Felicia Fago Demchuk
Educational Services Director
As Educational Services Director at Positive Education Program (PEP), Felicia Fago Demchuk is responsible for the academic programming within PEP’s Day Treatment Centers. She oversees curriculum adoption and development, staff training, academic assessment, and is responsible for ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local educational accountability standards.
Ms. Demchuk has been with PEP for over twenty years, and in that time has made considerable contributions to the organization. She led the team that developed PEP’s Intervention-Based Bibliotherapy Curriculum, a specialized curriculum that seamlessly combines both social-emotional objectives and English/Language Arts academic content standards objectives into a literacy-based instructional intervention. These lessons are successfully used throughout PEP’s day treatment programming and have been piloted in several public school settings.
Ms. Demchuk is a doctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University. Dedicated to helping children succeed, she has conducted research in several distinct areas including: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Post-Institutional Behavior and Institutional Autism, Reactive Attachment Disorder, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Bibliotherapy.
An expert on prenatal alcohol exposure, Ms. Demchuk has advocated in Washington, D.C. in partnership with the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She has spoken nationally and internationally on this issue, as well as that of children who have been institutionalized. She has also developed programming for children with complex needs. Ms. Demchuk is the National Board Secretary of Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption. She is a member of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and the American Re-EDucation Association.
Prior to her current role, Ms. Demchuk served as a PEP teacher, Day Treatment Center administrator and education coordinator. Before joining PEP, Ms. Demchuk was a teacher in various school systems including the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. She holds a bachelor’s degree in education and reading from Ashland College and a master’s degree in special education from Kent State University.