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April 2010
Having served on the TCASE board since 2004, Gann is fully prepared to play an influential role in ensuring that Texas children with disabilities have access to the very best in public education. She knows all too well the struggles that come from living with disabilities. And perhaps more importantly, she understands what can be achieved if given the chance. Gann spent her formative years in Sabinal, a small town west of San Antonio, where her mother worked as a classroom teacher and her father owned a crop-dusting business. When Gann was 5 years old, her father was in a plane accident. His life was spared, but he lost his sight. Her father's sudden blindness affected the way Gann saw things. "I think that I really learned most of my lessons about people with disabilities from him," says Gann. "I really noticed while I was growing up that my father did not let his disability defeat him, but rather, he found ways to overcome it." After some training, Gann's father started a new career, taking a job in computer programming at Frost Bank of Texas, where he quickly moved up the ranks. "He really brought that department from nothing to a pretty spectacular (one); he was not defined by his disabilities," Gann says. "He was not the banker who was visually impaired; he was the man who brought the computer technology component of banking to a new level at Frost Bank." Gann decided to pursue a career in education once she graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) in 1987. She started out as a first grade teacher at East Terrell Hills Elementary in San Antonio. Two years later, she moved to Hondo ISD, which adopted the concept of inclusion not long after she arrived. Gann's first grade class became one of these inclusion classes. "Although I wasn't the special education teacher, I was this general education teacher who had to find ways to make these students (with disabilities) be successful in my classroom," Gann recalls. Inspired by these challenges, Gann headed back to school in 1993 to get her educational diagnostician certification, as well as her master's degree in administration. She continued working for Hondo ISD and was hired as a diagnostician in 1995, performing all the testing that qualifies students for special education. In 2000, Hondo ISD's superintendent encouraged Gann to put her master's degree to good use by offering her the newly vacated director of special education position. "This is my 10th year doing this, and I (still) feel a commitment to developing a really great program for students with disabilities," Gann says. "Over the years, the landscape for our programs in the classroom has changed. Challenges that were rare 10 years ago have almost become regular occurrences. So, our programs have had to change along with those challenges. I enjoy that part of my job that involves coming up with solutions for kids who are struggling." During her presidential term at TCASE, Gann vows to continue the organization's pursuit to support not only the kids served by special education programs, but also the educators and administrators behind those programs. In the next year, she plans to incorporate more virtual trainings, such as Webinars and audio postcards, to accommodate districts that can't afford to send their employees to the workshops and programs that TCASE offers. Gann also wants to find new ways to meet the need of TCASE's increasingly diverse membership. "There are all different kinds of districts — rural, urban and suburban, large and small," she says. "We need to make sure we provide enough diverse information so that anyone can implement these tools when they go back home." Despite all she has learned during her years in the classroom and in administration, Gann attributes her formative years in Sabinal as the guiding force behind her work. "I look at my father and I transfer that to children with disabilities," she says. "I want them to be more than just 'the kid in the wheelchair' or 'the kid who can’t hear.'" WHITNEY ANGSTADT is a freelance writer in Austin. |
As director of special education in Hondo ISD, about an hour west of San Antonio, Cynthia Gann is accustomed to wearing many hats. Last summer, she took on one more — stepping up to president-elect of the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education (TCASE). This coming July, Gann is poised to take office as president.