The Girl Who Spoke With Pictures

Today I'd like to spotlight a very talented artist who has Autism. We talked about Kim Miller's art a lot last year as she and her mother, Eileen, worked to get their book, The Girl Who Spoke With Pictures, into bookstores and ultimately into your hands. (The bookstore story) I've had the chance to read this book and view numerous examples of Kim's art, and I am inspired.

Eileen has written the personal story of her daughter and her autism. She describes the way that Kim began to communicate by drawing. It began very young, age 3 or 4, and has not stopped. Kim is now an adult attending the community college and her art is very powerful. Although she is able to communicate verbally now, her art still speaks volumes. She can relay an incredible amount of thought, emotion, and issue in each of her pieces.

The book itself is a great reference about autism and the experiences that can be related to it. What I really liked was the insight I felt that I gained into Kim's mind. Although everyone is different, it opened my eyes to other ways of interpreting behaviors and situations that I have experienced with my students. I was also inspired by Eileen and her persistent support and advocacy for her daughter. Together this mother-daughter team are changing the face of autism... in their community and hopefully in the world.

The Girl Who Spoke with Pictures: Autism through Art by Eileen Miller and Kim Miller can be found on Amazon.com as well as many other online stores.

You can also take a look around their website.

Check out Kim on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyJtYU4tA3g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIk1KxEOF7c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9QCm7DdvyI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHf9yUSEFFs

April is Autism Awareness Month

I don't know if there is anyone left on the planet who is not aware of Autism. I think that we are all aware of it and how many people it affects (1 in 150). The question this month is:

Do we promote finding a cure for it? Or do we promote acceptance and neurodiversity and accomodation? There are many people who are quite offended by the idea that they or someone they love is "broken" in need of fixing or curing. There are also quite a number of people who believe that their loved one can't be who they truly are until we find a cure. The matter is deeply personal and very emotional for all who have autism or love someone who has autism.

What do coffee, style, The Arc, and saving the planet have in common?

Last month I posted about reusable lunch gear: reusable lunch bags, sandwich wraps, napkins and snack bags. Apparently that post caught the eye of a director for Rejavanate bags. He said I might be interested in their product and their company and that there is a good story to go along... and he was right. I was taken with these three things about the company:

1). They reduce a significant source of landfill waste - burlap from coffee

2). They provide jobs to those that often have difficulty finding jobs - The ARC

3). They provide a good way to reduce our paper and plastic bag consumption

Do you know about The ARC? It is an organization that helps to meet the needs of people with disabilities. Finding a job is often a need that that they can help meet.

The Arc is the world’s largest community based organization of and for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It provides an array of services and support for families and individuals and includes over 140,000 members affiliated through more than 850 state and local chapters across the nation. The Arc is devoted to promoting and improving supports and services for all people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
http://www.thearc.org/

According to Rejavanate:

- Coffee is the second largest commodity in the world

- 800,000 tons of burlap are put into landfills every year

- The ARC helps 140,000 people find housing and employment

- US consumes over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps

- 14 million trees were cut to produce 10 billion paper bags for grocery stores in the US


So with the support of this company and/or the purchase of one of their bags, I can:

• Create a job for someone who has a disability


• Save the planet and save landfill space


• Feel like I'm doing my part to offset my coffee consumption


• Have a fun new bag to put things in

I'm IN!

If you are interested, check them out. You can also have your company's logo put on the bag. The company's sister site is buygreen.com. They offer all kinds of products and information to help you and your family make some good green changes.

Book of the Day

I have been dying to tell you about Growing Up Grizzly: The True Story of Baylee and Her Cubs by Amy Shapira and Douglas H. Chadwick. I am absolutely in love with this book. I had to wait till our swap partners received it before I could talk about it.

The photographs are fabulous and the story is true. The authors witnessed this story unfold and we are so lucky to get to experience it in a book! It is about goofy looking 2 year-old bear named Emmett who wanders into an area of land inhabited by other grizzly bears. He notices a mother bear and her three cubs and is immediately drawn to them. The mother does a good job of keeping him away from her cubs, until one day, he sneaks over to them while she is fishing. When she returns she sees this big old bear sitting with her tiny cubs and seems to realize that he needs her. He becomes one of her cubs. She feeds him and teaches him and keeps him close to her as if she has 4 cubs now. They hibernate together and ... well, they seem to be one big happy family. Then when her little cubs are 2 and it is time for them to be on their own... well, Emmett is ready too! It is as if he was kicked out of the den at two but just really needed two more years to be ready... I am tearing up just thinking about it! You can think of it as a bear adoption story or a bear with special needs or a beautiful mommy story or whatever you want... I just thought it was touching and the photographs are fabulous. Did I mention it was true??? So sweet.

Beautiful Autism and Powerful Words

Those of us who have had a personal relationship with a person who has autism, know that people who have autism are just as unique and beautiful as people who do not have it, sometimes more so.

I have recently found myself lost in the beautiful Faces of Autism. Casdok has created a unique blog where parents submit a picture of their autistic child and a bit of info about them. They usually all link to their own personal website about their child or their family. I think that some older individuals have submitted pictures of themselves and linked to their own blogs. This is a creative way to let outsiders in on the beauty of these children and also a way for parents and autistic individuals to find each other and connect.

Casdok is the author of Mother of Shrek, a personal website about her son, C, and their experiences together. I find their encounters fascinating and sometimes disturbing. This mother and son have run into some incredibly rude and ignorant people. I cannot imagine the same situations occurring here in my neck of the woods, although sadly... I'm afraid they may. In any case, she is an inspiring real mother who is tackling life one day at a time... like the rest of us. I think she is hoping that through her blog, she and C may help you and I to think differently. Check her out, and don't leave without clicking around in her sidebar for related issues and definitely take a moment to read C's autistic rap!

While we are on the subject of neurodiversity and rudeness... let's not forget the power of our words!

For more information about words, please check out the R Word Campaign and another strong video: Offense Taken.

The Girl Who Spoke with Pictures

Exciting news! The book is out and the website is up!! Remember when I told you about Kim Miller, an artist who has autism? She and her mother have collaborated on a book together that lets us into the mind of Kim as she communicates through her artwork. Well, the book has received a wonderful review from ForeWord Magazine, and is for sale numerous places, including Amazon.

"Kim and I were overjoyed when we read the review. The magazine considers nearly 1,000 pre-publication galleys and manuscripts submitted each month, and approximately eight percent of those titles are selected for review. To be considered was awesome, to get reviewed was glorious." - Eileen Miller

Also Kim and her mother have their website up, to keep us all posted on the latest and greatest from this mother/daughter duo. I just thought you might appreciate an update!

The Cake Decorating Song

One of my students decorated this cake last Friday and wrote a little song as she went. It is to the tune of "Peanut Butter and Jelly".

Baking My Cake

First you take the frosting and you spread it. You spread it, spread it spread it.
Baking, baking my cake. (yummy, yummy)
Then you take the colored icing and you squeeze it. You squeeze it, squeeze it, squeeze it.
Baking, baking my cake. (yummy, yummy)
Then you take the sprinkles and you shake them. You shake them, shake them, shake them.
Baking, baking my cake. (yummy, yummy)
Then you take the candles and you stick them. You stick them, stick them, stick them.
Baking, baking my cake. (yummy, yummy)
Then you take the candles and you blow them. You blow them, blow them, blow them.
Baking, baking my cake. (yummy, yummy)
Then you take the knife and you cut it. You cut it, cut it, cut it.
Baking, baking my cake. (yummy, yummy)
Then you take the cake and you eat it. You eat it, eat it, eat it.
Baking, baking my cake. (yummy, yummy)

Written by A. Baker

Tip-toe through the sidebar

UPDATE: All of the following links can still be found in my sidebar, however they are now text links and on the right hand side of the page (a bit re-organized). All wonderful and worth checking out.

Let's take a moment to play around in my sidebar and remind ourselves of a few simple ways to save the world. Once we scroll past the slideshow of my beautiful baby, the categories for my random postings, the blogrolls for my favorite reads and my familial reads we come to the first point of interest:


Visit 29-Day Giving Challenge
This is a fun way to save the world: give. Give of yourself or give a gift to be held. Make a difference in your own life as well as the lives of others.

Give one thing away each day for 29 days. Share your stories about how it
impacts your life to focus on giving. Join the 29-Day Giving Challenge community
today.
Why? Because to see the world change, we have to do something to
change the world. Plus, the best way to attract abundance into your life is to
be in a perpetual state of giving and gratitude. Be an important part of the
global giving movement that inspires more generosity on our planet.



The R word campaign is just a reminder of your responsibility to others when you open your mouth. Your words are powerful. What kind of power do you what them to have?

The “r” Word Some people have mental retardation. While mental retardation is
not a bad word, when used to describe someone or something you think is bad it
becomes another thoughtless hurtful word. People with mental retardation are not
bad, their condition is not bad, the prejudice and discrimination to people with
mental retardation is BAD…and WRONG! Please stop using the word ‘retard’, it
hurts people with disabilities.

Every Day you can click on this button , and sponsors will donate money toward free mammograms. That is all you do. You click, they donate, a life may be saved. It doesn't get easier than that! After clicking you'll notice at the very top of the page are tabs for other "click projects".

You can click to give food to those in need at the the Hunger Site.

You can click to to give free child health care at the Child Health Site.
You can click to give free books at the Literacy Site.
You can click to protect natural habitats at the Rainforest Site.
You can click to give free food and care at the Animal Rescue Site.

All of these are just a click, just a second of your time, no money, barely any effort... and you can make a big difference.

• 

Free rice is another FREE way to help end world hunger. Click on the button and you will be moved to a page where you can take a vocab quiz. For every word you get correct 20 grains of rice are donated to someone in need.

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.
FreeRice has two goals:
Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.
Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.
Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.

Team In Training is a fun way to train for and complete an endurance event (marathon, half marathon, triathlon, etc.). All the while you are raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. This is an incredible experience, and although it is much more of a commitment than the organizations above... it is well worth it. You'll make new friends, get in shape, accomplish a major goal and SAVE LIVES - not to be taken lightly. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and will definitely be doing It again sometime.

Remember when you all freaked out at the suggestion of making your own sanitary napkins? Well, bite your tongue and check out this terrific organization called Goods 4 Girls. This project is to get reusable sanitary napkins to girls in Africa so that they do not have to miss school every time Aunt Flo comes for a visit. What you can do is buy, make or donate money toward these reusable pads. There are lots of ways to do it and all of them would make a huge difference in another woman's life. (can you imagine having to use newspaper, camel skin... or nothing at all?) The cost is low, and the good is great!

Goods 4 Girls was started to seek out donors to sew or purchase new, reusable menstrual pads for donations to areas of Africa where these products are needed most. Providing reusable supplies not only provides a more environmentally friendly alternative for these young women (in areas of adequate water supply for washing), it reduces their dependence on outside aid organizations to continue providing for their monthly needs.

The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of thousands of family farms,
restaurants, markets and other outlets that offer local, fresh and sustainable
food in the United States and Canada. Visitors simply enter a zip or postal code
to search for food that is free of antibiotics and added hormones, and produced
by healthy and humane methods that include organic, pasture-raised and heritage.

For those of us who are trying not to use all of those plastic bottles and instead have switched to filters.... what to do with the filter? You can't recycle it or reuse it... so what's a greenie to do? Sign the petition to get the Clorox company (who owns Brita) to make some changes. Also you can send your used filters to the address on this site and they will give them back to Brita for us (as a visual aid to the landfill clogging problem of the current filter design).

Use the Z Report. At the Store. With Text Messaging.
Posted by Jeremiah McNichols
Have you read and reread the Z Report on BPA, but have trouble remembering which brands are which when you get to the store?Have you been meaning to replace some bottles or a sippy cup, but have a hard time deciding when you're staring at all those products on the shelf?Now you can keep the Z Report at your fingertips, with information that doesn't go out-of-date, updated with new products at the same time they arrive on store shelves. Thanks to a partnership between ZRecs and Mobile Commons, our comprehensive directory of BPA in children's feeding products is now available via text message.

Well, now I think we are all acquainted with the sidebar, and maybe we can make a few easy changes or larger commitments to do our part in saving the world!

BADD: Judgements

Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day.
We've all heard of racism, sexism, ageism... but what about diablism? It is not a term most of us think about unless we happen to run in the same crowds with people who have disabilities. Discriminating against someone because of their different abilities is the same incredible injustice as discriminating against someone because of the color of their skin, their gender or their age. All types of discrimination can result in the loss of dignity for another person.

As ridiculous as it is to pass judgement on a person due to their appearance, judging a person due to their disability seems to be quietly kind of ok. Why? Why would it be any different? It isn't. It does happen all of the time and most of us are even guilty of it ourselves, no matter how unintentional. Is it ignorance? Is it inexperience? Is it that we are afraid of people that have challenges that are different than our own? It is so many things. Most people do not intentionally try to hurt others. We just need to realize that people with disabilities are like anyone else - you don't know them until you KNOW THEM!

Have you ever met someone and passed judgement on them immediately, only to get to know them later and find that you were completely wrong about them? Then someone else meets them and passes that same judgement you had, and you cannot believe you ears? How could anyone think that about this person? This is the kind of thing that we need to keep on the forefront of our minds. I once met a very intimidating and scary looking man. He wore all black and had piercings and tattoos everywhere. I thought that for sure he and I could have nothing in common, and I probably would have peed my pants had I met him on the street alone at night. However, after a very short conversation, I found out that he was a kindergarten teacher and that his son had a disability. Obviously, after that, we could have talked for hours! He probably looked at me and saw a young girl (19 at the time), beyond preppy, and about as clean-cut as a person can get, what would he have in common with me? Ahhh, but I was going to school to become a teacher and I was working at a camp for people who have disabilities and.... we had a lot in common. Such a simple story, and not deep at all, but it illustrates how we pass judgements all of the time without knowing a person. The old "Don't judge a book by its cover" thing. Anyway as much as you keep it in your forefront, it still creeps up.

While working at a camp for people with disabilities I learned many things and not to judge was a BIG one. The campers would come to this sleep-away camp for a week at a time. Every week was different. A different age group (kids, teens, adults); a different set of disabilities (cognitive, physical, hearing impaired, or specific like Muscular Dystrophy or Neurofibromatosis). Sunday night, the camp counselors would receive a short "history" on each of the participants that were to be in their group for the week. The history labeled their disability, and told of their special needs, and any goals that they or their parents would like to see them working on. Each week, I'd read those and think, What??? How am I supposed to play catch with someone who is blind, nonverbal, has severe cognitive and physical impairments and uses a wheelchair? How am I supposed to teach someone to ride a horse who cannot bend their legs? How am I supposed to... keep track of someone who has a 5 second attention span and LOVES to run?

Then as the campers arrived and I saw them, all of my worries and fears crept up again and I couldn't understand how any of this would be possible. Then their parents left, and we sat down in a circle to introduce ourselves, talk about our upcoming week and come up with a group name. Slowly my judgements slipped away. By the end of the first night, we were a group, a team, a little family for the week. By the end of the next night I knew these people even better and we'd crack jokes and play games and listen and learn and teach each other. By the end of the week, they were very close and dear to me and I would cry when they had to go home. These were my friends or my students or my peers, we all had our idiosyncrasies and we learned to live together and enjoy each other and respect each other as people. As we should.

And what of playing catch with someone who is blind and has so many other challenges in life? Totally doable! Somehow this particular camper turned out to be one of my most favorite people. Somehow though, nonverbal, he was very funny! Somehow, though blind, he could recognize me. Somehow he was able to let me know that we were friends. Somehow we sat on the couch (while everyone else watched a movie) and played and wrestled and were silly even though he had physical disabilities and needed his wheelchair to get around. Somehow, he showed me that I didn't want to be a journalist or marine biologist, or physical therapist, or nurse, or anything else. Somehow he let me know that my true love and passion would be as a special education teacher.

I have so many important memories from my years at that camp, and all of them are wonderful. I had never taken the opportunity to get to know someone with a disability before because they made me nervous and honestly I'd start to feel a little queasy. Now I know LOUD and CLEAR, you don't know anyone until you get to know them!

Today, you can read many many blog posts about diablism. Some are written by people who have experienced it first hand... each post will make you think. Each post will open your eyes. Each post will inspire you in a different way. Please take time to read these, either today or this week or sometime. And if you want more.... check out last year's BADD posts. A few that caught my attention are here:

Astrid's Journal- Freedom from disablism: What does it mean?

Growing up with a disability - Sandbox Lessons

One Dad's Opinion: Metamorphosis

The Gimp Parade: Fear, Avoidance, and the people we never get to know

Thank you Diary of a Goldfish, for putting this together. It is very important for all of us "temporarily able-bodied" people to learn from these posts today.

Not about Autism... but definitely could have been. A must read.

Letter to a Baby Who Was Thrown from a Bridge
by Astra Milberg

Artists who have Autism

KindTree Productions, Inc. Autism Rocks features art shows and print products by artists who have Autism. These artists receive 50% of every sale. Here you can support artists with Autism from all around the world.

Maybe we don't need a cure?

The Autism Awareness Project has a TOTALLY different take on Autism. They are looking for respect, acceptance, dignity NOT A CURE. Fascinating. It certainly has me thinking.

There are so many websites out there about Autism that are not looking at it as something to be cured, not an illness, not a bad thing. In fact many people are quite offended by the thought that they or someone they love need to be fixed.

Get another perspective... look at this: Asperger Square 8 , specifically this:
Also while on Asperger Square 8 look at this and this.

Another interesting issue, click on the graphic :

As a special education teacher, I've been able to love my students for their quirks, while their parents worry about what the future holds. I recall a moment many years ago, I was new to my school and had only been teaching a year before that. I was having my first IEP meeting with a particular set of parents. I was really excited because their daughter was so cute and funny, and I wanted them to know how much I loved her already (just 3 months into school). So I said something like, "OMG! Susie is sooo funny, you two must be laughing all of the time!" Their response? "Well, we're starting to, but we've spent the last 9 years crying." I'll never forget it. I was stopped in my tracks, I didn't know what to say, I hadn't ever thought about Susie from her parents point of view. Their baby was born and they had all of the hopes and dreams and aspirations that we all have for our children... those dreams changed with the diagnosis.
I think what some of the people on the sites above are trying to say is, yeah the dreams changed... but that's it... they just changed. They aren't gone. It isn't like there are no dreams to be had, just different ones. Susie is 16 now (that was 7 years ago), she has traveled all over the world, she's seen and done things that I will never get to do. She is a beautiful high school sophomore. She has a boyfriend. She is still funny, she still has Autism, she still loves Barney. She is every bit as entitled to this world as you and I, so what if she makes you uncomfortable?!