You may remember last year I shared a wonderful story about Jane, a student with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with for almost 14 years! This time I’m excited to share her latest Clicker success. Jane has been diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy and faces many challenges which have impacted her ability to attend school and access the curriculum. Last year, she was fully included in a general education high school setting for the first time, with the support of a team who assisted her in implementing AAC/AT strategies across the curriculum, including Clicker. She recently wrote a speech for her public speaking class using Clicker, with the support of a Word Bank and a handful of sentence starters. This time last year, she was learning to create 7-9-word sentences using Clicker Sentence Sets. What incredible progress this young lady has made in one school year! You can watch her read (or read for yourself) her compelling speech aloud, sharing her future dreams and aspirations below.
After college, my dream job is at WildBrain. WildBrain is a company that does kids’ TV shows in Canada. I think being an animator is cool because then you can design characters over there for TV shows for kids and do a lot of drawings on the computer. When I turn 17, I would like to learn French because in Canada they speak French or English, it depends what part of Canada you’re in. But also, for next year my goal for my job, besides French, I want to work at a party store when I turn 17. Well there a lot of ideas that I want to do for next year.
But I have to decide which job I want depending on what’s appropriate for my age. Also, my family and teachers might have to see all my credits through the years that I’ve been taught, [from] when I was kindergarten through this year. I hope I can have a job when I turn 17; maybe yes, maybe no. But my mom still has to decide whether or not I will be able to have a job at that certain age. Also, I might need a car to go to my job next year too. If I drive myself to work then my mom wouldn’t have her car, Vanilla Lightning. I might have to take a bus to work and to school instead of a car because a car costs a lot of money to buy.
Another class that I would like to do next year is Stagecraft Costume Design because every Halloween I love to make my own costume with my Grandma, Marty. Maybe it could be possible to do leadership and decorate the dances and Homecoming games for the rallies too. I have a lot of classes and goals that I need to work on until I work for WildBrain, but it will come very fast, soon for next year for my dream job until now I’m still a teen until one more year.