TEACHER OF INTEREST
The SPECIAL NEEDS TEACHER
Fort Pierce native Pamela Williams has spent her teaching career working with the students who needed help the most. After decades in St. Lucie County
schools, she was selected to head the school district’s Project SEARCH program at Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital in Port St. Lucie. Through this cooperative
effort between the hospital and school district, she heads up a four-person team working to train 12 special needs students from the school district
Coming from a family of educators — her mother and
58
her aunts were all teachers — Pamela Brown Williams
says she grew up with the realization that she
enjoyed most helping those students who struggle
with academics or confidence. Visiting the classrooms of her
aunts, she says she saw how they were able to make learning
fun for their students and she wanted to help students learn
in that way, too.
Born and raised in Fort Pierce as the eldest daughter of local
dentist Dr. Winfield Brown and his wife, Venetia, she says
it was when she was attending Dan McCarty High School
that she learned she could volunteer in the buildings that
housed the county’s special education classrooms, located in
the field behind the yellow brick school on Delaware Avenue.
Those experiences and that passion to help others led her
to apply to the University of Georgia after graduation from
Indian River Junior College. “It was known to have the best
program for special education in the South,” she says.
Her decision was serendipitous; she met her husband,
George, on a blind date at Georgia. The two married after
he completed his first year at the University of Georgia Law
School. Williams, who earned a bachelor’s in secondary
education, had her first experience with teaching what was
known then as special education at Cedar Shoals High School
in Athens, Georgia. “It was a wonderful experience,” she
ANTHONY INSWASTY PHOTOS
says, adding that she remembers being told by some faculty
at the school that “she wasn’t allowed in certain areas of the
school” after they had mistaken her for a student.
After her husband graduated from law school, the couple
came to Fort Pierce and he interviewed and was hired for a
position with Charles R.P. Brown’s law practice.
“My mother always said, ‘It’s important that we get sand
in George’s shoes so that y’all will move back to Florida,’”
Williams says.
The couple settled in and raised two daughters, Paige and
Payton, in Fort Pierce. Paige lives in Georgia and is director of
marketing readiness for Cox Automotive, while Payton lives
in Alabama and is following somewhat more in her mother’s
footsteps, working as the Inpatient Occupational Therapy
Coordinator at Children’s Hospital of Alabama. It seems Williams
didn’t quite follow her mother’s advice, as neither of
her children has returned to live in Fort Pierce.
As soon as Williams and her husband moved back to Fort
Pierce, she began her 45 years of teaching special needs
students in the St. Lucie County School District, beginning at
elementary schools, followed by two years at Fort Pierce Central
High School and eight years at Port St. Lucie High School
before moving to Fort Pierce Westwood High School, where
she spent the majority of her teaching years.
“It has always been a goal of mine to teach students with >>
on entry-level jobs at the hospital with hopes of employment in their futures.
BY PATTIE DURHAM
Trends In Education