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This month, Dorfman, now 22, will graduate from St. Joseph's University. He's a film major, a former NBC intern, and a paid mentor at the school's Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support.

He's also part of the newest wave of diversity to reach college campuses. As a generation of young adults - the first to be diagnosed with Asperger's as children - comes of age, it is demolishing stereotypes about its condition and prompting universities to respond to its needs.

Click here to register for this event What: Teaching students how to comprehend text remains a challenge in our nation’s school systems. Many of the efforts directed toward teaching reading comprehension focus on providing practice at answering questions, while neglecting to teach learners how to reliably answer those questions. In this presentation, we will describe a program that systematically teaches the fundamental strategies for reading success: inferential comprehension, literal comprehension, main idea comprehension, and derived meaning comprehension. These fundamental strategies comprise the core of reading comprehension as it is assessed in standardized tests. More importantly, they provide learners with flexible tools that can be used to comprehend any text regardless of subject matter or reading level. When: June 15th, 1pm (Mountain) Guests: Joanne K. Robbins, Ph.D., a co-founder and executive director of P.E.E.R. International and Principal of Morningside Academy, an innovative school that uses procedures derived from the learning sciences to help children reach their full academic potential. Dr. Robbins has over 30 years of experience in program development, curriculum design, and teaching and supervision of programs for children and youth, in both educational and mental-health settings. Dr. Marta Leon, Director of Instructional Development for Headsprout. Dr. Leon has significantly contributed to the design and development of the Headsprout Reading Comprehension program and its accompanying materials. Before joining Headsprout, Dr. Leon was an instructional designer at Morningside Academy.

A Note from Vicki S. Dohrmann: Our planning committee has been working hard at planning the annual Special Education Conference. We are pleased to announce our 2012 conference faculty and full-day course schedule.  We are bringing specialists from all over the U.S. to present current research and evidence-based interventions.  The conference is scheduled for March 7-9, 2012 (Wednesday-Friday) at the Shoreline Conference Center. We are asking local businesses interested in supporting special education to donate directly to schools to support staff development for special education teachers, therapists and support personnel.   If you have an intern or parent that may be interested in volunteering at the conference, please ask them to contact me at vickid@seanet.com; we currently have volunteer positions available for all courses.  If you have an active parent-teacher organization at your school, please share this information with them.  We appreciate your support in helping us "get the word out" about the annual conference. Sincerely, Vicki S. Dohrmann, MA, CCC-SLP Planning Committee Chairperson-Rehab Seminars When: March 7-9, 2011 Where: Shoreline Conference Center Greater Seattle, Washington Area

Click here for more information about this Conference What: The Pacific Rim International Conference (Pac Rim) on Disability & Diversity has been widely recognized over the past 27 years as one of the most “diverse gatherings” in the world. The event encourages and respects voices from “diverse” perspective across numerous areas, including: voices from persons representing all disability areas; experiences of family members and supporters across all disability areas; responsiveness to diverse cultural and language differences; evidence of researchers and academics studying disability; stories of persons providing powerful lessons; examples of program providers, natural supports and allies of persons with disabilities and; action plans to meet human and social needs in a globalized world. Each year the conference hews to its traditional areas which have bred much of the interdisciplinary research and educational advances of the last three decades. But each year new topics are introduced to foment discussion and change. The intent is to harness the tremendous synergy as generated by the intermingling of these diverse perspectives, thus, creating a powerful program which impacts each individual participant in his or her own unique way. When: March 26 & 27, 2012 Where: Hawai‘i Convention Center 1801 Kalakaua Avenue Honolulu, HI 96815

BMJ Editor Fiona Godlee presented a discussion of the stunning investigation she published earlier this year that revealed the MMR scare was based not on bad science but on deliberate fraud.  The three-part series was produced by journalist Brian Deer, who spent seven years investigating Andrew Wakefield’s infamous study linking the MMR vaccine with autism, discovering Wakefield had been paid by a lawyer to influence his results and had blatantly manipulated the study data. 

Kids.gov is the official kids' portal for the U.S. government. It links to over 2,000 web pages from government agencies, schools, and educational organizations, all geared to the learning level and interest of kids.

Athletes with intellectual disabilities will be allowed to participate in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London following a vote of the International Paralympic Committee.

Working and non-working parents alike are forced to scurry to school in the middle of the day to pick up children for issues that the school could have typically handled internally. These repeated pick-up calls beg the question as to whether the school can legally require parents to come get their special needs children before the school day concludes.

As the world's leading autism researchers and advocates gathered at the International Meeting for Autism Research last weekend to share the latest discoveries about autism spectrum disorder, a strong theme emerged: Autism is growing up.