The Pedagogy of S2C Think about a time when you were truly excited and engaged in learning. Were you inspired? Curious? Surprised? Intrigued? Perhaps it was simply the palpable JOY from the teacher. When someone is passionate about teaching, learning, and belief in the learners – that joy becomes contagious! During the S2C Practitioner training […]
Disabled an Important Part of Who I Am “My brother is a person with a disability. Not a disabled person,” this was the opening line of my 7th grade public speech. My parents taught me person first language with the explanation that we need to see that everyone is a person first before we talk […]
Getting to Know Your Neurodiverse Community This blog post began when I asked Ian to develop a message for the allies who attended the first Spellers & Allies Advocacy Network meeting in October 2019. Ian and I both believe that understanding, talking about and celebrating neurodiversity is extremely important. Once we realized this common passion, […]
Autistic Reflections On Racism Hi, my name is Ben McGann. I am 24 years old and I have autism. I am a black man and I am afraid for my life. When I saw the video of George Floyd pleading for his life I cried for him and his family. He died a painful death […]
Loops! I Did It Again! “Hi, how are you?” If I asked you that question, chances are you might respond with “Great, how are you?” right? Or have you ever had a waiter say “Enjoy your meal!” and you responded “You too!” UGH! They are automatic, overlearned responses, or motor loops. In some cases motor […]
Belief in Our NonSpeaking Autistic Selves We are delighted to introduce our new friends Meghana and Chetan. This poetry writing, brother and sister duo from Minnesota type to communicate using FC. Meghana and Chetan joined us for our first Open Mic at the Neurolyrical Cafe and everyone was astounded by their deep and insightful poetry. […]
Mind Over Motor The body is fascinating in so many ways! The way in which we move through space, accomplish our daily tasks and communicate with others is actually mind blowing, but we tend to take it for granted. Let’s stop and think for a moment about how we actually move our bodies. It is […]
Titrating Freedom to Exist Truly I want people and mostly autism families to believe that autism is more than a daunting diagnosis. A truly wonderful mind hides inside our asynchronous bodies distorted by sensory motor dysfunction. We deserve to be heard, we deserve to be proud. My freedom potentially mastered my mind the day I spelled […]
Six Things You Should Know about Apraxia What It’s Like & What We *think* We Know Since our work at I-ASC is informed by subject matter experts – those who are nonspeaking, minimally speaking and unreliably speaking people, we wanted someone who is actually apraxic to describe what this feels like. William was kind […]
40 Blocks of Love A few weeks before Easter this year, and unbeknownst to us, one of our neighbors sent an e-mail to the neighborhood that our son, Jack, was turning 21 years old on Easter Sunday. Jack, who has lived his entire life in the same Arlington, Va neighborhood, has autism due to a […]
