Dubard School help children to communicate with 'Wish-You-Wells'

HATTIESBURG, Miss. - The Dubard School for Language Disorders is a special place for children who have significant problems with speech and language, that affects their academic learning.

"Students who have language learning problems, sometimes they don’t understand what people are saying to them. It’s not that they don’t have good ability. They are smart students. For some reason they don’t understand what people say to them or maybe they can't organize their thoughts and get the words out," said Interim Director Missy Schraeder.

The Dubard school is a service to the public by helping children overcome communication disabilities.

“A couple of years ago, we did some training called conscious discipline. Conscious discipline is a way of working with students to help them become aware and in control of themselves and in control of their emotions. It also teaches kindness and empathy towards their fellow students,”

The conscious discipline technique is called ‘wish-wells’ and they can work at any given moment when someone is hurt or not in attendance.

"...you can see that at snack time or on the playground somebody falls down and a friend will come over and say ‘oh you fell let me help you up, oh I wish you well.’ It’s just really cool because they’re becoming empathetic, they’re thinking about other students,”

This technique teaches students how to use their words to express their emotions.

“Our goal is to help them be productive citizens and do the best they can to the best of their ability. So, knowing that we are able to give them some language skills so that they can go out and reach that potential, is just exciting,”

Eventually the students develop new skills and go back to regular traditional schools.

“Some of our students will go on and graduate from high school. We have students who attend university, last may we had five former students graduate form the University of Southern Miss. So, we're very excited about that,"