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Date 5-11-06
Contact David Tisdale 601.266.4499
WITH PHOTOS
Hattiesburg—Brooke
Jorns Davis of Hattiesburg will walk the walk at graduation Friday
at the University of Southern Mississippi, only because the university’s
Children’s Center for Communication and Development (CCCD) enabled
her to talk the talk.
Davis wasn’t
at a loss for words as a 3-year-old, but 20 years ago she had some
trouble getting her message across because an articulation disorder
prevented her from engaging in normal speech. “I pretty much couldn’t
speak at all,” she said.
But on Friday
she will step onto the stage at the University of Southern Mississippi’s
Reed Green Coliseum to receive her diploma, roughly a 100 yards
away from the CCCD facility, where she got the help she needed to
overcome the disability that could have made her special day impossible.
Ironically,
she began working part time as a teacher’s aide at the Children’s
Center this spring in order to gain experience in her chosen field
of speech pathology and in the course of her work learned that she
was assisting her former teacher, Diana Sawyer.
“I needed some
experience as far as going into my field, to get my feet wet,” Davis
said. “I didn’t realize Miss Diana (Sawyer) was my former teacher.
Margaret (Buttross-Brinegar, co-director of the Children’s Center)
told me, and I was just kind of shocked.”
Davis’ memories
of her time at the Children’s Center are fuzzy two decades later,
but after working with Sawyer she has gained a glimpse of the interaction
the two likely had. “She (Sawyer) is so loving and reaches out to
them (children). I see first hand the effort she puts into her work,
and I’m sure she put that same amount of effort into helping me.
“If it hadn’t
been for Diana and the Children’s Center’s staff pushing me to achieve
my potential, I would not be graduating with my degree Friday. It
just makes me admire her and the work being done here even more.”
The Children’s
Center’s mission is to provide an interdisciplinary team approach
to the assessment and treatment of communicatively and developmentally
delayed children ages birth to 5. Services are either home-based
or center-based, depending on a child’s needs.
“They have a
range of problems and disabilities, from Rhett’s syndrome and traumatic
brain injury, and then there’s a variety of different language and
articulation disorders,” Davis said of the children she works with.
She plans to start graduate school at Southern Miss this summer
to earn her master’s degree in speech pathology.
Sawyer said
she had seen Davis on campus, but did not recognize her after so
many years had passed. “Margaret (Buttross-Brinegar) mentioned that
one of our former students was now enrolled at USM majoring in speech
pathology, and when she said her name I said, ‘That’s one of my
babies.’ I remember her as being very sweet and very cooperative.”
The two soon
got in touch, and through Davis’ assistantship she came to work
with Sawyer and other teachers at the Children’s Center in their
classrooms.
Sawyer said
her job has always been rewarding, but to have one of her former
students come back to graduate from college and follow in her footsteps
is “extra special for me and everyone here at the Children’s Center.”
“It’s just so
wonderful to have her back and in this setting as an assistant.
She’s a good student and I believe she has a bright future in this
field,” Sawyer said.
Buttross-Brinegar
said Davis displays a strong motivation both in her work in the
classroom and as a teacher’s assistant because “I believe she has
an extra determination to give back to the community because of
what it did for her through the Children’s Center.”
For Davis, her
career choice just comes naturally. “There’s a part of me, having
been here, that I can identify with these children on some level.”
Click to enlarge
Brooke Davis of Hattiesburg, a senior at the University of Southern Mississippi, works with students at the university's Children's Center for Communication and Development. Davis learned this past semester that as a young child she received services at the Center at age 3, which helped her overcome an articulation disorder that interfered with her ability to speak. She graduates this Friday from the university with a degree in speech pathology. (Southern Miss Public Relations photo by Steve Rouse)
Click to enlarge
Brooke Davis, center, talks to her teacher at the University of Southern Mississippi Children's Center for Communication and Development in the mid-1980s. (Submitted photo)
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