A sixteen-year-old high school junior, Ralphie (not his real name) has Down syndrome, autism, and is deaf in one ear. He is four-feet-ten-inches tall and, like many young men with Down syndrome, is stocky. He has a difficult time expressing...
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While at dinner with a group of friends one evening, enjoying a light and convivial conversation, a buddy of mine began prattling on about how hard his job is as a pharmaceutical salesman for a multibillion dollar global drug company. He...
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Society often has unreasonably low expectations of youth with disabilities and a propensity to stereotype. In fact, there’s a prevailing and widespread belief that kids with disabilities pretty much have four career options: 1) Bag...
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BELOW READ WHAT SOME NOTABLE INDIVIDUALS SAY ABOUT THE NEW BOOK “SPECIAL STORIES…” “In life you meet a lot of very interesting people. Some are takers and others are givers. Mike Kelly is a giver and he has done so...
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Over the last fifteen years, award-winning transition educator Mike Kelly has worked with hundreds of youth with a wide range of disabilities living across America. During that time he has served as an employment specialist, job coach, event...
Read More As a society we’ve come a long way since the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990. Yet even in this age of disabilities enlightenment, there are still many who remain in the dark when it comes to society recognizing the...
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We’ve all seen or heard the news stories of professional athletes committing crimes or demonstrating other reprehensible behavior. We’ve also read about multi-millionaire professional athletes charging their fans $50 or $100 to sign a...
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ABLED or DISABLED? You decide… A man was born with Cerebral Palsy. A man became afflicted with an ALS-like (Lou Gehrig’s disease) motor neuron disease, rendering him speechless and without use of his limbs, confining him to a...
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From the Idaho Statesman SPOTLIGHT ON IDAHO AUTHORS “Special Stories: Short Stories on Youth with Disabilities and My Adventures Working in the Disabilities Field” by Mike Kelly; Vendue Books ($19.99 pbk/$6.99 e-book) Travel with award-winning...
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It’s rare to see a suburban fourteen-year-old working these days. The times have changed and priorities have shifted along with the times. A combination of unmotivated and/or overindulged youth coupled with protective parents keeps too many...
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Most presidential historians consider Abraham Lincoln to have been America’s greatest president. Of all the values and principles our 16th president believed in, the idea that an individual should work hard was the one he believed in most...
Read More How old were you when you got your first job? I’m sure it wasn’t when you were twenty or twenty-two or … never. You likely got your first job when you were in your early teens. That’s what most of us did. We babysat...
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