All Together We Can

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Mads posted this on the Simmons ASTECH list and it is must watch.

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Patty Cassidy, or Patty the conqueror as she has been come to have been known by, has been battling breast cancer. On Thanksgiving, I got a call from Caroline Ramsey Musselwhite telling me that our friend Patty had passed away early that morning. I first met Patty at Closing the Gap and then she later was my professor in AAC at the Simmons assistive technology masters program. I remember her passion for the individuals she taught to communicate. When she showed her videos of her students, I remember seeing someone who simply loved and believed in her students. She has been a beautiful model to me. One of the things that she made a point to teach me personally was the importance of modeling language. Not so ironically, I have been engaged in an in-depth literature review of the practice of modeling in AAC. As I re-work that study into a submission to a publication, I will do it in memory of our friend Patty. While I only knew Patty for the last few years, she was one of the friends I have met in the AAC world who I look up to the most. Maybe it was because she was so down to earth or maybe it was because she was so nice to me, or maybe it was that we looked at AAC so similarly, whatever the reason, we were friends and I will miss her. It made me smile when I heard about the true extent of the support she has had. One can only wish for friends and family like that in life. Special prayers go out to her three children.

This image is from a book put together for Patty in the last year. You can read inspirational stories about Patty and about funeral arrangements here: http://cassidynews.blogspot.com

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This post has a more personal flavor.

Last week, I successfully passed my PhD candidacy at The Pennsylvania State University with the paper, The Effects of Aided Language Stimulation on the Communication Performance of Individuals with Complex Communication Needs.

It has been a miraculous time. Proloquo2Go, the iPhone app I co-developed, has taken the world by storm, with David Pogue featuring it as a part of his TEDMED talk last week, CAN MY IPHONE SAVE MY LIFE?
, and then writing about it in his NY Times column, Medical Apps for the iPhone. This comes after a front page NY Times feature of two beautiful users of Proloquo2Go. There have been a ton of other major media features as well. Here are a few:

-Medicare Would Rather Buy $8000 Computer than $150 iPhone App
-iPhone applications can help the autistic
-ieeeTV Proloquo2Go AAC in your Pocket
-TUAW Proloquo2Go: Assistive communication for the iPhone and iPod touch

Last month, in October, we presented to overflowing rooms at Closing the Gap and had the first ever rounds of iPod touch labs at a major assistive technology conference. The stories pour in daily about how Proloquo2Go is helping children, teenagers, and adults. All of this is fantastic beyond belief.

It is truly beautiful to see individuals getting the communication technology they need, combined with getting the coolness factor.

Yet, among all the beauty and energy that is Proloquo2Go, I have been quietly hitting the books and spending long hours in classes and at my writing desk. I am ten months into my PhD at The Pennsylvania State University. It is an amazing experience that has proven to be a terrific decision in my life. Being here with the AAC faculty, Janice Light, David McNaughton, Kathy Drager, and Krista Wilkinson is truly amazing. The special education faculty are awesome. The range and depth that they represent is a wonderful gift in my life of learning to be a teacher/ researcher.

Finishing the candidacy process has set me free in a way that is hard to explain. I have been feeling so terrible missing my classroom teaching practice. This creative absence has left me feeling so indulgent. Where before I felt like I was going the way, I now am just reading and writing constantly. Yet, all of the sudden, nearly in one fell swoop, all of that is swept away and I see that this absence has left me quite a bit more prepared to serve the community that I care so much about. The research training is very important in my practice. So now as I turn to finding my lab, I feel free to go very deep into the work and study. I know that I can have the best of both worlds now, researching and having a group that I work hands on with. I also feel free to enjoy the process. The high stakes candidacy is very stressful! It feels great to realize what a gift this program is and how I have a great opportunity to leverage it into greater ways to contribute to the field dedicated to serving individuals with disabilities, their teachers, their families, and now their researchers.

Overall, I am very thankful to all the supporters of my work. The special education faculty in particular have been simply amazing and I feel that I owe them a great deal of thanks.

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