Barbara Kolski '97 came to Union intent on becoming a doctor, but now she is gaining experience in what she really wants to
do – special education for infants and young children-by substituting at a local school for children with neurological impairments.
The change in career goals was an evolutionary one.
Between her freshman and sophomore years, she completed a summer research program in the pediatric operating suite of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, studying the influences of secondhand smoke on children undergoing anesthesia.
“It was fantastic and I loved it. At that point, I was thinking `this is definitely for me,”' she says. “I loved the interaction with the families and the children. The medicine aspect was interesting, but that isn't what I want to do.”
The evolution continued back at Union, when she was immersed in what most pre-med students love-studying anatomy and a health care practicum at nearby St. Clare's Hospital. “Anatomy just didn't amaze me as it should,” she says. And she wasn't impressed by her experience in the hospital.
So Kolski decided to look into other aspects of health. She has always known that she wants to work with children; during high school, for example, she volunteered at a children's special education hospital near her home and worked for two summers at a day camp for autistic children. After exploring graduate schools that offer advanced degrees in special education, she
was excited to discover programs in infancy and early intervention, allowing her to work with young children and infants.
“It was neonatalogy without the medicine,” she says. “It was exactly what I've always wanted to do.”
To gain experience, she took the advice of a counselor in the College's Career Development Center and approached the Wildwood School, a local school that provides support to
people mostly children-who have neurologically-based impairments and whose needs cannot be met by their local school districts. Last term, Kolski substituted in Wildwood classrooms at least once a week, squeezing her last term of classes at Union
into two days.
Kolski taught life skills, helping children learn to share, wait for directions, listen, and behave. “I was just reinforcing social skills because that's what these
kids need most,” she says.
Kolski loved her work at Wildwood. “My mental image of how children should be treated draws me to this group that doesn't normally get as much of a fair chance as they deserve,” she says. “And I enjoy it because they are no different from the kids in my kindergarten class except that there is a language barrier.”
She remembers being saddened and frustrated when she first began dealing with children with neurological impairments. With the knowledge she has gained in school, though, she understands why the kids sometimes behave the way they do. And she is excited that in graduate school her academics will coincide even more closely with the activities of her students.
For Kolski, her involvement in programs outside of the classroom are natural. “I don't think that what I'm doing is out of the norm, because I'm getting more education from it than from
many of the classes I have taken,” she says.
Kolski graduated in March and is now working at home in Westfield, N.J., before entering graduate school in the fall.