Amy C. Sousa: The Guild opened in 1952 as the Protestant Guild for the Blind, and over the years we've really evolved into serving people primarily with intellectual disabilities.
Jen Young: What I like about the Guild, one of the things, is that it's mixed disabilities.
Kathy Lewiecki: We immediately felt comfortable when we walked through the doors. One of the things we really liked about The Guild School is they individualize the instruction for each student.
Jen Young: I walked in and there was a young man bouncing down the hall and a cheerful staff person bouncing behind him, and he looked exactly like my son. And the staff person looked happy, and the person at the desk looked happy, and I thought, "Oh, we're home."
Alec McKinney: And the whole transition process from his prior school to The Guild was very smooth.
Kathy Lewiecki: The teachers are amazingly caring and warm and really excited about their jobs. You can tell they're really happy to work here, and they really focus on the students' strengths.
Jonathan Muise: I think we have people that are here for the right reasons.
Alec McKinney: I think The Guild seems to have a real emphasis on safety.
Isaac Ssenyondo: If a parent trusts a child in your hands, that means you're doing a good service.
Shawn Massak: I work with a team of job coaches, so we have students kind of doing everything you can imagine around the school, and then we're working on developing employability skills.
Amy C. Sousa: All of us want to contribute meaningfully to our community and a big part of that is work. It's being part of something greater than yourselves.
Shawn Massak: One of our vocational training spaces is the school coffee shop. It gives our students the opportunity to practice some really complicated skills. Having those skills could be applicable to a lot of different jobs.
Kathy Lewiecki: The structure of The Guild's residential program has really helped him to live safely in a home environment with other people and to navigate safely in the community.
Alec McKinney: I think one thing that I really appreciated has been the fact that their houses are in the community and they're really modeling what life might be like for Tyler later on.
Julie McKinney: Yeah, it's nice. They really try to get the kids out into the community as much as possible.
Amy Gramling: What I enjoy most is just working one-on-one with the students. I like seeing them progress throughout their time here.
Kathy Lewiecki: Jesse's independent life skills have improved dramatically.
Julie McKinney: When he's here, we know that he's engaged, that they're doing activities, that they care about him, that they're teaching him the things that we know he needs to learn, and we don't have to worry about Tyler. We know he's in a good place.
Amy C. Sousa: At The Guild we provide a community, a community who cares about one another. The idea is that people get to belong here. It's not a secondary goal. It's primary.
Kathy Lewiecki: He is always excited to go to school and looks forward to it every day. School vacation weeks are hard for him because he misses school so much.