Listening Without Words 

For Will Rogers Elementary’s Teacher of the Year, Natalie Reed, teaching is not just a career. It’s a calling shaped by personal experience and a deep belief in seeing children for who they truly are. 

This spring, the special education teacher was named one of six finalists for the district’s Teacher of the Year award, a recognition that reflects two decades in special education and more than a decade in the classroom. Prior to her work at Will Rogers, Natalie taught at Northern Hills, John Ross, Edmond Early Childhood Center, and Clyde Howell Early Childhood Center. Today, she teaches at a developmentally delayed preschool, working with 3- and 4-year-olds during both morning and afternoon sessions. 

Presuming Competence: A Classroom Philosophy 

“I love the phrase ‘presuming competence,’” she shared. “Sometimes people meet young children who are nonverbal and assume they do not understand. They do. Our job is figuring out how they are experiencing the world and how they are trying to communicate.” 

That belief drives her classroom approach. She focuses on how the brain develops visually first, using matching, pointing, visuals, and communication devices to help students show what they know. Some children use augmented communication buttons. Others select songs on Spotify to express needs or emotions. One student famously used a favorite song to ask for bananas at home. 

“That creativity is incredible,” she said. “They are always communicating. We just have to listen differently.” 

A Calling Shaped by Experience 

Her path to education was not linear. She originally studied pre-med and worked at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. When funding ended, she took a job as a teaching assistant in special education, a role she already had experience with through family members with disabilities and as a caregiver for her niece with autism. She fell in love with the classroom and went back to earn degrees and certifications in early childhood, elementary, and special education. She has taught in Deer Creek, at John Ross Elementary, and now at Will Rogers. 

In her Teacher of the Year portfolio, she posed a central question: What does it truly mean to understand someone? Not just their perspective, but how their brain receives information and how they try to express it. 

Building Inclusion Beyond the Classroom 

Inclusion is a thread that runs through everything she does. Her students trick-or-treat through the school each year, and she takes time to explain to general education peers that their classmates have the same feelings, preferences, and favorite things. “We are all more the same than we are different,” she said. “We just experience the world together.” 

She builds community beyond the classroom, organizing zoo trips, pumpkin patch visits, pajama-and-pancake mornings, sensory-friendly Christmas events, and service projects like stocking a pantry using color-matching dice. She also serves as the disability minister at Memorial Road Church of Christ, leading accommodations and inclusion efforts for families. 

She is quick to share credit with her teaching assistants, Heather Hall and Becky Vincent. “I could not do my job without them,” she said. “We are family, and they love these kids like their own.” 

Together, they work toward a simple but powerful goal: “to help children love learning from the very start and to feel seen, heard, and deeply valued. We simply build connection and trust, and everything else grows from there.”