Additionally, they saw no indication that Schuyler would ever be able to utilize a high-end dynamic voice output device. Such a device was deemed “not educationally necessary”.
In the summer of 2018, Schuyler and I will give a presentation on her journey and her future with PMG, as featured speakers at the Polymicrogyria Family Convention in Denver. The following week, we will travel to the ISAAC conference in Gold Coast, Australia, where she will participate in a leadership workshop with other adult AAC users. In the fall, she will begin an internship at Baylor Scott and White hospital, in a program designed to give young people with disabilities the opportunity for real-world job training and eventual placement.
Before all that, however, this happened:
And if you sent her a gift for her graduation, the thank you note you’ll be receiving this week will be composed and handwritten by Schuyler. Those notes might not be pretty, but they will be authentically hers.
All of Schuyler’s successes belong to her.
The point of all this isn’t that we were right and her earliest evaluators were woefully, dangerously wrong. Although let me be clear: that’s definitely true. The reality is that I’ve gotten plenty wrong about Schuyler. I’ve failed her along the way with remarkably regularity; I’ve probably failed her this week on multiple occasions. I’m not a great dad except in that I mean well, I love her unconditionally, and much like Chumbawamba, I get back up again. If I were to identify my best attribute as a father, that’s probably it. My ability to say “Well, shit, that didn’t work. What else can we do?”
My point, not just for me or Schuyler or even for you but for every educator and every employer and policy maker and citizen, is that the only way the world will work for people with disabilities like Schuyler is if it becomes a place defined by opportunity. Inclusion can’t be a policy or a goal; the time for that is long behind us now. Meaningful inclusion has to reside in our DNA as a society. The idea that we should identify disabled children’s limitations and predict future outcomes based on what we see or think we see was never a good model. It’s an unforgivable one now.
As for Schuyler, I’m left with a torrent of emotions. Chief among them is pride, the kind of unbounded pride that bursts from the cage of trepidatious pragmatism that I’ve constructed over the years. My pride in Schuyler’s achievement runs free now. It sprints toward the future now, a future that is still unknown but which belongs not to poor prognosis or flawed predictions or prejudices and low expectations.
The future belongs to Schuyler and her friends. We need only create a just and inclusive society with opportunities and authentic relationships and real equity. And then get the hell out of their way.
Congratulations, Schuyler, you beautiful epic explorer. What’s next belongs to you.
