Praise for Beattie School of Arts teacher who got the job done

NEWS — A Kamloops teacher killed in a car accident is receiving praise and tributes from school officials and parents of kids she taught at Beattie School of the Arts.

Jennifer Swan, 43, died after a minivan hit slush on the Trans-Canada Highway near Hope on Monday, hit a ditch, flipped and submerged in water. Her husband and two sons escaped but she died later in hospital.

Counselors have been at the school this week to help students and teachers deal with the tragedy. Swan had taught at Beattie for 10 years.

The Kamloops-Thompson Teachers Association plans to sponsor a bursary in her name, and plans are being made for a memorial bench at the school.

In July 2012 Swan and a fellow teacher were featured in a story by Kamloops Daily News reporter Sylvie Paillard that described a program designed to help the “boy crisis.”

Swan and Tannis Tate were in the masters of education program at Thompson Rivers University while teaching at Beattie. They researched the use of movement to assist students in learning, especially boys in the autism spectrum disorder.

They did two detailed case studies on the use of movement education involving the arts, basing their research on the work of education author Anne Green Gilbert and focusing on two boys diagnosed with autism spectrum.

The two teachers showed how movement freed the boys while engaging them with the curriculum and their peers.

“Instead of acting out in our rooms, they’re acting in and through their bodies,” Swan told Paillard. “For these students their success mirrored in the eyes of their peers makes all the difference.”

Her masters thesis documented improvements to a second grader “as he has the opportunity to learn and demonstrate his understanding or reading and wring through dance/movement and drama.”

“I asked (my student) if he liked movement education and he said, ‘Yes because movement makes me listen.’” Swan said in her interview with Paillard. “Well that’s it. I’ve done my job,” she grinned.