Archive for November 23rd, 2004

How outreaching can our children be?

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004

Dad reports:

My Likes and Dislikes brings our attention to the Hopkin Green Frog meme and Mike Whybark’s story of the Hopkin Green Frog. This sounded too much like the stuff of Urban Legend but Snopes and others failed to debunk it so I wrote a letter to Mike Whybark asking for confirmation and in his email he assures me his blog entry is “true and accurate.”

The Hopkin Green Frog gets attention here because “[t]he person who drew the flier is a sixteen-year-old boy who suffers from autism.” Our children are capable of influencing the world!

Of note is that the father asked that no attention be brought to his family as a results of the Internet attention given to the Hopkin Green Frog. Lost Frog

Mike Whybark is “a free-range webchicken, writer, and designer living and working in Seattle.”

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Alternative Schools

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004

Dad reports:
Mom has told me this before but it didn’t really sink in until yesterday: Tommy will not get a high school diploma. He will get a special education diploma and still have to take the GED. It burns me that someone as smart as Tommy will not get through high school. The school does not plan on it happening and frankly the way Tommy is approaching school he is not asking for it. Tommy doesn’t want to do what is required to get a diploma. The funny thing is he argues “I am going to college!”

The Harbour School

Mission: The Harbour School provides a supportive, caring and individualized education to students with learning and other disabilities in grades one through twelve by assisting each child to attain academic and personal achievement and success commensurate with the child’s abilities. Personal achievement includes success in social, physical and vocational skills.

The High School Curriculum philosophy states:

Preparing students for life after high school is the goal of the high school program. This preparation includes academic skills, social/emotional behaviors, and transition to employment or college. We want our students to maintain personal relationships, enjoy satisfying work and maintain good physical and mental health.

Orion Academy Orion specifically caters to NLD and Asperger’s Syndrome.

Orion Academy is a day school designed to provide a state of the art academic program for secondary students whose academic success is compromised by a neurocognitive disability. Orion students are bright young people with the potential for success in the world at large, but as a result of their disorders, historically fail to realize that potential. As a group, these students suffer profound difficulty with information processing and integration, coupled with significant social skills problems, often making it impossible to function and succeed in existing high school programs. Without the necessary program modifications and social skills training, their future has been uncertain.

We should compile a list of schools.

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