Michele McKeone Fights for Underdogs Through Autism Expressed
Run across the Disruptor: Michele McKeone
The former special ed instructor's Autism Expressed, teaching digital skills to autistic students, is growing. The secret? Its founder's "oppositional defiance"
Apr. 12, 2016
In that location were many "aha" moments in those seven years that Michele McKeone taught students with autism at South Philadelphia High School. There was, for instance, the surprise that, though her job was to prepare her students for life after graduation, there had been nothing tech-related in the curriculum; nothing nigh sending email, building a portfolio, browsing the spider web, editing video or writing calculator code—all necessary skills in today's workforce.
Then there was the shock of what her students were capable of when she did finally get computers into their hands, even those who were nonverbal: They may accept made unintelligible noises, but they could rap, socialize, produce videos, and write code—in many cases, better than her. As she learned, 60 percent of those on the spectrum are drawn to some course of screen-based media. So even her students given to temper tantrums and high-pitched yelping became talented bloggers.
And there was the caste to which her students were invisible to other adults. There were times when even other teachers wouldn't want her students in their classrooms. "I'chiliad pitiful," McKeone would say to colleagues who didn't know any improve, a dagger somewhere behind her bright smiling, "did you recollect we were having a discussion nigh this? It'southward the law."
McKeone, 34, self-describes as "oppositionally defiant": Tell her non to do something, and it'south going to go done. She'd discovered an unmet need in the classroom, a whole generation of autistic students consigned to a futurity of either unemployment or menial, low-wage jobs because the special ed industrial complex didn't encounter her kids the way she—and their parents—saw them: As capable. With apologies to one-time President Bush, who first coined the phrase, she started to run across "the soft bigotry of depression expectations" for her students everywhere; McKeone transformed from teacher to advocate. "My tiny fist was always raised," she says.
McKeone resigned from educational activity in Jan of 2022 to chase a dream and launch a company, Autism Expressed, which teaches digital skills to autistic students. Since its 2022 launch, she has done a quarter million dollars in revenues, received the Philadelphia Geek Award for Startup of the Year, and garnered media attending. The Autism Expressed curriculum is used throughout the Philadelphia School District, and thousands of students in several states—at public and private schools, as well as in many homes—utilise the online program. At present, McKeone is almost to rent a caput of sales and mayhap even rebrand to abound her mission even further.
Her students could rap, socialize, produce videos, and write code—in many cases, better than her. As she learned, 60 percent of those on the spectrum are fatigued to some form of screen-based media. So even her students given to temper tantrums and high-pitched yelping became talented bloggers.
At that place's no question nearly the need. Autism is one of the nation'due south fastest-growing developmental disabilities, with 1 in every 88 children falling somewhere on the spectrum. And according to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate among those with developmental disabilities is 14.3 percent.
Nevertheless, McKeone felt paralyzed past fear when she resigned to focus full-time on her visitor. So 32, McKeone had only closed on her Fishtown house and now hither she was, abandoning the security of a education job, which came with a steady paycheck and health insurance. At 2 a.one thousand., she would jolt awake, and the anxious thoughts would start in: How am I going to pay this mortgage? What nearly healthcare? Come morning, after hours of exasperated pillow-fluffing and side-turning, the anxiety would morph into malaise and paralysis. For two months, she was in its grip.
And so what did she practice? How did she snap out of it? McKeone, by turns boisterous and sotto voce, can fill a room; she speaks with conviction, but never in a rush. She'due south more instructor than pitchwoman; she doesn't sell so much as explain. At a neighborhood watering pigsty last week, while she sipped white wine, I asked for the recipe to waving a center finger at uncertainty. Her head dipped, and she inched forward.
"Investors probably don't similar to hear information technology, because it sounds a little out there," she said. "But I let get."
Fearfulness, McKeone says, can be a motivator—just with a cost: "It tin lead to burnout." Instead, she had one of those Risky Business moments: Sometimes you just have to say, 'What the fuck?' She permit become of the fearfulness, of our addiction to result, and she thought near her kids—she still refers to them every bit her kids—and their needs. Making it about them made it less about her. Not only did the chattering distractions of her own heed dissipate, but she started to attract what she needed. In May 2013, she won a $20,000 prize from the University of Pennsylvania and the Milken Family Foundation. Information technology was as if letting become had unlocked something in the universe.
McKeone graduated from the University of the Arts in 2005, where she studied digital media before getting a Main's in Education from Chestnut Loma College. At Due south Philly High, she adult a curriculum that began with very practical tech lessons—What's proper etiquette online? How practise y'all attach documents to an email?—and has grown to include coding and web design.
She was and then digitally savvy, she had assumed all teachers her age were, every bit well. But few of her colleagues were every bit at ease in the digital earth. It didn't take long for McKeone to see the need to increase digital skills amid special ed teachers. UArts' Corzo Middle for the Creative Economy, which infuses creative economy types with entrepreneurial know-how, staked her with a $ten,000 grant, enabling McKeone to build her beta version and test the design in her classroom.
Turns out, the key innovation of Autism Expressed isn't necessarily in its platform. Rather, information technology's in McKeone's sui generis observation that her kids—and countless only like them—can do way more than people think.
"I saw that my students had an inherent analogousness for applied science," she says. "Code is a puzzle and my students would lose themselves in puzzles. Nosotros once had an afoot vocational instructor come up to the classroom. He's supposed to size the students upwards and identify them in appropriate programs. Lamar, one of my nonverbal students, greeted him with an affectionate human being pound to the chest. Just he didn't plan on including Lamar in the task training plan at all. He couldn't see that Lamar simply saw the world differently than him."
Since its 2022 launch, she has done a quarter one thousand thousand dollars in revenues, received the Philadelphia Geek Award for Startup of the Year, and garnered media attending. The Autism Expressed curriculum is used throughout the Philadelphia Schoolhouse District, and thousands of students in several states—at public and private schools, as well as in many homes—use the online program.
McKeone grew upwardly in Atlantic City, a wild child center daughter of a belatedly cocktail waitress she refers to as having a "gypsy spirit." Her father was a hustler, a knockabout jumping from odd job to odd job. In grad schoolhouse, she read the inquiry that showed the difference 1 role model can make in an boyish'southward life. But she didn't take to read about it; she'd had her Aunt Cathy (Grandma now to Franklin, her puppy). In some ways, McKeone's commitment to her students—she's still in touch with them—is her playing Aunt Cathy to them. It's not their autism that captured her heart; it'southward that they'd long been overlooked. Only like a certain club-going Atlantic City teen. ("I have great dance moves," she boasts.)
McKeone is wrestling now with a rebrand of Autism Expressed. New federal legislation mandates that 15 per centum of country vocational role budgets be spent on employment transition services. She's thinking of changing the name to Digibility (a play on "inability"), and expanding the population of its clientele beyond merely those with autism. This would broaden her customer base. And it would no doubt be more lucrative. McKeone says she's definitely rebranding, just isn't ready to make the move only yet. "Autism Expressed is my babe," she says, sheepishly. "I'g part Native American. Then I'yard waiting for the corking spirit to move me."
McKeone is a mix between action-oriented entrepreneur and spiritualist, someone who is open to the mysteries of the universe, while too driven and defiant. She's a leader of men and women, with the touch on of a poet. At one recent speaking appointment, an audience member pressed her on her motivations.
"Is someone in your family on the spectrum?" she was asked.
The answer was no, merely the questioner kept pressing. "Finally, I realized," McKeone says. "Information technology's non autism that drives me. It'due south empowering underdogs."
Photo Header: Michele McKeone
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/disruptor-michele-mckeone-autism-expressed/
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