Originally posted July 28, 2018. [Watch the fun 90-second video below!]
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My kiddo is 16 today! He’s headed 3,000 miles away to Tufts on Tuesday for an internship with Tufts Biomedical Engineering Silk Lab (where they are pioneering medical and other breakthroughs applications using the building blocks of natural silk proteins!) The director of the program invited A.J. to participate in this summer program last September when he was only 15, but he had to be 16 years old to participate!
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One of the casualties of the past 2+ years of persecution of my advocacy work has been not having enough funds to cover appropriate educational enrichment opportunities for my kids (especially given their disabilities from being lead poisoned as babies.) We have had to figure out enrichment activities we can encourage at home (with little-to-no-cost) as well as creative, out-of-the-box educational alternatives.
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A.J. was lead poisoned as a toddler – when he was just 3 years old. As a result he has Dyslexia, severe Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and has had other significant challenges (including crippling GI issues classified as “abdominal migraines”) he has had to overcome in his 16 short years to get where he is.
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High school was overwhleming (so many subjects and so many kids in each classroom and so much going on each day, way too much sensory input for a kid with severe SPD) and he was failing. So – when he was just 14 years old – we enrolled him in college at Portland State University (PSU) where he could take fewer classes and could choose classes that interest him, classes that he would be able to focus in and that he would excel at (because he wasn’t overwhlemed), and be able to get appropriate academic support if he needed it. It worked! This Spring, at 15 years old, he just completed his 6th semester of college at PSU and has a 3.91 GPA!
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This video of my AJ (with his 13-year-old little brother Avi, who was 7 months old when he was poisoned) rehearsing this song (a collaborative project they hatched entirely of their own accord!) conveys so much:
• It shows my boys’ love of science and of music (it’s the Elements Song by Tom Lehrer.)
• It shows A.J.’s (self-taught) nascent piano playing (he’s a very gifted Trumpet player, but he’s just started also “fooling around with” euphonium, guitar and piano!)
• It shows Avi (my 13 year old) learning to *read* on his own terms with the help of his big brother, in defiance of his brain injury (that specifically pretty much destroyed his visual memory apparatus, which is required for “normal” reading) — by recognizing and memorizing the *shape* of complex words!].
• It shows (I hope) Avi’s amazingly good sense of pitch!
• And best of all, it shows two brothers having a blast creating together!
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These are really good kids who have been through way too much in recent years and they each deserve the opportunities that we just cannot afford these days. If you are in a position to contribute to help make A.J.’s internship happen that would be amazing. While the internship is free, and I managed to find him free housing for the month – I borrowed $ to cover his flight there & we still need to come up with $ for his return flight, for incidentals, for ground transportation and food for his trip. I would truly appreciate any and all help to make his experience a postive one all the way around.
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Below is the link to the PayPal Money Pool we put together to help with the costs related to this once-in-a-lifetime internship opportunity for this brilliant kiddo (there’s no fee taken out for contributions with the MoneyPool option!) Any amount helps. Thank you.
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Tom Lehrer’s “Elements Song” Rubin Boys from Tamara Rubin on Vimeo.
wow! i can’t believe he memorized all of those! just thinking of doing that gives me a headache! LOL! and what great singing and wow that piano! wow wow!
That’s my reaction exactly! 🙂