21News

The weather was perfect, the greens were great, and we supported a tradition more helpful than any other! Welcome to the 33rd Annual Carbon Lehigh Special Needs Children's Foundation Golf Tournament at Olde Homestead Golf Club!

We are grateful for all the people you support us each and every year. We were able to raise over 12,000 dollars between registration, raffles, and dedicated sponsors.

Our Enhanced Autism kiddos love to dance! Our annual Spring Fling Prom Party at our LCEA program is always a fun time! Once one kid starts to dance, everyone joins in! And you would be surprised at some of the moves these kids bust out!

We take this time to celebrate and reflect on the school year, with lots of comments talking about student growth in such a busy and fun setting!

We're celebrating student accomplishments in our Jim Thorpe classroom at L.B. Morris! Teacher Trish Lorkowski holds her annual, end-of-year red carpet award show so every student feels like a star! With candy themes like "Starburst Surprise" and "Kit Kat Comeback Kid", each award is personalized to each child's progress.

Trish and her staff are always doing something in their classroom, so of course the kids loved it! Congratulations to our students and their success!

As Mental Health Awareness Month comes to a close, our Behavioral Health team reflects on a very insightful May we've had at the CLIU21 headquarters.

It's just a reminder to take care of yourself and others all year round. As our therapist says, "There is no health without mental health."

What's better than coming together with your friends to play a bunch of games?!?! This is our DHH Field Day 2026! We gather our deaf and hard of hearing students of all ages for an athletic field day! Lots of different games played by all the kids in elementary, middle school, and high school.

But this is also a chance to connect with others who speak ASL. This gives older students an opportunity to be a mentor, and it gives younger students a role model to look up to.

Exercise, music, inclusion, and some sunshine all wrapped up into one! This is Movement with Maia at Veterans Memorial Elementary!

We get all the kids moving and grooving with all sorts of props and toys! Pom-poms, blow-up guitars, streamers... you name it, we get them moving around with it! Our special needs kids really appreciate being included with regular kindergartners in such a fun activity.

Welcome our newest CLIU21 employees for the month of May! Ushered in by Kim Talipan and Heather Levitt, we are bringing on teachers, an IA, an ESI, a social worker, and a vehicle driver/assistant!

Give a warm welcome to our newest team members!

What an amazing end to last week! There's nothing quite like our special needs students giving it their all on the track and field! The 2026 Jim Thorpe Olympic Games was a success. Sprints, relays, and throws were part of the competition including carnival games!

We are so proud to be part of such an amazing community of people coming together to help make memories for these kiddos!

The energy surrounding the 2026 Special Needs Fishing Derby is amazing! Hosted by The Germantown Grove Club in Jim Thorpe, this is one of our region's greatest displays of inclusion! IU21 students from our classrooms in the Panther Valley School District really had a great time thanks to all the friendly folks willing to lend a rod & reel.

There's nothing more heartwarming than watching the community come together to give these children a wild experience! And there's nothing like seeing the face of a special needs child after catching and holding a fish!

May is Mental Health Month , and we're asking the question, "What helps you have more good days?" We had a place for people to answer that question with sticky notes. We also gave students and employees a place to express themselves, showing people what makes them happy and fulfilled! The lobby of CLIU21's Behavioral Health is a small art gallery!

A huge thank you to our Behavioral Health Department for hosting such a lovely display (not to mention all the work they do for our students)!

We hope everyone had a thoughtful April during Autism Awareness Month! These are just a few of the many children we teach in our enhanced autism program not to mention the students with autism in our other schools! CLIU21 educators in the classrooms are dedicated and passionate about providing a place of belonging for our kiddos.

We're always working to become better at fostering understanding, promoting inclusivity, and celebrating neurodiversity!

We want to give a big THANK YOU to our IU21 transportation staff here on National Bus Drivers Day! It doesn't matter if you're a bus driver, van driver, or vehicle aide. These are just a few of the exceptional people we have taking children to and from school every single day!

Say hello to our newest CLIU21 members of April! We're bringing on a large crew of instructional assistants, vehicle drivers, and vehicle assistants including a teacher, an administrative assistant, occupational therapist, and autism support interventionist!

We're happy to have you all on board to Help Children Learn!

How does a student express themselves artistically without a paint brush, crayon, marker, or pencil? How would they do it if they couldn't use their voice?

Using worksheets to help with decision-making, we have our kiddos making AI-generated artwork! It's a great tool our speech therapists are using to promote sentence forming with words they might not put together on their own. With the help of their communication devices, they are using prompts for some whacky artwork!

Journalism and honest news reporting is vital to the American understanding of our society. That's why we are so excited and proud to see our 3rd Annual CLIU21 Journalism Summit be such a success yet again!

High school and middle school students come together to compare newspaper, broadcast, and yearbook programs. They heard from working professionals in the field, and they spoke with different college admissions staff about communications degrees in the pursuit of these careers. We want to thank Jai Smith from Lehigh Daily for speaking to the students about running your own online publication!

These students are interested in journalism, yearbook, photography, or podcasting. There's something here for students with any interest in the media landscape.

It's Week of the Young Child, and today was a twofer with Miss Angie at the Liberty Lane Early Learning Center!

We started with Work Together Wednesday doing a team scavenger hunt for puzzle pieces in the playground! The puzzle picture turned out to be a "Dirt" Cake! So of course that rolled right into Tasty Tuesday where we made some of that dessert!

Another High School Academic Competition in the books! This is a high school, team version of the game show Jeopardy where students get points for answering trivia question. This day was full of fun and lots of tricky questions!

Congratulations to the Whitehall High School team who secured their 3rd straight tournament victory!

We had a very busy day in Harrisburg! It was the 2026 PAIU Day on the Hill where legislators met with members of intermediate units from across the commonwealth.

This goes beyond CLIU21. This is about the work all 29 IUs deliver in Pennsylvania. Quality legislation improves the lives of all special needs children in PA, not just the ones in Carbon and Lehigh counties. This is another chance for intermediate units to discuss how legislation can impact the mission we carry out. We thank all the senators, state representatives, and the staffers for meeting with us all today!

Say hello to our newest employees from March orientation! We have teachers, occupational therapists, instructional assistants, and vehicle drivers/assistants joining the team. We also have an IT engineer, a mental health specialist, and an emotional support interventionist signing on!

Thank you for choosing to work with us at CLIU21, and thank you for choosing to Help Children Learn!

When we include special needs children into regular classrooms, we can see growth and potential. We have IU students from our Whitehall-Coplay Early Learning Center going across the way to the Head Start program at Community Services for Children. We've noticed with at least one child lots of gains in their learning and playing.

See how this strong partnership produces results in our student, Mubarak!

We are celebrating over 50 years of greatness in public education as we dedicate ourselves to our most vulnerable learners! Back in November of 1975, President Gerald R. Ford signed into law what would later be known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA for short.

But Pennsylvania has always been ahead of the curve, fighting for inclusion before anyone told us we had to! It's why we are one of the premier states for public education in the entire country to this day. We are so happy we could make this video for Dr. Carrie Rowe and Dr. Carole Clancy at the Pennsylvania Department of Education as they showcase the keystone state's readiness and willingness to educate ALL students!

What an amazing experience at our most recent Legislative Visit. This was our largest one yet! IU21 educators alongside Lehigh Valley Health Network administration took our area legislators and their staff on a tour of LVH - Muhlenberg in Bethlehem.

We showcased the healthcare/education total partnership on our ProjectSEARCH school-to-work program. This is where special needs students learn to work in a real world environment. LVHN has been gracious enough to let us use hospital services careers to train our students on professionalism and independent living skills alongside Goodwill Keystone Services and OVR.

We're wishing a BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our facility dog Gemma Skye! We love her bubbly, fun personality. Our IU21 dogs are such a valuable asset to our mission and morale!

We only have one retiree for the month of February, but she's an important one! Sean LeDonne was an Assistant Director of our Special Programs and Services for nearly a decade. Thank you for everything you've done for us and the children!

Today we are recognizing National School Police and Resource Officer Day! We celebrate Officers Kevin and Daniel for all they do as our SPO’s at IU21. Thank you for keeping students and staff safe!

t's the power of amazing partnerships that make all the difference for special needs families. We work with Variety - the Children's Charity of Pittsburgh and BLACKBURN'S Home Medical Equipment & Supplies to host the annual Adaptive Bicycle Day here at IU21

On this episode of the Helping Children Learn Podcast, we're talking about Transdisciplinary Modeling in the classroom. That sounds like complicated term, but really it just means everyone working together knows how to do each others' job at least in some part.

Lets give a warm welcome to the first new employee orientation class of 2026!

Another great group of diverse occupations including teachers, instructional assistants, behavioral health technicians, vehicle drivers and assistants, autism support interventionists, and occupational therapists!

Thank you to our January retirees for dedicating your career to children!

So much joy at our Sensory-Friendly Storytime & Movement at Lower Macungie Library over the weekend!

We sang, moved our bodies, explored sensory stations, and shared lots of smiles with some truly amazing kiddos and families.

Huge thank you to Lower Macungie Library for the welcoming space, our incredible volunteers for bringing the energy, and all the families who came out to play, connect, and learn with us. This is what inclusive community looks like

We can’t wait to do it again! Stay tuned for more sensory-friendly fun!

Hello parents and families of our Early Intervention programs! Make sure to take advantage of all our FREE resources! Contact your Early Intervention team members to be connected with free family networking and supports!

Join us Saturday, January 24 | 10:00–11:00 AM at Lower Macungie Library for a welcoming, inclusive morning designed for children of all abilities and their families!

We can't go into the new year without recognizing those who have retired! We had four women with a combined 85 years of CLIU21 experience retire including 35 years from Connie Schultz!

o better way to celebrate a two week holiday break from school than a little party! Joann Lutz in our MDSB classroom at Northwestern Lehigh High School always has a bunch of Christmas fun each year! She always bakes a ton of cookies which the kids love decorating with sprinkles and colored frosting! And we were able to celebrate the two birthday boys, Connor and Matthew!

IU21 not only helps our member school districts, but we work to bring students from different high schools together! This event is called Student Forum, and each participating school hosts other students and advisors at a place in their community.

Snowflakes, stories, movement, and so many smiles    Our final Sensory-Friendly Storytime & Movement event of 2025 was amazing! We cannot do these without Migrant Ed, Special Olympics Pennsylvania, and the Allentown Public Library. They are full of heart, made possible by the most amazing rockstar volunteers and library partners!

Today is about much more than the meal. It's about the people you share it with, all the other people in your life who have lead you to this point, or maybe the things you have that bring you happiness.

In our Life Skills classroom at the LB Morris School in Jim Thorpe, our students reflect on what they are thankful for! And they wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

Let's give a warm Thanksgiving welcome to our newest group or CLIU21 employees! A smaller starting class, but it gave us a better chance to get to know one another! We have two instructional assistants, a speech therapist, a teacher, and someone working with our IT department!

Welcome to the team!

Another lovely Thanksgiving gathering at one of our schools last week! We had quite the spread at our Allentown Learning Achievement School in Center Valley. Students also took part in serving food for others. The food was so amazing and so flavorful! Dr. Flood is not shy with the cayenne pepper!

This ALASgiving was a great way to celebrate our students, staff, and new building.

For the last day of American Education Week, we are celebrating our substitutes! When our educators are sick or absent due to something unforeseen, these people fill in to keep the classroom rolling! John Edelman is one of our longest tenured substitutes serving us for over 23 years!

John loves working with students of all ages and programs. After reflecting on a long career with us, he says, “I enjoy working with the kids and seeing them make progress. I like to get back to classrooms to see the kids I’ve worked with before, see staff I haven’t seen in awhile. It’s nice to see I’ve worked with toward the beginning of my career, and sometimes I get a chance to see them later on when they’re almost done with school.”

Thank you to all of our substitute educators!

On day four of American Education Week, today’s theme is Educator for a Day! Although our teachers, paraprofessionals, and itinerant staff are showing up every single day to Help our Children Learn, there’s a whole lot these children teach us, too!

When you spend time with special needs children, you realize how smart they really are. Your worldview on special education and these kids will change. They can have just as much emotional and educational awareness as anyone else. They just need a little extra help. So take some time and let a child with special needs educate you for a day!

We're in the middle of American Education Week, and today we're highlighting our brand new schools in Center Valley! One location, two schools. Our Allentown Learning Achievement School and our Lehigh County Enhanced Autism School are housed in the same building. It's a major upgrade from where we were before, and our students&staff can feel the difference.

In this video, we talk about what it took to bring this project together, how the school year is going so far, and what plans we have for the future!

The second day of American Education Week is Family Day, and what better way to celebrate than having a Thanksgiving meal at school! Sharing food and memories with people we spend a lot of time with!

The staff at the L.B. Morris School in Jim Thorpe put out quite the spread, bringing multiple classrooms together!

All week CLU21 is celebrating American Education Week, and we sure had a Kickoff Day to remember! We want to thank J.B. Hunt Transport Services for selecting all of our IU21 special education classrooms in Weisenberg Elementary for their Adopt-A-Class program!

They gave students free t-shirts and hats to wear, but the best part was letting our students sit in the cab of a semi-truck! They even got to honk the air horn! These are smiles and memories we will not forget. Thank you to the JB Hunt team for an incredible time!

Thanksgiving came early for our kiddos at Panther Valley High School! Last week our special needs classrooms came together for a Thanksgiving luncheon, so of course turkey had to be on the menu!

It's that time of year to think about the winter holidays (Sorry, Thanksgiving!) as we roll out our 2025 Holiday Basket Raffle! Supporting the Carbon Lehigh Special Needs Childrens Foundation, you can buy tickets to win 14 different baskets ranging from lottery tickets to chocolate lovers!

Tickets are $1 a piece or $5 for 6 tickets. You can purchase them at the CLIU21 main office, or buy them online @ www.CLSNCF.org. The drawing will be held on December 15th!

Some more Halloween fun! Leanne Thomas' MDSB classroom at Peter's Elementary carved a pumpkin into a classic Jack-O'-Lantern! They started with the crown/cap, then cleaning out the pulp and seeds inside. They finished by carving out the eyes, nose, and smile before putting in some spooky lights!

It's a busy Halloween week at IU21!

At our Whitehall-Coplay Early Learning Center, we're having trick-or-treat in the hallways going classroom to classroom! We have Elsa, Ms. Rachel, Spongebob, a Penn State Cheerleader, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Peter Pan, and so much more!

Not quite a Halloween visit, but supervisor Brigid Messa went to her Catasauqua Middle School MDSB classroom dressed as Mother Goose! And with her she brought an interactive story and lesson!

She created a story using AI, and had students use a touchscreen to answer questions about the characters, making students exercise memory recall. Mother Goose was such a hit with the kids, we think they had more fun hanging out with her AFTER story time than during it!

This IU is full of bravery. Allyssa Helm, one of our teachers at the Whitehall-Coplay Early Learning Center, completed an Ironman Triathlon this past weekend in Wilmington, North Carolina! She swam, biked, and ran a total of 70.3 miles in 8 hours and 1 minute!

Allyssa trained for a year to do this, living out her mantra of, "Just Start." Her colleagues are so impressed with her resilience, determination, and her dedication to the students and her goals!

SPS Director Dr. Mark Scott, after 11 years with CLIU21, will retire after the new year. The board has approved Dr. Cathy Nelson to replace him. Congratulations to Dr. Nelson on this exciting new beginning! We thank Dr. Scott for all of his contributions and we wish him a happy retirement!

Each year we recognize an amazing educator, from the past school year, with an employee of the year award in honor of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's longtime companion teacher.

This year our winner is Heather Szoke, MDSB Teacher at Northern Lehigh High School! She's so grateful to receive the award, but understands it couldn't have happened without her paraprofessional staff. And she recognizes anyone who is dedicated to CLIU21 and their classroom are just as deserving of this award!

Twenty people are starting their professional journey with CLIU21! A great mix of professions getting ready to Help Children Learn!

Teachers, Instructional Assistants, Social Workers, Occupational Therapy Assistants, Vehicle Transportation Assistants, Early Intervention Facilitators, Computer Technicians, Speech Therapists, and Administrative Assistants!

Friday, October 10th was World Mental Health Day, and our IU21 Behavioral Health Department wanted to celebrate! they invited everyone down to their offices to enjoy some gluten-free treats and chat about what mental health means to each other! Fun activities also helped people reflect on mental health.

Welcome to a new season of the Helping Children Learn Podcast! We start off with our Annie Sullivan Award Winner from the 2024-2025 school year, MDSB teacher Heather Szoke!

Starting this school year, we will be acknowledging our retirees after they're done dedicating their careers to Helping Children Learn!

Our first one is Instructional Assistant Sonia Garcia! Thank you for 25 years of excellence in the classroom!

Are you or someone you know actively looking for help with mental health? Whether it's autism support, medication management, substance abuse services, or if you have other needs, we encourage you to visit Project AWARE PA Findhelp. It's a free, online directory that helps school staff and families quickly connect students (ages 0–21) with local mental and behavioral health providers.

If you are a community member, use this link: PROJECTAWAREPA.FINDHELP.COM

If you are a school staff member, use this link: PROJECTAWAREPASTAFF.FINDHELP.COM

And remember, if you need immediate support, you can always dial 988 to speak with someone right away.

September is Deaf and Hard of Hearing Awareness Month, so our student Faith is recording a Pledge of Allegiance sign language video for her entire school!

Let's all welcome our orientation class of new employees for the month of September! We're bringing on teachers, transportation staff, instructional assistants, a speech therapist, COTA, job coach and payroll specialist!

Welcome to CLIU21, everyone!

We all know the main school year is the end of August through mid-June, but it's vital for our special needs students to continue their education through the summer! That's why CLIU21 holds Extended School Year at five different sites all over our region! And we're always trying to make it fun with a theme.

Watch the video to see what we're doing and why it's so important!

#helpingchildrenlearn #extendedschoolyear #specialeducation #lehighvalley #pennsylvania

Our Behavioral Health Department here at CLIU21 wants everyone to know about 988 day! 988 is the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for anyone dealing with mental health struggles, emotional distress, alcohol or drug use concerns, or just needing someone to talk to. You can call or text the number!

Our team of educators are officially ready for the classroom! Summer Academy has wrapped up! This is a time when our staff come together to learn updated rules & regulations, sharpen their skills, come up with new activities, and so much more to be prepared for the new school year. We even make sure we practice first aid with Cetronia Ambulance Corps!

There's also the occasional group activity meant for fun like sidewalk chalk drawing! But it all comes back to Help Children Learn. See you in class next week!

From classroom teachers and aides, to job coaches and mental health workers. We brought in over 20 new employees covering a range of kills and positions!

This year's Opening Day ceremony at CLIU21 is quite fitting to our theme for the school year. "Individually United" is the recognition of everyone's work even though we are spread out in Carbon and Lehigh counties. We came together via Zoom from five different sites due to construction at our normal venue.

Between our district classrooms, center-based programs, and our itinerants and transportation folks driving all over every day... We all contribute to the singular mission of Helping Children Learn. This video encapsulates the hard work everyone does from wherever they are at!

CLIU21 Executive Director Dr. Gregory Koons is now the president of the Pennsylvania Association of Intermediate Units!

We would like to give a warm welcome to our newest Director of Transportation, Lucia Miletto-O’Brien! Lucia comes to us with more than 20 years of experience in educational transportation.

She's ready to keep our children safe and push for the constant improvement of our team. Welcome to IU21!

We're always having constructive conversations with our educational leaders, listening to their needs, and making sure we're all heading in the right direction. Executive Director Dr. Greg Koons and C&I Director Eric Lech from IU21 are leading these discussions alongside Dr. Lauren Paterson from BloomBoard!

At this year's Education Leadership Forum, we're working on pathways into education for students and adults, retaining our best staff, recruiting educators to our schools, and other pressing issues.

Thank you for everyone who attended, and thank you to our speakers from Lehigh Carbon Community College, Allentown School District, Lehigh Career & Technical Institute, and Central Susquehanna IU16!

Join the CLIU21 team and make a difference in your community!

We're hosting walk-in interviews for our student transportation department:

• Tuesday, July 15th from 10am-1pm

• Tuesday, July 22nd from 10am-1pm

No application required - just show up!

• Vehicle aides start at $15/hr

• Van drivers start at $17.82/hr (bumps up to $20.25 after CDL testing to become bus driver.)

Plus, enjoy full benefits:

• Healthcare

• Pension retirement plan

• Summers off!

Help children get to school safely and be part of something amazing!

Look at these girls go!!! Each summer, we spend a group of our students to Girl Scouts Camp Mosey Wood for a week of fun in nature! They get to swim, row a canoe, shoot bow&arrow, and all sorts of camping fun!

In this video you'll see the girls tye-die t-shirts and go ziplining! And how all of these new experiences make them a better person when they leave.