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Sun, 09/26/2010 - 10:06 — jimw

What am I interested in? Well, a few things. I am very interested in "special education". I have a daughter who has autism, is bipolar, and is mentally retarded, or so they say, because of her low IQ. I am interested in ensuring that she, and other kids with special needs, have the same opportunities as regular kids. We've fought with our school district. We've struggled with her behaviors. Our persistence finally got her placed in an approved private school while she was in the 9th grade. Our hopes for her to grow at Elwyn never happened because of a breakdown she had when she first got there. Then after being there for 4 years and not really improving, we had her transferred to the IU program at Don Guanella school for her last year in education. And then, unfortunately, she had another breakdown. She recovered much better this time and was improving tremendously, but this stopped since she was 21 and this ended her education.

I was on a Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare Children's Behavioral Health Taskforce. I was co-facilitator of the Transition committee. To read more about this task force, please click on this link.

I have been a member of the Springfield School District Special Education Advisory Council for the past 5 years or so.

I also like to volunteer for things. At work we were allowed to volunteer 40 hours of time for Project HeadStart. I spent some time during the summer helping out at a Project HeadStart facility in Chester, PA. It was a very rewarding experience. I participated in this for 5 years.

Also at work, I was a volunteer on the company's IT Newsletter. I have written a couple of articles and gotten some good recognition not only by my department but also from our parent company, PNC.

I'm also interested in technology, using technology as the appropriate tool. My best friend and I started a company to build software. I've built computer programs for my daughter to help her in school. I teach about computers and computer applications to the adult community where I live.

What about hobbies? I like to watch movies, mostly funny ones and science fiction. I like to listen to music as does my wife and 2 daughters. I recently bought an iPod which I use to carry around our complete family library of CDs. I still need to get my vinyl LPs digitized so I can store them on my iPod.



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