Stories of Bridgeway House: Nathelle Comeau and Nicholas Brown

Presenter: We’re listening to stories of Bridgeway House as we visit with students, parents, grandparents, teachers, staff, and volunteers of this amazing school, which is truly a community treasure. With years of experience supporting the autism community, here are Nicholas Brown and Nathelle Comeau:

[00:00:21] Nathelle Comeau: My name is Nathelle Comeau. I’m the principal. Previously, I was a teacher for many years out here, SPED (special education) teacher, and I’m the principal at the Camp Creek location.

[00:00:30] Nicholas Brown: I’m Nicholas Brown, I’ve been at Bridgeway for about 15 years. I started interning here in college. I started out as an IA (instructional assistant) and then social group lead and evolved into lead teaching and the Mandt professional for the organization.

[00:00:48] I was never really planning on being a lead teacher. It just kind of evolved into that and just, the longer I stayed there, the more I fell in love with the population, the organization, the people I worked with. And so it became more of a passion after that.

[00:01:06] Nathelle Comeau: We teamed up together. (For years!) We both started about the same time and we teamed up and were in the classroom together for a lot of years.

[00:01:13] Nicholas Brown: She was the lead teacher and I was the IA for like 10 years. (Yeah). 12 years. I don’t know. Long time. She helps support me quite a bit when I need help.

[00:01:22] Nathelle Comeau: Same here.

[00:01:23] Nicholas Brown: Yeah. Bridgeway, it’s, you know, it’s a private school that was created to help support this population because there was a need for it.

[00:01:31] We wanted to be able to provide a place that was safe and secure for these kids to be able to grow and to be able to achieve the things that they want to achieve—so helping them find their niche and build upon that, and that they might not have been getting around public schools or typical children.

[00:01:51] Nathelle Comeau: I help out with the placements, with placing students. Every year luckily I get to visit a lot of schools during the year and observe students, and I see it is very different. It’s smaller, the classes are smaller. It’s very family-like, just the way the kids are treated.

[00:02:09] They’re very supported. It’s very individualized. Typical schools are big and busy, and kind of can fall through the crack sometimes in these, it’s just a smaller—

[00:02:20] Nicholas Brown: More support, more teachers, more IAs to be able to help. (Yeah.) Get that one-on-one support, while in the mainstream school, you might fall through the cracks a little bit, not get all the support that you need.  

[00:02:32] I think especially in this population, it sometimes takes quite a few years before you’re noticing that change in that growth that you’ve been helping with. And then after it’s noticeable, after that time, you can kind of see it more often, more rapidly.

[00:02:47] But I’ve seen many kids be able to come in from public schools with some pretty severe dangerous behaviors, that could only be in school for an hour, if even that, that are now at school for a whole day and are meeting their goals on their IEPs and are even able to possibly be put back into the mainstream public schools to get their diploma if they wanted to and go to college.

[00:03:18] Nathelle Comeau: In our classroom, our kiddos were a little bit younger. And so we’ve gotten to see ’em go from our classroom to other classrooms, to other classrooms, and then come down here to the downtown location.

[00:03:31] And it is, it’s so great to see ’em grow and see ’em going out into the community and doing things and making friends and they have parties and they get together and they have game night and they, they just hang out together.

[00:03:43] It’s just, it is the coolest thing to watch. It is, yes. It’s great to see them hanging out together and doing things together and being friends and calling each other and getting together and doing stuff, and it’s neat. It’s neat to watch.

[00:03:59] Nicholas Brown: And the parents just, they just love it because, you know, they haven’t experienced that with their child too often. So when there’s another kid calling to hang out with their kid, they’re like, ‘Yes, for sure.’

[00:04:11] Nathelle Comeau: You know, these are the odd kids out oftentimes. (Yeah.) They’re not invited to birthday parties. When they come to Bridgeway House, they start to get invited to stuff like that and doing stuff like that, and it’s fun for them.

[00:04:22] Nicholas Brown: Yeah. It’s—it’s a family. Everyone supports each other. We try to as much have an open mindset with each other and the students as much as possible to build that trust with everyone.

[00:04:33] Nathelle Comeau: A lot of these kids come with some big behaviors, struggling to communicate, which sort of can make for some big behaviors. So we have behavior teams that work with that. We have our Mandt team that helps support us support them. There’s all kinds of interventions that we put together. We have plans, we have IEPs—

[00:04:53] Nicholas Brown: We’re a lot different too, is that we really push building that rapport first with our students rather than trying to get academics from them straight on. ‘Cause that wasn’t really working for them in the mainstream school.

[00:05:04] So I tend to like to take two to three weeks to really figure out what they like to do, who they are, and then once they start building that trust with us and have that trust, then I’m able to make some simple demands to start out, and then evolve it into a place where now they’re doing a lot more academics and learning more.

[00:05:24] Nathelle Comeau: It’s about connecting.

[00:05:25] Nicholas Brown: It’s about connecting and building that trust.

[00:05:27] Nathelle Comeau: Yeah. And with each other, even as colleagues, we all trust each other. We’re a team.

[00:05:31] Nicholas Brown: The more that we can model that, the more that they’re going to be able to pick up on that as well.

[00:05:35] Nathelle Comeau: I like what you said earlier about, you know, when they first come to us: Build rapport. Spend some time. Don’t just jump right in and start with academics. Build rapport, get to know them. Connect.

[00:05:46] Nicholas Brown: That’s exactly what I would say too: Pick your battles. Build the trust. (Build the trust.)

[00:05:52] You know, coming in here, we think outside the box a little bit. (Totally.) These kids are wired a little differently and we come in, (if) it’s not with an open mindset and thinking outside the box, then it’s not really going to be helping them at all.

[00:06:03] Presenter: We’re visiting with Nathelle Comeau and Nicholas Brown from Bridgeway House, to learn more about how to support their awareness-raising and fundraising campaign.

[00:06:12] Nathelle Comeau: We’ve got to support Bridgeway. It’s an amazing place with amazing kids.

[00:06:15] Nicholas Brown: And it’s not just for the kids, it’s for the parents and the teachers too. You know, this is our livelihood, just as much as anything else. And we love it. And so I wouldn’t want to change that. I want to do this for a while. So…

[00:06:31] Nathelle Comeau: It’s been kind of cool to watch the parents of these kids, the way that they have built their community around these kids. And it’s huge. They’re everywhere in this town. It’s beautiful. Yeah.

[00:06:43] Nicholas Brown: Yeah. And once you start participating in this population, you start realizing how big it actually is. (Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm). You don’t even realize it, how everyone is connected in the autism community.

[00:06:54] Presenter: You can connect with a great local resource at BridgewayHouse.org, or call (541) 345-0805.

During summer break, calls to Bridgeway House will be automatically transferred to school admin team cell phones. For faster service, call the cell phones directly: (541) 743-5159 and (505) 930-6910.