Description: Borrowing from Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” Ann and Rud will use their family story with a focus on their son, Jay, to emphasize how families can divert from the segregation road to the inclusion road. They will describe a group solution-finding process that they used, Group Action Planning, which involves forming reliable alliances to generate energy and joy in creating supports for inclusive living. They will bring Group Action Planning alive through video clips of their family and reliable allies.
Trainers: Rud and Ann Turnbull are Emerti Distinguished Professors in the Department of Special Education and Co-founders/Co-directors of the Beach Center on Disability at the University of Kansas. They are co-authors of two leading textbooks in the field of special education – Exceptional Lives: Special Education in Today’s Schools and Families, Professionals, and Exceptionality: Positive Outcomes Through Partnerships and Trust. Their combined publication record includes approximately 45 books, 425 articles, and 100 chapters. In 1999, both were selected as two of 36 individuals who have “changed the course of history in the 20th century” for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. They are the parents of three children, one of whom, Jay (1967-2009), experienced multiple disabilities, and yet had an “enviable life” of equality of opportunity, independent living, full participation, and partial economic self-sufficiency. They say, “Jay was our best professor.”
UNC Chapel Hill – Family Focus and Disability Lecture Series Programs 