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By Matt de Simone
Contributing writer
Last month, Blue Eagle Credit Union awarded Breanne Metz, the speech-language pathologist at Buchanan Elementary School, with an annual Teacher Grant given to teachers in the Roanoke Valley and Lynchburg. The grant funds the continuing programs for new and fun innovations to aid in educating children in the valley.
Metz is currently in her sixth year as a speech-language pathologist; her second year in Botetourt County. She specializes in speech sound skills, articulation, and understanding language needs (vocabulary and grammar skills). Speech-language pathologists teach a variety of communication skills and problem solving activities to their students.
“I knew I wanted to work with children,” Metz stated. “Initially, I thought of teaching but while taking courses early on, I was interested in language development, speech development, and early child development.”
Metz grew up in a military family. She’s lived in Germany, Korea, and all over the United States before spending most of middle school and high school in and around Virginia. Experiencing so many cultures, speech, and language varieties, it makes sense that Metz is now a speech-language pathologist.
Early in her studies at Radford University, Metz experienced educating students for the first time.
“After my freshman year of college, a friend of mine connected me to a special education summer school program,” Metz explained. “It was a 12-week program working one-on-one with a lot of the students while interacting in a lot of the speech therapy sessions. I fell in love with the whole process, not just with the speech therapy, but with the students as well. It was a special experience.”
Metz had a project in mind to create a “speech sound library” for her students. Due to limited resources, she applied for the Teacher Grant to help with funds. Her proposal explained that the funds would purchase 75 books, each of which target specific speech sounds. These books will also help with students’ literary skills in terms of character development and reading comprehension. Metz says she will complete the project using the funds from the Teacher Grant.
Metz added feels confident that other schools in the area can build similar projects for their speech and language students.
“The Blue Eagle Teacher Grant can benefit anyone in any project they come up with but a speech sound library was something I researched and wanted to do it for a while,” Metz said. “I think a lot of speech therapists would agree that it makes a lot of sense to work on both speech and language skills at the same time.”
For more information about the Blue Eagle Credit Union Teacher Grant, visit the website: https://www.blueeaglecreditunion.com/education-programs.