Worthwhile Work: After nearly three decades, Sheri Willrodt will retire as Special Services director in August – Austin Daily Herald

For nearly three decades, Sheri Willrodt has been advocating for and helping special needs students advance during their time at Austin Public Schools.

For the last 15 years, she’s been the executive director of Special Services at Austin and throughout it all her work and the work of the department has been about one thing only.

The students themselves.

“It’s all about the kids,” Willrodt said. “It’s why I got into this field, why I stuck with this field for as many years as I did. This is not easy work, but it’s really important work and meaningful work and you feel like you accomplished something with your life that meant something.”

“When you see a student that is going in the right direction and making progress, it makes it all worth it,” she added.

She still has a couple months, but by the time August ends, Willrodt will be heading into retirement making the 2024-25 school year her last before Sarah Knudsen, Ed.D. takes over.

Willrodt began her career in South Dakota where she taught in Clear Lake before moving to Austin 30 years ago. Her first job with the district was as a special education teacher at Neveln Elementary School for eight years before transitioning into the Elementary Special Education supervisor position for five years.

That led into the position she holds now and it’s given her a wide-ranging look into the job differences over the years, particularly in the differences between the two states. South Dakota tended to lump many of the disability areas into a single licensure, something that is much different in Minnesota.

“Minnesota is very categorical,” Willrodt said. “You had to have different licensures for different disabilities. Minnesota even has some adapted different licensure areas that can cover multiple disabilities. That’s really the reality of our work and what we have to do.”

That has encompassed areas like autism in that as more is understood about the disability, the more the qualifications have changed to a point where autism requires the highest level of qualification in the district.

“We’ve seen a real increase in that area and a need for more resources in that area,” Willrodt said.

Nevertheless, the job has always been about meeting the needs of the students as well as meeting them where they are at. With better diagnosis comes a better understanding of the needs of the staff in order to meet those goals.

“Regardless of what the label is, our goal has always been to meet the individual needs of the students,” Willrodt said. “We learn more about it, we learn more effective techniques, yes, but the focus is the same.”

One of the areas that has been a focus at Austin Public Schools is that need to ensure that while the district is meeting the needs of students, it’s not letting those needs define who they are.

To that end, Willrodt said there has been a heavy emphasis on inclusion and alleviating any restrictive environments a student may have. A key to that is blending students with their peers at the schools whenever possible.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to include students in the general education environment and extra curricular activities and special events the school district has,” Willrodt said. “It’s always heartwarming to celebrate those accomplishments.”

Building relationships is another cog in the machine and is an important step towards the future for students.

“The more relationships we can develop between students with disabilities and typically developing peers, the more successful they are going to be in that integration,” Willrodt said.

In the field of special services, advancement of techniques that help those students being served can often have cascading effects. That’s what Willrodt has experienced over the years and it comes in terms of successes that have lasting and positive consequences.

“I would say it’s a lot of little things kind of building on each other,” Willrodt said. “I’m very proud of our transition programming at Austin High School. We have a very robust program for assisting students into adulthood with partnerships with Riverland Community College.”

That same kind of team aspect is reflected in partnerships out in the community that help get students into real-world opportunities.

However, Willrodt also points to the development of the Austin-Albert Lea Special Education Cooperative that has its home at the Oakland Education Center. Formed in 2016, the cooperative is nearing 10 years of collaboration that caters to both of the district’s neediest learners.

Along the way Willrodt has overseen the operation of a co-teacher initiative that pairs special education teachers with general education content area experts that work side-by-side in the classroom.

“We’re trying to build our skills in that area and getting them better at supporting student needs in that area,” Willrodt said.

While her work in the district has been important to Willrodt, what she does outside of her work has been just as important and oftentimes collaborative in nature. She has been on the board at the Hormel Historic Home, which is home to special autism camps in the summer as well as spending her time in the Zonta Club and her own church.

“It’s really nice to be able to establish those connections with people in the community in order to build opportunities for students with disabilities in the community, too,” she said.

After all is said and done, though, it all comes back to the students.

“Maybe doing something worthwhile isn’t always easy, but it’s important and worth it in order to be able to at the end of the day feel like you’ve made a difference,” Willrodt said.