Find us at:
A Place to Know More About Ability
This time I will share the common tendency of the people with disabilities regarding employment.
1. Education participation in the U.S.
2. Business running on holidays
3. Incentives of not working
I had an opportunity to interview Mr. Lawton Williamson, a director for employment. Lawton came to this field because he got a lot of inspirations from his friend Bob who is a legally blind man. Bob had a dream to be a sportscaster. Lawton wondered how he can get the job.
I read through the old articles which I have never done before…And I really feel that younger me is totally different even just 1 year ago. I realized again that I am energetic person.
Today, in my mailbox, I found a letter from my dad and a package from my friend in Japan!
Kristen has been in special education field all through her undergraduate to graduate training at Vanderbilt University. After graduation, she taught students with a wide range of disabilities from mild to fairly severe and profound level in a high school. A couple years later, she went back to Vanderbilt University to get her Master’s degree in special education technology. During her research, she met Prof. Doug Fuchs and got involved with a lot of his research related to learning disabilities (LD) and academic related difficulties. In the doctoral program, she spent efforts on a program called Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS), which is a peer tutoring program that is designed as an inclusive general education approach to accommodate a lot of kids with disabilities or academic difficulties.
I visited the National Center on Education Outcomes (NCEO) located at the University of Minnesota. NCEO was founded in 1990 with the purpose to identify important outcomes of education for students with disabilities.
SVRI provides various kinds of supports, trainings, and services for people with disabilities.
While I was looking for interviewees, one of the professors that I know at University of Minnesota introduced another professor. Her name suggests she may be a Japanese person and I was very excited because I never expected to meet a Japanese researcher in Minnesota! I emailed her and got a reply very soon. Surprisingly she also uses wheelchair (Moon Rider) !
I could visit one the the major medical companies, Medtronic in Minnesota (operational headquarter). Medtronic is a multinational company with 87,000 employees. The company was also nominated at The 2014 DIVERSITYINC TOP 50 Companies for Diversity.
I would like to introduce the hotels I stayed in Minnesota. In the U.S., there is a wheelchair accessible room (ADA room) at every hotels. We do have the same kind of room in Japan called “barrier free room”, but usually we need to pay more to stay in those rooms. Here in the U.S. you can request a wheelchair accessible room at booking or checking in, and usually you are not charged extra payment under ADA.