Vogelweid Learning Center at J.C. St. Peter to expand to Helias Catholic H.S. in 2024

We’re taking a broader view of our vision and mission: to be able to serve all of God’s kids.”

Elizabeth Twyman, accommodations coordinator at Helias Catholic.

Helias Catholic High School is in the process of becoming more catholic.

That is, more universal.

By this time next year, services now offered through the Vogelweid Learning Center at St. Peter School in Jefferson City will be expanded to the diocese’s largest Catholic high school.

This will allow students who qualified for special education services in grade school to continue receiving them for four more years in a Catholic environment.

“It’s the realization of a dream that appeals to our highest aspirations as Catholic educators,” said Erin Vader Ed.D., superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Jefferson City diocese.

The Vogelweid Learning Center at Helias is slated to begin with the 2024-25 academic year.

It will offer special education services well beyond the programs already being offered through Helias’s Pope John Paul II Student Success Center.

“Expanding to Helias is a natural continuation of what we all stand for in Catholic education — for students to have access to what they need in order to develop to their fullest God-given potential,” said Paula Wekenborg, director of the Vogelweid Learning Center at St. Peter.

The expansion will “complement what they’ve already established at Helias, what they’ve already developed, their staff, their expertise,” she said.

Services will include teaching functional life-based skills to students with significant learning challenges, helping them prepare for employment and independent living.

“We’re taking a broader view of our vision and mission: to be able to serve all of God’s kids,” stated Elizabeth Twyman, accommodations coordinator at Helias Catholic.

As part of the expansion, the school is in the process of hiring a special education teacher who specializes in working with high school students.

“The more kids we can serve, the better,” said Mrs. Twyman. “The more kids we can bring closer to Christ, the better we’re doing our job.”

What is Vogelweid?

The Vogelweid Learning Center was established in 1964 as the special education division of St. Peter School.

It now functions as a special services program for children of widely diverse learning needs.

The variety and depth of these services — coupled with the level of integration with the rest of the students of St. Peter School and the collaboration among all the teachers — makes Vogelweid genuinely unique.

The center helps students across a broad spectrum, including those who come to the center for any or all of their core classes but spend the rest of their learning time in a general-ed classroom; those who spend their whole time in general-ed classrooms with support from an aide or with some form of accommodation or adaptation; and those who receive some kind of accommodation but don’t otherwise require any specialized support.

Vogelweid includes three full-time certified special education teachers, two full-time aides, and Mrs. Wekenborg, the full-time director, who coordinates all of these things.

Of one mind

Mrs. Wekenborg and Mrs. Twyman already collaborate on helping students who’ve received services from Vogelweid make the transition to Helias Catholic.

“We’ve worked closely together and have a united vision and goals,” said Mrs. Wekenborg.

“Helias has been serving students who have received services and supports through Vogelweid for years,” Mrs. Twyman noted. “This expansion is allowing us to continue those services to our students with lower functioning skills with the personnel needed and the support from the Vogelweid program at St. Peter’s.”

Growing its own staff and drawing on the resources of the Vogelweid faculty will allow Helias to serve students with an even broader range of needs.

“We want to ensure that all saints and scholars who come through Helias get what they need to become successful, faith-based, productive adults and members of our Church,” said Mrs. Twyman.

“We want to makes sure that we have services that not only help those children with special needs, but also propelling our AP students to go on to help cure cancer,” she added.

In-SPIRE-ing

Support for Vogelweid at Helias Catholic will come from the newly-revitalized SPIRE Foundation.

The foundation was established in 2015 to support special education services at Catholic schools throughout the diocese.

SPIRE’s main premise is that Jesus loves and welcomes all children, and his schools should do likewise.

“Jesus ministered to the most vulnerable in society,” noted Donna Frazier, a college educator and former Catholic school teacher and administrator, who’s a member of the group bringing SPIRE back to the fore.

“Children with disabilities are the most vulnerable in our society,” she said. “We need to be ministering to them, welcoming, including. That must be at the center of our mission.”

SPIRE’s objectives fall into two categories:

• raising awareness among school administrators, teachers, staff and parents of the need to provide Catholic education to children with special needs, as well as the availability of workshops and professional development opportunities to help teachers bring out the children’s best efforts; and
• raising money and helping secure grants to pay for staff development, classroom materials and additional personnel to help students with special needs achieve success in Catholic schools.

“The long-term goal is to raise enough money so that (the schools) can have paraprofessionals, certified special education teachers, as well as physical and occupational therapy and speech programs in the schools,” said Mrs. Frazier.

Unanticipated blessings

Paula Backues sees the expansion of Vogelweid as “the best thing that can happen.”

“It’s an excellent program, and we’re thrilled to see an extension of it being made at Helias,” she said.

Mrs. Backues, her husband Corey and their children are members of St. Peter Parish in Jefferson City.

Their daughter Sophia has Down syndrome and related developmental disabilities.

“From Day 1, we always felt that Sophia was the gift from God that we never knew we needed,” Mrs. Backues stated.

“I believe that with God’s hand, she has opened our eyes to so many blessings that we would never have experienced without her,” she said.

Sophia went to St. Peter School and received services through Vogelweid from pre-school through eighth grade.

In the process, “she got to learn about her faith and how it can be a positive influence in her life,” Mrs. Backues said.

She’s convinced that that same inclusive, faith-based environment helps all the children at St. Peter School.

“The student body there is used to having kids with special needs in their midst,” she said. “And because it’s a faith-based environment, typical students were open not just to Sophia learning from them, but to learning FROM her as well.”

A turning point

Mr. and Mrs. Backues worked with St. Peter School and Helias Catholic for over a year to plan for Sophia’s transition to high school.

“Our hope was for her to go to the Catholic school and be with the kids she went through grade school and middle school with,” said Mr. Backues.

Those efforts ended in disappointment, with Sophia having to leave Helias near the end of her first semester.

She’s doing well now at Jefferson City High School, but the hardest part was no longer being with lifelong friends.

Stung by the experience, the Backueses set about helping to build something better.

“The blessing on the back end of all of this is, I think there’s now a better understanding of what needs to happen,” said Mrs. Backues.

The couple said they want for their daughter what every parent wants for their children: “for her to be included, accepted and able to achieve to her best ability.”

“Whether you have child with special needs or a typically developing child, that’s what you want,” said Mr. Backues. “And you want them to have an education with faith built into it that will help them get to that level.”

“It will happen”

Mr. Backues is convinced that integrating more students with special needs and learning differences will benefit all students at Helias Catholic.

“So many times, people tell us, ‘We get more out of being around Sophia than she probably gets from being around us,’” he noted.

As work on numerous fronts to bring about the expansion progresses over the next year, Mrs. Wekenborg asks for prayers for guidance in making the right decisions.

Likewise, Mrs. Backues requested prayers for continued commitment to making the expanded program succeed.

“It will take a village,” she predicted, “but as long as everybody has their faith in order, and if God helps everyone stay committed, it will happen.”