“A wise man once told me that a seed needs love and nurturing to become a flower and a caterpillar needs time and persistence to become a beautiful butterfly. So that’s why I say everyone has an inner voice that is waiting to come out and all they need is you.” -- Carly Fleischmann, Carly’s Voice: Breaking Through Autism
But ever since seeing her interview on ABC-TV’s 20/20 program, I have been as fascinated
as millions of others who have followed “Autism’s Angel” on the news, in her
book, or on her own website, or Twitter or Facebook sites. My wife had turned
me onto the Carly Fleischmann video when she got it from other mothers of
brain-injured children. (My youngest daughter, Katharina, has cerebral palsy after
suffering a brain injury before she was born.) I decided to show it to my 12th
graders as part of a unit we were doing on the Exploration of Otherness. I
wanted to show them how a disabled person copes with their difficulties and
overcomes them to do something to help themselves and/or others.
I just finished the book that Carly wrote with her father, Carly’s Voice: Breaking Through Autism (Simon
and Schuster, 2012, 402 pages), and I have become a huge fan of this teenaged
teacher.
As background, I can provide you her bio from the book:
“At
the age of two, Carly Fleischmann was diagnosed with severe autism and an oral
motor condition that prevented her from speaking. Doctors predicted that she
would never intellectually develop beyond the abilities of a small child.
Although she made some progress after years of intensive behavioral and
communication therapy, Carly remained largely unreachable. Then, at the age of
ten, she had a breakthrough. While working with her devoted therapists Howie
and Barb, Carly reached over to their laptop and typed in "HELP TEETH
HURT," much to everyone's astonishment. This was the beginning of Carly's
journey toward self-realization.”
Carly has come a long way, and in the book, her father details her struggle to communicate through writing on her computer, what they call “spelling,” through the difficulties of respite care and the education system, and finally gaining her dream of joining and succeeding in a mainstream high school class – an honors level one at that. You can see a sample of one of her papers by clicking the hyperlink.
Not only did she find her own inner voice through “spelling,” but she has shared valuable insight into the world of autism, which she said is much misunderstood by everyone, including the medical profession and educational system. As she often shares,
“I
think people get a lot of their information from so-called experts but I think
what happens is that experts can’t give an explanation to certain questions.
How can you explain something you have not lived or if you don’t know what it’s
like to have it? If a horse is sick, you don’t ask a fish what’s wrong with the
horse. You go right to the horse’s mouth…..
I want to help people understand autism by giving them information from
people who have autism, straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Carly’s video was a hit with my students. They enjoyed
seeing someone about their own age overcoming great obstacles, perhaps
inspiring some of them to overcome their own obstacles, whether physical or
not.
For me, I found some great lessons:
On being a father. Carly’s father, Arthur, always made time for his daughter, reading to her even when he didn’t know if she understood and writing to her online in between meetings at work to maintain one of the only means he had of learning about his daughter. The book details the almost-debilitating struggle of parents trying to cope with a severely-disabled child. Even though my daughter has a less severe disability, I could empathize and see personal similarities in her parents’ ongoing struggle with maintaining sleep, work, and sanity from diagnosis onward. I could also see some comparisons with Kath and her penchant to hit her head or leg when overwhelmed. Carly describes the reason that she rocks back and forth, hums, and bangs her head is to compensate for excess visual or audio input that overwhelms and pains her. I’ll have to keep that in mind and be more patient and understanding whenever Kath does that. Thank you, Carly.
I am going to pass this book over to my wife next. It’s invaluable reading for any parent, regardless if they have a disabled child. (Lord knows every child has their own challenges, right?)
On being a teacher. More and more these days, teachers are being introduced to students with diagnoses of autism or autism-spectrum disorders Asperger’s syndrome. And not just Special Ed teachers. One of the difficulties is that educators are expected to know about this, but the reality is that many do not. A mother of one of my wife’s students came in to her at the beginning of one year and handed her a folder explaining her child’s disorder. Way to go, Mom! Carly states that her noncommunicative state made people believe she had low intellect. This led to frustration on her part that made her less able to perform on demand, which had the unfortunate consequence of validating the initial judgment. As Carly says:
"I hate when people ask me to do things that they already know I can or can’t do
Like ask me to spell ‘chips’ for a chip
It makes me feel like I am stupid
‘spell your name.’ Good have a chip
‘spell your name.’ You did not get it right I guess you are not smart
How does that make you feel?”
And the lessons from Carly go beyond physically-challenged students. What about students with low state-assessment scores? An assistant superintendent I shadowed once told me how she looks beyond the overall score to the breakdown of skills scores. She showed me how some of the lower scoring students had poor writing skills but good scores in mechanics like spelling and grammar, while some of the highest scoring students great writing scores had low mechanical scores. But, she asked me, which skills do you think will be emphasized for these kids? You guessed it! A heavy dose of spelling and grammar mini-lessons in the remedial classes and little to none in the advanced writing classes.
And what about the students who act out and/or don’t perform well due to classroom distractions, or the students that say they need to listen to music in order to concentrate, or who bug everyone by tapping their pencil on the desk or humming to themselves. How many of them feel stupid? “Bad student! Go see your principal since you won’t stop it,” we may say. An easy response. But what is behind the behavior? Can we address that and help them find success? Carly indicates yes.
The greatest lesson that Carly taught me, or at least confirmed for me as a Parent and as a Teacher, is the essential nature of believing in any child and their ability to learn. One thing Carly mentions time and again is the importance for her to have her parents and her therapists believing from the earliest times and in the most difficult times in her ability to overcome her disabilities. She received further validation in every effort in which she challenged herself to go further: getting Ellen DeGeneres to be her voice for her bat mitzvah speech, getting on Larry King Live, introducing her idol Temple Grandin at an international conference on autism.
One difficulty reading about her in the book and online is
hearing from the naysayers who don’t believe her story—that she is exaggerating
the severity of her autism or that she is not the one responsible for her
writing. I understood when the journalists looking into her story sought
written verification of her diagnosis, or wanted to witness her “spelling” with
their own eyes; that’s just simple journalistic skepticism. But for cynics who
don’t believe for the sake of contrariness, that’s just plain ignorance. It
reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: “There are two ways to slide easily
through life: To believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us
from thinking.” (Alfred Korzybski)
Carly Fleischmann did me the greatest favor that anyone
could: she made me think. She made me believe in many more possibilities than I
had originally thought – for my students and for my own children.
Without ever uttering a word.
