Glen, I like you am an ADHD recovering alcoholic. Statistics tell that 30 % of ADHD children end up on Drugs and Alcohol, another 30% end up in jail. I have spent the last 20 years trying to establish an academy to turn this trend around. I have never been able to get funding to do It. I heard on your radio that you were looking for worth while humanitarian project. This is a great one to consider. I have been dry for 52 years now and am 72 years old but I still want to be the bridge builder to help those that can be helped before they turn down the wrong road as you and I did. I established The Academy for Intellectual Development in Louisiana and in Utah. I proved that it can be done. I have been able to bring ADHD children with a 68 IQ to 94 IQ in 3 years. The problem is as always, money. Insurance doesn't pay for it, schools won't do it and parents can't afford it. I even appealed to John Huntsman and he wrote and said that it looked like a wonderful program but his money was all going to Cancer programs, but he hoped us the best in getting funding. Are you interested in helping?
1 Answer
Back in 1973, I began teaching at a vocational agricultural high school, this was before we had any special education programs, and the condition ADHD had not been common. I without doubt had many students with AD, and ADHD, undiagnosed. With no special education education plans yet, we found success in that the school had half of each day with students in the vocational shops. These were actual settings such as a working greenhouse, landscape and nursery, mechanics farm shop, animal barn enterprises, a poultry processing facility, and a vegetable growing operation. these were all part of the 230 acre campus as a working farm and academic school. These students were successful because they had the opportunity to work, not just academically, but vocationally. They collected eggs, cleaned barns, groomed animals, planted plants, drove equipment, dressed poultry, cut wood, built things in wood and mechanics shops, arranged flowers, and other hands-on skills. They were like a reward for enduring the academic classes, at least that is how kids put it. We need to return to models like this. Not all kids will be college bound, and some need to survive the school experience and develop some skills which they can take to the world of work. True, they need to have literacy, computer skills, science, math, grammar, and composition also, but not every kid must attend college! Some should go to work from high school, and would be happier and contribute as they will to their society. There are too many labels put on kids today, many that should not even be given. Kids ripen and develop at different paces, and some go off to college, others to work, some drop-out of school and the vocational model often worked to keep these rates down. Keep vocational education, and voc. agriculture in some programs! They work many of these schools have become what they were not intended to conform with attainment of testing scores, etc. True vocational kids have been the losers with these schools morphing into watered down programs!
12 years ago. Rating: 3 | |