Meet Amanda Zatko, Early Intervention Special Instructor

Amanda Zatko likes to get out of her comfort zone. Throughout her 26-year career in education, she's always kept an eye out for new ways to use her skills and experience to help children. So when she was approached to join Happy Hearts as a Special Instructor, she jumped at the opportunity.

Amanda got her undergraduate degrees in Elementary Education and Early Childhood Development from Bloomsburg University and a graduate degree in Curriculum Development and Instruction from Wilkes University. She then spent 23 years as an elementary school teacher, in a variety of classrooms from Kindergarten to third grade. She also taught gifted support, where she worked with smaller groups of kids with individual education plans.

Three years ago, Amanda went back to teaching pre-school, her original niche. “Every teacher has their favorite age,” she shares. “I love working with all kids, but I really love working with younger kids. Birth to five is the most rewarding age. Learning is still super fun for them and everything is exciting, even normal stuff.”

While happy teaching preschool, she kept her information on Indeed because she’s always curious about what roles might be out there. Earlier this year, Jess reached out and asked whether she’d consider working in early intervention. Amanda loved the idea and joined the team in April. She’s now a special instructor that works with a wide variety of cases, many related to behavior or helping kids learn more words. 

As a preschool teacher, Amanda would often bounce ideas off the early intervention therapists who came in to work with her students. Now she teaches preschool during the day and offers early intervention at night. Her experience creating goals and plans in gifted support has made it easy to shift into creating goals for the families she serves.

After decades in classrooms, Amanda enjoys seeing kids in their home environment. Her favorite part of the job is witnessing that lightbulb moment when something clicks–especially with a very small child. “Right now a lot of my cases are kids who are learning to talk but aren’t using as many words as they should,” she explains. “Lots of kids understand more than they can say. When they finally connect words to objects it’s such a fun moment. It’s also great to see parents get excited when their kid has a word explosion.”

While not at one of her two jobs, Amanda enjoys spending time with her 14-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son and watching their softball and baseball games. She also loves going to the beach. While she takes her family to Fenwick Island, Jamaica is her happy place and she’s been there six times. At home, she enjoys swimming in the pool in her yard and reading everything from memoirs to beach reads by her favorite author, Elin Hilderbrand, who was originally from Collegeville. 

Amanda encourages parents to take advantage of all they help they can get. “Don’t be afraid if a doctor suggests early intervention,” she says. “As a parent, if I was offered these opportunities for my kids, I would take them every time. These services are free and set your child up for success. At this age, everything extra you do is going to be so beneficial in the long run, more than you can possibly know. If kids are behind they can be caught up so quickly with just a little extra push. Jump in with both feet.”

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Think Your Child Might Need Early Intervention?

Early intervention helps children develop the skills they need to thrive throughout their lives, and trains and equips parents to be part of this important process. The first step to receive early intervention services is to request an evaluation. If you believe your child might benefit from early intervention, learn more about the evaluation process and how to get started.