Tall and slender with a wide smile, brown hair and pale blue eyes, Connor is a movie-star-handsome seventeen-year-old high school junior that girls his age would typically want to date. Because Connor has Cerebral Palsy, cannot walk, and uses a...
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PART 2 OF 2 During my next visit to Charleston the following December, I was once again contracted by Lindsay’s parents to help their daughter with a new project. Her parents reported that she was still working well with Carly at The...
Read More PART 1 OF 2 Due to the flexibility of my job and my wife’s work—combined with our desire to travel and embark upon new adventures—I was able to build a small caseload of students in Charleston, South Carolina each winter. During my...
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Classified with intellectual disabilities, Benson (not his real name) was a friendly fourteen-year-old with an engaging smile and an easy personality. I first met Benson when his mother called me after she read a newspaper article about my work...
Read More While there are a great many people out in the business world who will bend over backward to accommodate my students at work, I’ve come to find out there are even more that won’t. These folks always seem to watch my students more...
Read More NOTE: The names of all students have been changed SHANNON– After acting part-time for seven years on the hit TV show Sesame Street, when Shannon turned thirteen she was told by producers that she was no longer the adorable little kid with...
Read More 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...
Read More 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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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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