Learning Ally Blog: Access and Achievement

Story by Tony Gruenewald Learning Ally's YES! Program's Celebrating Success 2015 NJ event on Saturday, October 24 was quite a success! A crowd of YES! ambassador mentors and mentees and their parents overflowed our conference rooms to hear inspirational stories from Juli Cunning, a teacher at Pennington's Cambridge School who has dyslexia, Will Marsh, an award-winning student at St. Joseph's University with dyslexia, and longtime YES! ambassador Victoria True. There were also assistive technology demonstrations and a pizza party for attendees. More than two dozen members had the opportunity to record in the Princeton studio booths. Volunteers Cindy Stetz, Tony Brickman, Bob Kolker, Karen Miller, and Anne Rudisill directed recordings by the members who were prompted to create an audio time capsule to their future selves about what they'd learned that day. They received their recordings on flash drives that also contained information to help them now. The volunteers loved working with the YES! members and meeting some of the people for whom they work so hard. Staff members Dave Kozemchak, Michael Kinsey, Barbara Greene, Tom McCartney, and Tony Gruenewald helped organize the sessions, convert the recordings to mp3s, and distribute the flash drives. Learn more about Learning Ally's YES! Program or check out our Explore1in5.org website and see how students and parents are sharing stories and helping each other.