Empowerment Through Technology

Transcript

ANNOUNCER:  This is Curious Incident, a podcast for special needs families, and your window into the world of special education. Special needs parenting can be challenging, and we want to make it easier by providing you with the resources you need to help your child. Stell deep into the world of learning differently with your host, special education attorney Adam Dayan. 

ADAM:  I am pleased to present Beth Rosenberg as my next guest on the Curious Incident podcast. Beth is an educator and advocate for students with disabilities. Beth is the founder and executive director of Tech Unlimited, a technology not-for-profit program for special needs youth. Tech Unlimited now serves 545 students from ages 10 to 24 with autism spectrum Asperger’s ADHD, OCD, and learning and social and emotional challenges. The program empowers these students to develop job applicable skills in graphic design, video editing, game development, and more. Beth, welcome. 

BETH:  Thank you so much Adam for having me. 

ADAM:  It’s great to have you here. Can you start by telling us about yourself and Tech Unlimited and how it came to be? 

BETH:  Sure. I’m an educator. I’ve been an educator in New York City for about 35 years. I have taught everyone from nursery school, preschool to graduate students. I still teach where I’m an adjunct at NYU Tanson School of Engineering. I teach undergraduate and graduate students. I started Tech Unlimited by accident. It’s kind of a funny story and it goes like this. I am the proud mom of two beautiful young people and my younger child, my son, is neurodiverse. And by the time he was two years old, we had a ton of therapy in the house, including OTPT, speech, ABA, and a SEAT. I ran a five year program in my home with therapists going in and out of my apartment and then came the special need schools and also suing the Department of Education twice. And along the way, I was just working with quote underserved students at various different places like IBM Center for Art and Technology. And prior to that, I had been at the Guggenheim Museum for 10 years early on in my career. The idea behind underserved students was not really including students with disability. And so when my son was about nine years old, the iPad came out and he loved it and it was so intuitive. And that was the time when STEM, science, technology, engineering, math programs, lots of after school programs was really all the rage. And I felt like why shouldn’t my son be learning how to produce technology instead of just playing with technology, like playing games or watching videos? Couldn’t he be a creator and a producer instead of just a watcher? And so I just sort of started a class in 2009. I was working at the JCC Manhattan as a special needs consultant and I asked my supervisor if I could have their media room class for a February break in February of 2009 and they said yes. So I wrote up a little ad. I sent it through to my son’s school and in five minutes, I got 10 kids to sign up to take a I stop animation video class that week in February when it’s really hard for parents that February midwinter break, you need to put your kid in some program because you have to work. So I had 10 students and I knew two wonderful graduate students who were doing their PhD at Teachers College, Columbia University. They were doing their PhD in the arts and social justice and they really didn’t know how to work with students on the autism spectrum. But I just knew that they were kind and patient and that together we would figure it out. I brought in these two teachers. I had 10 students. I had a media room. We had I stop animation software on the computers and then one other important thing happened which was that my daughter who’s a few years older was in high school and high school students in New York need community service. And so I thought it’s really good to have a lot of people teaching our special needs students. But I bring in some of my daughter’s friends to sort of get community service and they would work with the students that week as well. So then I would have two teachers in the classroom plus myself. So that’s three teachers in the classroom plus about three community service students. So now I had about six adults in the classroom with 10 students and it was beautiful. And at the end of the week the students they worked really hard and they made fantastic videos all about what they were interested in. Like my son loves trains. He made video about trains. Another student loved the Titanic and she made a video about and I stopped animation video about the Titanic. And that was the very first workshop and then the parents were hooked. They then said, well, what about April break and what about summer break. And we started doing the program little bits here and there until around 2013. 

ADAM:  So I just want to commend you on a few things before we move forward. First of all, on the parent side, all that you were managing and coordinating in terms of your son’s services. Secondly, just in terms of the way you’re raising the bar for special education students, neuro diverse individuals and what they’re capable of. Not just accepting the status quo, but leveling it up. And the way that you’re combining typically developing and neuro diverse children to support each other. 

BETH:  I think that’s beautiful. Thank you so much, Adam. Really, this idea was just an idea. I had no idea if it was really going to work. And I guess I’m kind of one of those warrior moms where I just see that I want my kid to get the best. And also I want other students to to be able to have technology skills in their back pocket. So in 2013, my boss, Professor Luke Dubois, saw me in the hallway at NYU and he said to me, Hey, you’re running this program. I’m for students with disabilities, right? And I said, yes, I am. And he said, well, we’re starting a new space at NYU Tandon called the Ability Project. And it’s going to be a classroom and we’re going to do assistive technology and accessibility. And it’s a combo between three different schools, the Steinhardt School of Teaching and Learning, Tisch School of the Arts, the ITP program and NYU Tandon, the program that I teach in called Integrated Digital Media and Design. And would you like to bring your program here to NYU? And I said, okay. And he said, well, what are you? Like, are you a nonprofit? Like are you a business? I said, I’m nothing. I don’t even I have no website. I have nothing. And he said, well, you’re going to have to become something because if we’re going to do a partnership, we need to have a real partnership. And I said, I come from the nonprofit world. So I will become a nonprofit. If you become a board member and that was in 2013 and we shook on it and the rest is history. 

ADAM:  So that was 12 years ago and you’re doing it for several years before that relationship came to fruition. I want to ask you, what makes tech unlimited different from other programs serving young people with special needs? 

BETH:  I’m really proud to say that we have a unique pedagogy where we combine a whole bunch of different learning things, learning teaching methodologies that are out there, including universal design for learning, explicit instruction, connected learning, design thinking, all of these different things, which like may sound like buzzwords, but they’re actually real things in the field of education. And we combine them. But also the secret sauce for us is that we have multiple adults in the classroom, including a social worker in every single class. And so while the students are learning technology skills, we’re also working with them on their soft skills. They’re conversation around the water cooler, their workplace etiquette, because that is really key for these students. And I do want to say one other thing. I want to say that when I started thinking about this program and teaching my son and his friends’ technology skills, some of it was about, yes, students need to become producers and not consumers. But a lot of it was about fear. A lot of it was about, I am scared as a parent that my son, like so many others today, will wind up on the couch and will not have a meaningful, purposeful life doing what they want to do. So fear really drove me. It drives me a lot. 

ANNOUNCER:  If you like what you are hearing, please let us know by subscribing to the Curious Incident Podcast and letting other special needs parents know about it too. If you have thoughts, questions, comments, or would like to suggest ideas for a future episode, we’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast @ Dayanlawfirm.com. 

ADAM:  What do you look for before admitting a student? 

BETH:  We have two initiatives. One initiative is called Tech Knowledge Workshops and the other initiative is called Career Ladder Programs. We go from ages 10 to 24. So between 10 and 14, we want students to take technology workshops. They’re open to anyone. They’re not application based in any way. Like for example, we just had a Sunday program. It was a family day and it was all on emerging AI. Families and their kids got to go around in different stations and play with lots of different AI software. And that was super fun. And then we even had a guest speaker from one of our corporate sponsors, Infosys Foundation USA. So then we had a guest speaker. So it was a super fun day. We even had ice cream for everyone. We like to make it fun. And then our summer workshops, same thing. We did five weeks of summer workshops. Every week is a different program. Like one week is gaming. The next week is video editing. The next week is podcasts. We did do podcasts. So anyone can take those. And we encourage them. We encourage parents to sign up to their kids. They just go to our website. And some of the workshops have small price tags attached to them. But we give out a lot of financial scholarships. You just have to fill out the form online. And we don’t ask for your tax records. I don’t care about your tax records. We just say like, are you suing a school? Like are you paying a private school fee? We want to know that because we know, I know, how much it costs. To raise a special needs child. And I want to make sure that our workshops are open to everyone. Now, the other part of our programs is something called Career Ladder. And some of those programs have applications. So the idea is like, go into the technology programs. Go to the summer workshops. Go to the after school program. We have a beautiful free after school program once a month called Digital Empowerment, where we just taught kids all about financial scams. How many scams are you getting? Every single day. It’s unbelievable. So you can take any of our tech knowledge programs, which gives you like a nice background of lots of different software and skills, et cetera. And then when you’re 15, then you’re going to move into what we call the Career Ladder. And the Career Ladder is a suite of five work-based learning programs. And for some of those programs, we ask you to fill out a very simple application. And the thing that we want to know is two things. One, we want to know if you really want to learn or you just want to play YouTube. Because if you just want to sit behind the computer and play YouTube or play video games or talk on your phone, then the program is not for you. We want to know that you want to learn. And then for some of the programs, we want you to have a couple of programs under your belt. Like we want you to maybe know Photoshop or Canva. We want you to know how to get around Google Docs or to do you know PowerPoint. Like sort of not super hard things. And also, we’re not a coding program. We are not teaching coding. With the exception of one type of software called processing is a little bit of code, but the code comes out visual. So it’s like a beautiful visual abstract design that the kids love to do. But we’re not coding. Also, between you and me, we don’t need to code anymore because of AI. That’s another story. 

ADAM:  And I want to come back to that a little bit later, your take on AI. But first, you offer a digital media arts program and career readiness internships. Can you explain how those work? 

BETH:  So once the student is in our career ladder program, and remember I said there’s like five different programs. And I’m going to describe those programs to you. So one of the programs that is part of career ladder is called the creative tech internship program. And that is an in person or online program that meets for the full day on Fridays. The reason that program came about is because many schools want their kids by the time their juniors or seniors to be out of school. They want you to get that work experience. And many schools sort of make the parent try to find that internship type experience. Well, when my son was in high school, the first place that he had an internship program was in HR at a law firm, which was very nice that a parent had gotten that for a couple of kids. And when he came home that day, he said, do you want me to tell you what I did, Mom? And I said, yeah, tell me what you did. And he said, I sorted paper clips. And my daughter sat around at the dinner table with us. And she said, well, you know, there are two kinds of boxes of paper clips that you can buy the big ones or you can buy the small ones. And he said, I know, but that’s what they made me do. I was so upset. I called the other parent. Her kid was working with my son because they sent them two at a time to different internship sites. And I said, do you understand like what they’re doing? And she said, oh Beth, it’s all right. It’s experience. It’s okay. And in the back of my mind, I was like, no, this is not okay. This is an absolute waste of time. This is demeaning. It’s condescending. And it really follows that old model of disability. It’s a hundred year old model of the four Fs, which is food, filth, factories, flowers. And that is the hundred year old model of disability employment in the United States. At that point, the next year, I called up the school and I said, look, I’m running this program, this nonprofit, Tech Unlimited. We’re gonna start a new program. We’re gonna call it the Creative Tech Internship. Send me some kids and we will have a great time with them and they’ll do various different things. Well, that program started with two students in 2017. And we just started our class last Friday and we have 35 students. Wow. And it’s a great program because the students spend the whole day with us and with the social worker. And they have a lot of fun and they do things, first of all, they’re in a college campus, they’re at NYU. So they walk in, they feel proud. They’re like an NYU student for the day. The security guards know them. The staff knows them. Other faculty at NYU gets to know them. And every month they focus on a different aspect. So they may learn digital marketing one month. And the next month, they’re learning game design and then we take their games and we put it into the annual competition games for change. And some of them win. They make films. Like last year they made films for the Pace Disability Film Festival about what neurodiversity means to them. Cool. So that’s one of our programs. And the next program that is very popular is called the Digital Agency. That’s an after school online program where we pay the students to create real digital projects for clients, which is kind of amazing, right? The client comes in, they say to the students, this is what we need. These are the colors. We need a logo. We want it to be five pages. Here are the pictures. Here’s the content. And then our students make it. And each of them earns for a 12 week session. They earn $120 provided that they come and that they work. But they get a check for $120. 

ADAM:  And in that example, they’re not just working on digital marketing skills. They’re also part of a cause that’s furthering disability awareness. 

BETH:  Yes. We have this other program called Level Up. And the Level Up program is a career pathway program. Because what we have found over the past few years is that it’s not enough for your child to get a smattering of softwares, of technology skills, like to get a smattering, like to know a little bit about podcast editing, to know a little bit of premiere, to know a little bit of Canva, to know a little bit of Photoshop. What is really important is to delve deep into whatever that career pathway is. So we decided to start off with a class called digital marketing and e-commerce. And why did we start that last year? Well, we were lucky enough to receive a grant from the New York City Employment Training Coalition, plus Google, plus google.org. And we hooked up with the Disability Organization, AHRQ, and also Bridges to Work. And the idea was, could we take a grow with Google curriculum? Because Google has curriculum out there that they want people to use, and then you get a certification, and you can put it on your LinkedIn, et cetera. So could we take that digital marketing curriculum, adapt it, redo it for special needs students using our pedagogy, and then give it out to students. And that’s what we did. And so we were then able to not only teach students about the idea of Canva or Photoshop or video editing, but we were then able to talk to them about branding and marketing and Google Analytics. And so that idea really made us think, let’s be a little bit more focused, a little bit more pointed. And so our next class that we did, we piloted a class in this past June called Careers for Education. Because we are finding that a lot of our students are working in special needs schools. They’re working in camps, they’re working in youth centers. And so we did a four session class about what does it mean, and what are helpful tips and tricks to work in a school, using Google Docs, thinking about project management, all of those types of things. This fall, we’re offering two classes, one in digital entrepreneurship, which I’m really excited about, it’s a six week class online, and the other one is gonna be a longer class in data analytics. And when I say data analytics, it sounds really hard and whatever, but all it is, is Excel. Teaching Excel, because that is the heart of data analytics for an entry level job. So these are all things that we’re thinking about, these sort of career pathways related to entry level jobs. How do you get your foot in the door? Because if you can’t say that you know a little bit about Google Analytics, if you’re applying for a social media job, then you’re not gonna get the job. I do wanna say something about the type of student that really thrives a tech unlimited. And this is my own made up word. I based tech unlimited on what I know based on my own experience as a parent. And I would say that there is a new type of student in a way that I am calling a mid-level neurodiverse student. This is a student who has language, maybe not a lot of language, but they have some expressive language and they have average IQ, not off the charts, but average IQ. And they are able to sit and to listen. And they may have learning disabilities, they may not be great readers, they may have dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, they probably have ADHD, they probably have sensory challenges, the lights in this room, the humming, and of course the executive functioning. So the combination of all of that between the ADHD, various different characteristics, maybe there’s some mental health things like OCD. That is our student. 

ADAM:  That’s a really helpful profile. Tell our listeners what role do soft skills, like time management, collaboration and humility, play in preparing young people for employment? 

BETH:  The soft skills are massively important and I wish that parents could see that. I wish that we could, as parents, really put the academics aside, no one says what was your grade point average in high school or even college? No one cares. They don’t care. But when you’re sitting down at an interview, if you can’t have a chitchat, if you can’t say to someone, that’s a very nice suit that you’re wearing. Only because you want to dig in and have a conversation with them, then that becomes really difficult for these students in terms of jobs. So what we are seeing is that teaching students tech skills, using our supportive and inclusive methodology is easy. The piece that is hard is the soft skills. And things like saying good morning, walk again on a Friday and saying good morning. Or if you see that someone’s in a meeting, don’t run up to them and say, oh, Beth, I have to ask you this question. You have to say, Beth, I see you’re in the meeting. Or I’m going to wait until you’re finished with your meeting. But don’t run and cut into the meeting. These different types of skills around the water cooler, that hidden curriculum, skills around the water cooler, whatever they are. See, the thing is, is that we as parents can really practice these skills, things like bringing your dishes to the sink when you finish eating. Or when you leave your house to say, bye everyone, have a nice day. Little things like that. 

ADAM:  So give me your take on AI specifically as it pertains to special education students. 

BETH:  There are positives and negatives with AI, but for special ed students, I do see a lot of wonderful things in regard to AI. If you’re a student who is dyslexic and you can draft out your paper with AI, that doesn’t mean that you are handing in an AI paper, but you are getting an outline from AI. I say, great. What’s wrong with that? Versus sitting there and struggling and struggling and feeling bad about yourself that you can’t understand the words on the page. That is a great, I think, example of AI. There are lots of different researchers that are doing various different things about using AI to model soft skills and language as well, especially if you are a non-speaking individual. So I think that AI can really be a game changer for our students if it’s used well. Now where I see AI problematic is that when the student relies on AI so much that they are losing their own ability to think. And I do see that actually in my own undergraduate and graduate classes, and that scares me. 

ADAM:  All right. Talk about transferable skills and how they translate into real employment opportunities. 

BETH:  I think transferable skills are like the most important thing. And when I say transferable skills, what I mean is that if you have a student who loves Thomas the Tank Engine or the Titanic, as I said before, and they are researching and researching and going deep into the various different episodes and when did certain trains appear and et cetera, I think that that is a transferable skill. To understand how to research something is great. We all need to be researchers all the time. I think that is a great transferable skill. A transferable skill is something like, for example, if you have your child help you go food shopping, right? And you give them a list in the front of the store and you say, okay, now you need to find me those five items. And they have to walk around, figure out, okay, the cookies are going to be with the crackers. Okay, that makes sense. Maybe the gluten-free ones are there or maybe there’s a separate gluten-free aisle. I’m going to check or if I don’t know, I’m going to see that man over there who is unpacking groceries. I’m going to go and ask him, where’s the applesauce? That is a transferable skill. So those types of things we need to have our students do more and more of that because those are skills that you need in the workplace. You need research in the workplace. You need to be able to find things in the workplace. You need to be able to ask someone for something in the workplace. You need to be able to go into Domino’s Pizza and don’t order for your kid. Say to your kid, I’m having the pepperoni pizza and what are you having, Susan? You tell them, Mom. You tell them. No, you can tell them what you’re having. Oh, okay. I’m going to have the white cheese pizza. And that is a transferable skill. We need to do more of that. And parents, I feel like need to realize that and cut it with the academics. Cut it. Again, the SAT, the ACT, the this, that, the other thing. School is great. I’m an educator. I believe in school. But you know what I think school really teaches you? School teaches you how to get along with other people. How to make a friend. How to problem solve. How to collaborate. And hopefully the most important thing. A little bit of criticality. How to look around and be like, oh, that may not be right. I don’t agree with that author. Maybe I should agree with this person instead. That’s what school in my humble opinion teaches. 

ADAM:  Okay, really interesting. My brain is firing in terms of things to do with my own children. You know, I think these are good tips for any parent, whether they have neurodiverse children or not. My kids love going to the Nut Factory. They love doing math. I’m thinking about next time we go, let’s make it a math exercise. But I agree with you. It brings me back to a book called Sabretooth Curriculum. I don’t know if you ever heard of it. I forget the author, but it’s all about how the curriculum in school is so outdated. It was created when there were certain needs in society. The needs have changed, but the curriculum hasn’t updated. And that’s where we are. So, so important to focus on things that are practical for the real world and employment situations. Beth, you started the ASD workforce coalition, autism spectrum disorder workforce coalition about a year and a half ago, I think. Late 2023. 

BETH:  Okay. 

ADAM:  What is it and what motivated you to create it? 

BETH:  So, there’s many wonderful disability organizations in New York. And I just feel like we all need to talk to each other more. And we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every single time someone is doing a program for special needs students. So, I decided that we would meet every six weeks for one hour and I would invite tons of nonprofit organizations. And so, we have the Mayor’s Office for Disability on it. We have the Intrepid Museum, which does wonderful programs for people with disabilities. We have job path. We have HRC. We have tons of organizations, nonprofits, who are all trying to wrap their head around students with disabilities. Very much around internships because internships, as we know, can lead to jobs. And that is what we all want. We want to see these students who we feel are capable, employed in society and not just to continue to rely on either the 4F disability model or the other model, which is like Microsoft and Ernst Young, etc. saying, oh, we have an autism program, but they’re only hiring the PhD, low support, high functioning individuals. Those seem to be the two models. Isn’t there anything in between? And that was what I wanted. I wanted to see, could there be something in between? Could we think of internships and programs and even collaborate together? And so, we get on the phone every six weeks and it’s a bunch of passionate people who are educators, parents who have started autism entrepreneurship organizations like Invictus, Bakery, in Brooklyn. And we get on the phone and we think about the system and we think about how can we change the system. 

ADAM:  I applaud that. I see special education schools, private ones doing this type of work. I see private companies or nonprofits doing this type of work. I think of a rose farm in Connecticut that employs individuals with special needs. I don’t see enough of this happening on a national or societal level and I think what you’re doing with this coalition is so important. 

BETH:  Thank you. 

ANNOUNCER:  So email your feedback to podcast @ Dayanlawfarm.com. 

ADAM:  Beth, how do you help parents understand the difference between advocating for their child and unintentionally enabling them? 

BETH:  I think as parents we’re all guilty of something called learned helplessness. We help our kids a little too much. Am I guilty of it? Yes. Why did I wake up at 6.30 in the morning and make my son breakfast and lunch? He absolutely can do it. And then I get nervous. Well, if he doesn’t wake up on time and he doesn’t make it and he goes to work late, are they going to get upset? Will they fire him? Whatever. So I figure, oh, I’m just going to do it myself. And part of me enjoys doing it. Who doesn’t like making your child a healthy breakfast? That’s learned helplessness. I’m not doing anything good for my kid when I do that and I shouldn’t be doing it, but I do. So I am enabling him. And so that’s not good. We should expect and we should have our children do those types of things because the more that we do for them, the less independence that they are taking for themselves. And at the end of the day, we need and want our kids to be independent. 

ADAM:  We’ve all heard the expression, little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems. I’ve heard you use that expression yourself. How should families prepare for those bigger challenges down the road? 

BETH:  Students with special needs get older and the type of student that we work with at Tech Unlimited back to this idea of the mid-level neurodiverse student, these students know that they are different than their sibling, than their person down the block. They know it. And the big piece, one of my colleagues once told me, she said anxiety is the biggest killer. It’s the biggest killer for these kids because anxiety has multiple forms. It comes, you get the depression and then you get the OCD and… 

ADAM:  Raising my hand over here. 

BETH:  We all have it a little bit. It can become debilitating, right? When anxiety becomes debilitating, when OCD or something like it becomes debilitating, then that’s when the really hard stuff happens. I don’t have the magic answer. I just know that our role as parents is never complete. But the more that you can get into your kid’s life, the better. Like, watch South Park with them. It’s funny. Ask them for the recommendations of what they’re watching on Netflix. If they’re telling you they’re watching Abbott Elementary, go ahead and watch it. Or watch Ted Lasso with them. Discuss it afterwards and say, wow, there was a lesson in here. Did you understand what was happening? I think that the more you could sort of like spend time, the old-fashioned thing, of spending time with your kid and really talking with them and just seeing what their likes and dislikes are. That leads to hopefully a stronger relationship so that when they are depressed and they are feeling under the table, that they will understand that I can go to my parents. 

ADAM:  I agree with you. I think that was very well said. It can be hard at times. I think about my kids and TV. Sometimes they’re watching something that maybe if it’s about dating in high school and they’re not anywhere near that age yet can seem a little bit inappropriate, maybe the impulses to just shut it off or change the channel. But there’s an opportunity there as long as it’s not wildly inappropriate to watch it with them. See what’s happening in the scene. Discuss it with them. Make it a teachable moment. I think that takes some courage to lean in and grapple with it. It might be easier to change the channel, shut it off or say no, but to foster that relationship where you can talk about anything and they’re comfortable opening up to you. 

BETH:  That’s invaluable. 

ADAM:  If you can nurture that type of relationship with your child, where you can talk about even the most difficult subjects that are really tap into, how are they experiencing this thing? That’s priceless. 

BETH:  I want to tell you about this project that we’re doing. We just got an incredible grant from Young Futures Academy and we are going to have our students create videos of their favorite video games. And in the students’ videos, the students will be talking to their parents, caregivers, etcetera, families about what they love about those particular videos. And the project is called Play My Way. And we’re really excited about it because we’re going to have 10 videos where students will be playing their own video that they love. But then they’re going to be actually instructing and helping parents understand why do they play that video? What are they feeling when they play that video? I think that that’s so important to have that intergenerational connect. 

ADAM:  Yes, love that. All right, two-part question. What’s the biggest shift you’d like to see in workforce development and philanthropy for young adults with autism? 

BETH:  It’s such a great question. So as you said before, we know that schools are antiquated. Neurotypical and neurodivergent folks are graduating high school and the leap to find a job is gigantic. I feel like internships are very, very, very important. But in order to get an internship, you have to have skills. Coming back to Tech Unlimited, that is where we are teaching you employable skills. And we are teaching you specific technology, software, all open source, all free, etcetera. We’re teaching you all of that. You have to have those skills. You want to be able to look at a resume in the work world that says, I can do Google Docs, I can do Canva, I can do Excel, I can do PowerPoint, I know Premiere, etcetera. You want that. I think that upskilling is very important. And if you think long-term about your student, your child, and where you want them to be, coming to a program like Tech Unlimited, and there are other wonderful programs there, a bakery program, the teachers had to be a bakery, other programs like that that are skill-related programs. That is the best thing that you can do for your child. In terms of philanthropy, philanthropy, in my humble opinion, wants to always see specific results. And at the end of the day, workforce philanthropy in particular wants to see how many jobs you have created for your students. I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. I think that work means many different things to many different people. So workforce philanthropy is very complex. I feel very lucky at Tech Unlimited that we have a set of 25 funders that we work very hard to work with and writing grants and who are supporting us, who understand our kids. They understand that there’s no race to the finish line. They understand that our students take many more years to develop and that they need to be up-skilled repeatedly, and that also they understand that the social worker aspect is incredibly important. One of the things about Tech Unlimited that I really love, and that’s why I encourage people to send their children to work with us, is that we are a community. We are an anti-bullying, no-bullying, kind, inclusive community. Sometimes our students, for the very first time, being surrounded by students like themselves in a specialized environment or multiple different schools, whether it’s online or in person, there’s a real sense of relief. There’s a real sense of comfort, of being surrounded by a bunch of techies that are like them. 

ADAM:  So before we wrap up, I know you were talking about your different programs earlier. I think we covered three out of five. Was there anything else you wanted to mention about the others briefly? 

BETH:  Yes, I do want to say we have this one program and it is really the cherry on the cake. And the program is called Career Ready Internship Summer Program, and this is an invite-only program. So this means, this is all the more reason to join Tech Unlimited. This means that when the student is about 17, between 17 and 24, after they have taken multiple workshops at Tech Unlimited, if our education staff feels that they are developed mentally and technologically able to have an internship, which is a 20-hour-week internship at a specific site, then we will give them that internship. So this summer, we had 25 of our students who worked at 18 different organizations, including Con Edison, small businesses, website design shops, etc. And it’s all guided by a team of social workers who give them support and workplace etiquette during the six-week program. If the student is not ready to do this six-week program, we also have a three-week program that really any of our students that have been in our programs can join in the summer. But the key thing is, if you don’t have the tech skills, we can’t invite you to either of the programs. So just start getting the tech skills. 

ADAM:  That’s right. Finally, is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners? 

BETH:  As parents, we’re on a journey. And I said this before, it’s a hard journey. And I get a little choked up when I say this, because I really believe that we can make the world a better place if we all work together. 

ADAM:  It was a pleasure to have you. That’s a really nice note to end on. This has been a great conversation about all things tech. I appreciate all the insights you’ve shared with our listeners about how individuals with special needs, neurodiverse individuals can gain the skills and experience that they need to flourish in the working world. And I’m excited to follow tech unlimited’s growth in the future. Thank you so much for being here. 

BETH:  Thank you for having me again. 

ANNOUNCER:  Thanks for listening to Curious Incident, a podcast for special needs families. Don’t forget to subscribe for a new episode every month. For more resources and helpful information, check out our website and blog@dayanlawfirm.com. This podcast provides general information which is not intended to and does not constitute legal advice. You should not rely on this information for any purpose. For legal counsel, you should consult with an attorney to discuss your specific circumstances. You’re listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-quiet relationship between you and the law offices of Adam Dayan, PLLC. No attorney-quiet relationship is established unless a retainer agreement has been executed between the clients and the law offices of Adam Dayon. This podcast may constitute attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any guest featured or resources mentioned on this podcast are for information purposes and are not endorsed by the law offices of Adam Dayan, PLLC.