Our Blog

“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”― Alice Miller, “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self.” My three-year stay at Riviera Junior […]

Fall 1977. Jimmy Carter was in the White House. Elvis Presley was dead. The first Apple II, Tandy, and Commodore personal computers were on the market, albeit they were expensive. George Lucas’s space-fantasy film Star Wars was well on its way to becoming the highest grossing box office hit of its time. The guillotine was […]

A team of eight high school seniors who attend a class at Kent Career Technical Center’s Engineering and Architectural Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently completed a redesigned middle school lock, which helps Brin DeVries, a sixth-grade student with cerebral palsy, open her locker more easily and get to class in time. Michigan Live reports […]

In early September of 1976, after a glorious three-month summer vacation, I returned to Tropical Elementary to start school as a sixth grader in Mrs. Mildred Vaughan’s class in Room 10. I had passed fifth grade with unimpressively average grades, but I managed to remain mainstreamed in the regular classes rather than getting a transfer […]

In the fall of 1975, almost three years after my arrival at Tropical Elementary, I was granted my fondest wish: a transfer from the school’s Special Education department to Mrs. Anne Brown’s regular fifth grade class. I had been Mrs. Margo Chambers’ student from November of 1972 to June of 1975, and although I was […]

I arrived at Tropical Elementary School on a cold Monday morning in mid-November 1972, only a few days after I was told I could no longer attend my neighborhood school, Coral Park Elementary. My third grade teacher there was apparently not prepared to deal with a nine-year-old boy who had cerebral palsy and hadn’t yet […]