Make Way for the Next Generation of Advocates!

I want to share a story about an exceptional young woman, Erika Pumilia. Erika is 17 years old and a senior in Kingston High School, located in Kingston, New York. What makes Erika so extraordinary? In 2005, at age 15, she initiated an autism awareness club in her school.

It’s called Learning Educating about Autism Diversity (LEAAD) and has roughly 15 members, all of whom are high school students like Erika. LEAAD isn’t a peer-mentoring program; it’s much more than that. Erika explains, “I think schools that have peer mentoring programs mostly do it to cover themselves. So that they can claim they provide social interaction” for kids on the autism spectrum. Such programs, she feels, are overly focused on fulfilling IEP goals and satisfying state and federal mandates. “But it’s almost like the kids are forced to do it, like they have no choice,” Erika says. That’s when socializing begins to feel disingenuous and, in her mind, any opportunity for real friendship is spoiled.

Erika’s take on what a peer-mentoring program should do comes from a fresh, humanistic outlook, rather than a bureaucratic one. “Everybody needs a friend,” she says. “No one should come to school and not have a friend.” That’s where she and members of LEAAD come in. Their efforts range from hosting “chats” that bring members of LEAAD and autistic students together for formal and informal group activities, to sponsoring dances for individuals with autism who attend their school. “We heard that they never go to prom, so we made one for them.” Erika also had t-shirts printed up to represent their club and raise awareness about ASDs. Members wear them to school to get fellow students to rethink their attitudes toward classmates in special education. It’s tough sometimes,” she adds, because she and fellow club members often hear jeers in the hallways from peers who just don’t seem to understand what life is like for a student with a disability. Even posters for LEAAD sponsored events have been vandalized. “But in spite of this, we keep going.”

The way students with autism are targeted or completely ignored in schools was one of Erika’s chief concerns when she founded LEAAD. “In the hallways, when students with autism walk by, we say hello to them.” This, she feels, will ultimately influence her fellow classmates and how they perceive students with disabilities. Recently, her club was able to have language in the Kingston High School’s code of conduct amended to include protection of people with intellectual differences from being persecuted on school premises. In the same way that a student might be suspended for calling out racial slurs in the hallways, students who use the word “retard” or other derogatory language about peers with disabilities will face the same disciplinary actions.

After graduation, Erika plans to get her masters degree in special education, with emphasis in the fields of autism. “I want to start my own school for kids with ASDs,” she says. Educators and experts of the older generations have done what they can to support autistic children, but Erika feels that there is much more to do. “Autism is here, and it isn’t going away. It’s up to my generation to make it better.”

My hat is off to Erika Pumilia and members of LEAAD. Witnessing a self-initiated peer program like this brings joy to this mom’s heart! Had my own son had friends like these in public school, he might have felt more a part of the place which, on the books, he had every legal right to enjoy, yet in practice, was never authentically provided. Let’s hear it for the next generation of advocates!

—Valerie Paradiz
Entered 677 days ago

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Integrated Self-Advocacy ISA℠

Integrated Self Advocacy helps us, as professionals and family members, to provide children and adults with ASD and other conditions with safe forums for self-discovery, structured learning activities and a cumulative understanding of the many facets of self-advocacy. More..

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