The TSA Education program provides accurate, current information in many areas. Our materials are designed to help students, parents, families, educators, clinicians, and others understand, address, and manage symptoms of Tourette Syndrome in the school and other settings. By offering essential TS information, we want to promote optimal teaching and learning, end stigma, and promote acceptance regarding TS in school settings.

In 1988, when Anne Fadiman met Lia Lee, then 5, for the first time, she wrote down her impressions in four spare lines that now read like found poetry:.

barefoot mother gently rocking silent child ¶ diaper, sweater, strings around wrist ¶ like a baby, but she’s so big ¶ mother kisses and strokes her ¶ The story of Lia, the severely brain-damaged daughter of Hmong refugees who had resettled in California, became the subject of Ms. Fadiman’s first book, “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down,” published in 1997. ¶ Its title is the English translation of the condition known as qaug dab peg (pronounced “kow da pay”), the Hmong term for epilepsy, from which Lia had suffered since infancy. ¶ In traditional Hmong belief, qaug dab peg, like many illnesses, is spiritual in origin, caused when the soul becomes separated from the body. A traditional cure might entail visits from a shaman, who would attempt to reunite body and soul.¶ A work of narrative nonfiction, Ms. Fadiman’s book is a cautionary tale about the cultural chasm between Lia’s family, with its generations-old animist beliefs, and her rationalist American doctors.

BILLINGS - An event dedicated to supporting those who have lost loved ones to suicide, the Out of Darkness Community Walk in Veteran's Park, brought awareness of suicide to the Billings area. The annual walk is the primary fundraiser for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Suicide claims 36,000 lives in the United States each year. Montana owns the highest rate of suicide in the nation.

Sometimes the difficulties of autism can lead to behaviors that are quite challenging for us to understand and address. Most individuals with autism will display challenging behaviors of some sort at some point in their lives. Autism Speaks has created this Challenging Behaviors Tool Kit to provide you with strategies and resources to address these behaviors, and to help support you and your loved one with autism during these difficult situations.

Sometimes the difficulties of autism can lead to behaviors that are quite challenging for us to understand and address. Most individuals with autism will display challenging behaviors of some sort at some point in their lives. Autism Speaks has created this Challenging Behaviors Tool Kit to provide you with strategies and resources to address these behaviors, and to help support you and your loved one with autism during these difficult situations.

I have to admit, I have been giddy ever since I began researching college opportunities for children with special needs.  How exciting!  We have always told our 13-yr old daughter with Down syndrome she would be going to college some day, but it was one of those hopeful comments where I wasn’t really sure it would ever be a reality. No more! Vanderbilt, Ohio State University, University of Kentucky, Syracuse University and on and on and on. I sorted through 200 programs throughout the United States. 200!  Only a few years ago, when this subject was first brought to my attention, there were a mere handful of these programs in the US. I was very surprised to see the great strides our educational community is making to make college a reality for young people with intellectual disabilities.

NCLD collected data from a random sampling of 1,980 adults in the United States, evenly distributed across males and females, via an online survey in August 2012. The sampling is representative of the U.S. population with a margin of error of 4.4 percent.  Twelve percent of the respondents cited having a learning disability, and eight percent of the parents surveyed have a child with a learning disability.  Results reveal the need for more education about the causes, treatments of, and treatments for learning disabilities, and a better understanding of the rights of learning disabled people in the workplace.

In fifth grade, Cali McClelland Beeson was diagnosed with low-level autism, also known as Asperger Syndrome. She couldn’t make eye contact. She clenched her hands and she struggled with tests, but she was determined not to let autism define her. In eighth grade, she dropped out of public school in Illinois because the large classes broke her focus. She was home-schooled through high school and then attended McHenry County College. Today Cali attends the University of Montana, sticking out from the crowd with her untamed hair, infectious smile and creative outfits.

Since 1997, Kids Wish Network has been making dreams come true for hundreds of thousands of children all over the world. We started out with the single purpose of granting wishes to children suffering with life-threatening conditions. Since then, we created a unique range of programs designed to bring hope and joy to children facing life-altering circumstances who demonstrated needs above and beyond the extent of wishes.

We grant wishes to kids between ages 3 and 18 who are battling life-threatening conditions. Our Wish Kids can request just about anything for their wish, such as trips to theme parks, celebrity meet and greets, travel, or shopping sprees.

Raising the achievement of students with learning disabilities is hard, expensive, controversial and complex. School systems must pay private school tuition for students they can’t adequately serve. Educators and parents sometimes disagree on what methods to use. Education writers like me rarely deal with the subject because it is difficult to explain and lacks many success stories. That explains in part why learning disabilities are so poorly understood, as revealed by a remarkable survey just released by the nonprofit National Center for Learning Disabilities. The representative sampling of 2,000 Americans provides a rare look at the depths of our ignorance. Forty-three percent believe that learning disabilities correlate with IQ. Fifty-five percent think that corrective eyewear can treat certain learning disabilities. Twenty-two percent believe that learning disabilities can be caused by spending too much time watching computer or television screens. All of those impressions are wrong.

In a recent speech, Secretary Duncan noted that parents understand better than anyone how important it is that schools prepare students for success in life—not just with academic knowledge, but with the skills needed to succeed in jobs and to be an active participant in society.

This free online course helps parents and educators build knowledge and confidence as they become advocates for their children living with hearing loss and work with local school districts and service providers.

You are at the home for families on the Listening and Spoken Langauge Knowledge Center. On this page you will find a full listing of information and resources to help you learn about your child's hearing loss, and things you can do to ensure they have access to language as early as possible.

As children head back to the classroom, now is a great time for parents and guardians to talk with your kids about bullying. Here are five tips to help your child prevent bullying and to help them deal with bullying:

Artist Sue Austin has been wheelchair-bound since 1996. Instead of allowing her circumstances to hinder her art, she uses it as a vehicle — so to speak. Austin has created, with the support of diving experts, an underwater wheelchair outfitted with a propeller and fins that allow her to steer. With it, she gracefully hovers through the deep ocean, mingling with fish and flying past coral reefs. The wheelchair is equipped with a clear fin, making the artificial device seem slightly less out of place in the serene ocean.

Flu is most deadly for children with neurologic problems and disorders, an analysis of swine flu fatalities finds. The results come from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers who looked at childhood fatalities during the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009, when there were five times the usual number of deaths. In all, 43 percent of the deaths occurred in children who had neurologic diseases, such as cerebral palsy and epilepsy, or developmental disorders.

A growing number of educators are working to turn learning on its head by replacing traditional classroom lectures with video tutorials, an approach popularly called the "flipped classroom." Interest in that teaching method was in full view this summer at the International Society for Technology in Education annual conference in San Diego, where almost every session on the topic was filled to capacity.

The stresses of poverty — such as crowded conditions, financial worry, and lack of adequate child care — lead to impaired learning ability in children from impoverished backgrounds, according to a theory by a researcher funded by the National Institutes of Health. The theory is based on several years of studies matching stress hormone levels to behavioral and school readiness test results in young children from impoverished backgrounds. Further, the theory holds, finding ways to reduce stress in the home and school environment could improve children's well being and allow them to be more successful academically.

Development of the “All Children Can Read” website began in 2006 as part of the work of the NCDB’s (National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness) Literacy Practice Partnership. This group envisioned the creation of a central location to provide information and resources to individual state deaf-blind projects, teachers, family members and related service providers interested in beginning or enhancing literacy instruction for children who have combined vision and hearing loss and children with other complex learning challenges. Following literature reviews of literacy learning for all children, children who are blind or visually impaired, children who are deaf or hearing impaired, children with multiple disabilities and children with deaf-blindness, a set of literacy indicators and corresponding strategies was developed to help guide instructional planning.

As a wave of kids with autism enter the transition stage, strikingly little is known about the best interventions for teens and young adults with the disorder, a new analysis finds.

A Washington, D.C. newspaper is facing rebuke after an editorial written by its own staff criticized federal efforts to hire more people with disabilities. The opinion piece from The Washington Times editorial board focused on a recent U.S. Department of Justice memo informing employees about the agency’s plan to hire more people with so-called targeted disabilities including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness and severe intellectual disability. “Most employers would balk at even minor mental disabilities in hiring a lawyer, let alone severe ones. But the policy states that the Cabinet department run by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. must ‘achieve a work force from all segments of society,’ which includes those who are teetering on the edge of sanity,” The Washington Times said in its Aug. 22 editorial. The commentary is drawing strong backlash from disability advocates who say the criticisms are baseless and rely on untrue information. “While the Times editorial suggests applicants with disabilities would be fast-tracked into jobs at the DOJ without due screening and assessment, the DOJ memo clearly states otherwise,” said Jonathan Young, chair of the National Council on Disability. “To mischaracterize the DOJ initiative with fear-mongering and hyperbole misses the point.”