Nellie Veliz Ferdinandtsen, MEd., BCEA

Nellie serves on the Advisory Board of NSEAI. 

Nellie Ferdinandtsen is a former Special Education and Science middle school teacher with over twenty years of experience in the public school system.  Nellie received her master’s degree in Educational Science from Walden University in 2014 and is a member of the Golden Key International Honors Society.  Nellie is also a member of the National Association of Special Education Teachers since 2017 and a certified Education Advocate through NSEAI since 2019.

 Nellie’s first five years in her teaching practice began as a behavioral teacher in a self-contained unit.  Nellie taught the school’s curriculum in addition to social and behavior management skills.  The rest of her teaching experience included resource teaching in reading, social studies, and science as well as co-teaching in science and reading.

All of Nellie’s teaching practice and experience has been in  Title 1 school districts where students are from low socio-economic backgrounds with a growing population of 1st generation immigrants from Mexico and Central America.  Ninety-two percent of the school’s population are on the free lunch program.  The school’s demographics are ninety-nine percent of Hispanic origin.

Nellie, along with her teaching duties, managed a substantial caseload of special needs students, monitored their improvement, met with parents and teachers to discuss behavioral interventions, academic achievement, evaluations, transition planning, and annual assessments at Special Education meetings.

After years of working and serving special educations students, Nellie noticed a pattern in the school’s yearly reports that special education students were not making much progress from one year to the next.  Annoyed, at her school’s general indifference towards special education and their needs made her believe that everything was not as transparent as it should be. 

 After Nellie retired as an educator, the desire to continue working to make things better for special education students kept pulling at her heart.  Nellie found her answer when she enrolled in the National Special Education Advocacy Institute and became a certified education advocate.  The combination of her experience and the in depth knowledge she gained from the National Special Education Advocacy Institute (NSEAI) is now working on becoming a voice for students, a resource for teachers, and a mentor for parents. Nellie’s goal is to work as part of a team in making sure that special needs students get the best opportunity to learn and have access to high-quality instruction through the delivery of appropriate learning supports and assistive technology.

When Nellie is not busy working in her garden or craft making, she keeps current by reading supplemental fact sheets from the United States Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, Texas Education Agency, and local and state news. If there is one thing that Nellie believes in it is that students can learn given the best supportive academic environment. 

Motto:

“Every student can learn, just not all the same day, or in the same way.” ----George Evans.