Welcome to 2021! Perhaps this new year, more than any other most of us have experienced, we hope the next 12 months will treat us better than the last 12 have. The year 2020 will go down in history as one of the most memorable, with COVID, racial unrest, nation-wide protests, a tense presidential election, hurricanes, and wildfires captured in many of the mental pictures we keep in our personal scrapbooks. How can such a tiny object, such as a microscopic virus, affect every person’s behavior and change the world? The story is still unfolding, and 2021 will reveal more to us about it. Maybe this year (oh please!) the COVID vaccine will allow our lives to return to something resembling “normal”; probably a new normal, but one that provides us more freedom than we now have. May the lessons we’ve learned this past year draw us forward into more unity, thoughtfulness, kindness, giving, and whatever additional traits we need to develop. We’ve had a bumpy start to 2021 in the United States; we can only hope that things level out sometime soon.

At Temple Grandin School, 2021 represents our 10th year of offering individualized, socio-academic education. We’ve had 84 students pass through our doors since we opened those doors in 2011. Twenty-three of those students have left with graduation caps on their heads. It has been a decade of learning about learning: about how we can foster education for those with agile minds who don’t fit the traditional student mold, how we can involve the whole person in the process, and how we can create a community of learners who support each other in good times and in difficult times.

This year, to celebrate our tenth anniversary, we are pondering the Power of 10. We will soon release the first of ten videos that cover ten different topics you might find interesting, such as ten surprising careers for people with Aspergers, ten answers to ten questions asked by parents of neurodiverse kids, ten great colleges for Aspies, ten dating tips for people with Aspergers, and more. We will let you know as soon as our first video is available. We hope to provide you with valuable content that will answer questions you might have about all kinds of life topics applicable to the neurodiverse. Please let us know in the comments if you have a question or subject you’d like us to explore!

Also in celebration of our ten years, we are getting back into the groove of publishing blog posts. After a four-year hiatus, we are focusing again on offering content regularly. Looking at education and current events through neurodiverse eyes, we have some fresh knowledge from our decade of education that we’d like to share, and we have some opinions about things happening around the world. We consider ourselves thought leaders in education for the neurodiverse, and we’d like to offer what we’ve learned as a way of giving back to the community that has invested so generously in us.

That includes you. If you’re reading this blog post, you have some stake in the world of neurodiverse education. Maybe you’re the parent of a twice-exceptional person who has struggled in school. Perhaps you’re a teacher who knows that we can offer more to our young people who need more individualized learning experiences. You might be an employer who wants to invest in a generation of students who have unique gifts and interests. Whoever you are, thank you for reading our blog and being part of our community. We look forward to connecting with you!