Superhero Au Pair, Michéll Saves The Day Every Day!
The EurAuPair Au Pair Of The Year (USA) is a prestigious title that is awarded to the Au Pairs who made the biggest impact on their host family.
Host families get the opportunity to nominate their Au Pairs to show their appreciation for their hard work and dedication to them.
For the THIRD year in a row, a South African has been crowned with this prestigious title and we are super proud.
This year, Super Au Pair, Michéll was awarded this incredible title.
Below you can read the letter Michéll’s nomination letter:
Thank you to our partner agency, EurAuPair and host families for loving our Au Pairs so much!
”Maya Angelou once said, “I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.”
A hero is truly the best way to describe the abilities (superpowers) of Michéll and the au pair program to positively influence our family and community.
Michéll, a native of South Africa, has embraced American culture, become an integral member of our family, and volunteers and shadows in the local community working to support kids with Autism and Selective Mutism.
All of which is why we feel she would be a perfect candidate for Au Pair of the Year Award.
Michéll is truly a superhero, supporting our family like a team member and a role model for our kids and our family.
She has our back every day and often volunteers to help us in her off hours when we have long and hectic days coordinating three active kids.
We first discovered Michéll had superpowers when Ethan and Aidan, our two older sons, needed support to overcome Selective Mutism and work on their brave voices.
Selective Mutism is an anxiety disorder whereby a child is unable to speak in select social settings.
Michéll was able to use her talents of working with children and the skills she has acquired by volunteering and shadowing she does with local occupational therapists to understand the unique situations of working with children with Selective Mutism.
With these skills Michéll learned on her own, she was able to bring back critical knowledge to support Ethan and Aidan overcome their challenges.
With every person we meet, Ethan and Aidan need a proper warm-up strategy or they can become completely non-verbal in public situations and shut down to avoid the situation.
Many teachers and community members usually just think kids with selective mutism are shy but if proper steps are taken and awareness is given, children with Selective Mutism can speak in public situations.
Without a single hesitation, Michéll rose up to the challenge to learn the techniques needed to encourage brave voices and be able to support the teachers behind the scenes to coach them on how to keep communication open with Ethan and Aidan.
Michéll was able to communicate her observations with the therapists and teachers and help us coordinate a ‘pit crew’ for Ethan and Aidan so we can come up with best practices for working with Ethan and Aidan to overcome selective mutism across all 29 different teachers, speech therapists and professionals we work with each week.
Thanks to Michéll’s efforts, Ethan and Aidan talk to all of their teachers and participate verbally in all their classes with their peers.
Michéll also participated in research studies and worked with the top professors at La Salle and Florida International University and was never afraid to ask questions to better understand and share with professors some of her techniques to eliminate communication barriers.
During this short time, Michéll has embraced the American cultural exchange and with our family, she has completed a 30-mile bike ride, skied down a mountain, did scuba diving and also visited numerous National Parks with our family.
She is now a key part of our family peloton and teaches our kids to be active every day and work on their brave voices!
Michéll is family and our gratitude can’t be expressed enough with this letter as she has had a positive impact on our lives and shown us that superheroes really do exist.
Michéll will always have our back at the end of the day even with a hectic crazy life.
We believe that Michéll deserves this award because of her dedication to excellence and being an active role model to our children and making our family a little bit better each day.”
Wow, Michell, you are truly Au Pair Goals and you embody the spirit of cultural exchange and what it means to be a good Au Pair.
We are proud to call you a CAP sister!
Thank you Michell for raising our African flag high for your good deed .