by the number of outstanding teachers that were submitted.

However, in the final analysis, we had to make some very touch decisions, and Mary and Sandy were chosen...