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Time for wake up calls.
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Good morning, campers! This is Gina.
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And this is Tina,
with your morning announcements.
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Today's thought,
if at first you don't succeed...
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Don't try skydiving.
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Some of our campers
do not have the language yet
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to put into complete sentences
what it is they need.
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And they're trusting us to care for them.
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They are some of the bravest kids
in the world.
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Our campers all use
speech-generating devices as their voices.
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Nickel. Five cent.
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Some of them sign.
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Some of them point and gesture
and use their bodies.
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They've figured out all kinds
of different ways to talk
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and to have relationships with people.
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Near.
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At.
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Dinner.
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My...
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name...
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is...
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Katie.
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Good morning, Katie.
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Good morning.
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Of.
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Most of our kids go to school
with neurotypical kids every day.
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Here, they're like everybody else.
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Oh, awesome.
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There are a lot of challenges
in using AAC devices.
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Batteries run low.
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They die.
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It takes a lot of practice.
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Everybody around you needs to use
that AAC device.
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Message window.
Message window.
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- It's scanning.
- Make questions.
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Message window.
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Message window. Message window.
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She's actually using what we call
proximity switches at the moment,
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so they're close to her.
When she moves her head towards them,
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they pick up that movement
and that's what triggers them off.
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So one moves the boxes, and then
when she gets to the row she wants,
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she uses the other side
and that's like a selector.
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- It's pretty hard work.
- Message window.
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Message window.
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Patience is really important.
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I can't just go up to a camper and say,
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"Hey, tell me what you did last night."
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Campers need to think about
what they wanna say,
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and then they build it.
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D...
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E...
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V...
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We want them to know
that their voices are heard.
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You gotta say it.
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Toothpaste.
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Can you turn
your volume up a little bit, bud?
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Toothpaste?
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Toothpaste was in the Oreos?
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I think we tend to underestimate
kids with complex bodies.
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We have amazingly creative, smart kids.
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And we have kids that struggle, too.
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They're just normal kids.
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The core focus of camp
is the literacy portion of camp,
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based on the work of doctors
Karen Erickson and David Koppenhaver.
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Think about what the poodle look like.
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The poodle looks small.
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The poodle look fluffy.
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We started Camp ALEC
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'cause we knew there was this group
of kids out there
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who had all kinds of potential
that wasn't being tapped
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in a typical school environment.
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If you use a computer
to talk to the world,
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the only way you're ever gonna be able
to say everything you want to say,
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is if I teach you how to spell.
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Camp allows us to gather teachers,
speech language pathologists,
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and other kinds of therapists
who really value
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what the gifts and talents are
that these kids have.
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Leo, do you have a guess
of an animal before we get a clue?
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- A dog?
- Oh. Leo's guessing a dog.
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- All right, Denise.
- Good guess.
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I'm half duck
and half otter?
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Yes or no, do you think
it's a velociraptor?
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Yeah? Is that our guess? Velociraptor?
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All right. Let's see if we're right.
Hailey, what is it?
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- A platypus.
- Oh, a platypus?
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Have you ever heard of a platypus?
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Do you guys wanna see
a video of a platypus?
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- Hailey does.
- Hailey loves her animals.
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This is called platypus,
the world's strangest animal.
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Hailey is a rock star in terms
of how she communicates.
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She will work to get that message across,
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and I love that about her.
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One of the biggest challenges
in learning to read
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when you don't have the ability to speak
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is developing what we call an inner voice.
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We think linguistically
while we're reading.
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The ability to do that happens some time
developmentally during childhood.
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For the campers who come here,
they never had that ability,
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and so one of our biggest challenges
is helping them learn
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to use that inner speech.
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Okay.
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Oh, that's about it.
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Can we say goodnight?
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Goodnight, Emily.
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Goodnight, Katie.
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Goodnight, Lily.
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Goodnight, Hailey.
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Sweet dreams.
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As a speech language pathologist
and as a mom,
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I don't like to use the word non-verbal.
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I prefer non-speaking.
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My son, Mateo, has apraxia and dysarthria.
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It's difficult for him
to communicate verbally.
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He's more persistent and hardworking
than anybody I know.
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I love you, too.
You're welcome.
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At the end of the day, I just want Mateo
to be comfortable with who he is.
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I want him to have all the same
opportunities as everybody else.
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Okay. So, Alec, uh, was my son.
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He used a power-wheelchair to drive,
controlled by a head switch.
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He'd have sweat pouring down his face
to try to get his point across.
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And he passed away at the age of 15.
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And so, because it was our dream
to get him to read and write...
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we began this camp in his name.
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We know that at camp,
we can't change a child's literacy life
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during this five or six days
that they're here.
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But what the kids leave with,
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is a really carefully
thought through plan.
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Year after year, we see campers come back
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who it's really clear that people
took those recommendations to heart.
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We see kids who, at ten and twelve,
couldn't read at all,
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who at 14 and 15,
are reading and writing
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in all kinds of sophisticated ways.
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Our kids have that right
to be able to live and work
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and love in their community, regardless
of how they communicate
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or how they move their bodies.
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Our kids' voices should be
no less powerful than anybody else's.
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This camp has allowed me
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to stay in the world of kids like Alec.
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It's given me a purpose again,
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if not for my own son,
then for other children.
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I believe the work
we do here is life-changing...
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because they know
that if you take the time...
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their voice will be heard.
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