Stories of Bridgeway House: Tasha and Moira

Presenter: We’re visiting with the extended family of students, teachers, parents, grandparents, staff, and volunteers at Bridgeway House. We had the chance to visit with some of the students at Bridgeway.

Tasha: My name is Tasha.

Presenter: And we had the chance to talk with some of the parents. Tasha’s mom Moira Kiltie:

Moira Kiltie: I became aware of Bridgeway initially around out-of-school supports, so social programs and summer camps.

[00:00:28] And then as the gap between my daughter’s development and the kids in her mainstream class were becoming so much bigger, the boys started actually maturing, didn’t want to play the same way. The girls had moved on. It was really the best place for her to be, around folks that got it.

[00:00:46] And I’m going to give a shout out to Pleasant Hill’s school system (and Go Billies!) because they recognized that their tight resources, they couldn’t really support her this way. But they were open and very supportive of her coming to Bridgeway and have been ever since.

[00:01:01] They’ve told me, ‘Once she’s a Billie, she’s always a Billie.’ And that’s really given us as a family a lot of confidence and I think also Bridgeway, a lot of confidence that we’re here and that the school system supports it.

[00:01:13] So she came in, just around fourth grade, into (the start of) fourth grade, and has been here ever since. I think she’s an 11th-grader now. We do things a little differently. And what it did for her and was very clear initially was, it brought her anxiety down.

[00:01:27] She was starting to have some behaviors that didn’t seem core to her. And I think that was ’cause she has communication disorders and she couldn’t express herself. She was distracted by lots of things and she could tell that the kids that she used to play with, you know, were no longer engaging with her.

[00:01:45] And so coming to Bridgeway, there were adults that understood. There were kiddos that were parallel, doing the same things that she was. And there were lots of other supports: things in the classroom, seating arrangements, and squeeze toys and heavy vests and things.

[00:02:05] Tash has intellectual and developmental disabilities. You know, autism is a piece of it. And we’re able to watch her progress at her level and at her time. And she does keep progressing. And the people around her get that.

[00:02:19] And the norms of the (public) school system, which they need to have, but it doesn’t work for her, or her peers. So that’s how we got engaged and that’s sort of why we value it so much. It helps.

[00:02:32] And then there’s all these wonderful other things that we do here. We have the social nights on Fridays, particularly as kiddos get to be teenagers. My daughter will kind of be perpetually a five- to eight-year-old in many emotional and other developmental ways. But she’s a teenager and she needs that social interaction, even if she’s still at parallel play. So those Friday night socials are really terrific. And still with the camps, the dance opportunities.

[00:03:01] We’ve had some, really fun, other social engagements, like a Valentine’s Day party that the kids up at Sheldon helped put on. And then they brought kids from their special education classes in as well.

And particularly this age group, this teenage age group, KindTree Autism Rocks has lots of great programming too, but there’s a lot of young young adults, a little bit older than our kids. There’s a bit of a gap. There’s more things for kiddos when they’re little.

[00:03:28] So, Bridgeway fills that gap too, academically and with these social programs. And there’s nothing else. I mean, like the ARC is a great program here in Lane County. But again, they tend to focus on those little kiddos and a broader range of developmental disabilities.

[00:03:45] We’re fortunate here in Oregon to have a number of programs. Bridgeway really fills a particular gap on the academic side, but also on the sort of social networking side for the kiddos and the young adults.

[00:03:59] So most of the students here are seeing some kind of media, and so they’re aware of, my daughter is still very interested in preschool, like Nickelodeon things. But she still sees, you know, on Dora, they have the quinceañeras and they have fiestas and Dora has grown up a little bit. So she has Valentine’s parties and she wants to have that experience too. And the other kids, they have other media that they’re interested in.

[00:04:25] So even if the social interactions may feel different to sort of neurotypicals, there’s a lot of stuff that folks want that are the same, regardless of what your neural networks are.

[00:04:37] Bridgeway has been a source of not just support, but I think inspiration to do things. And of course it also, it’s not just Lane County, it’s kind of shocking to me how many districts come here—and kiddos coming from long, long ways away. So people are making sacrifices to come here.

[00:04:57] We have it really convenient for us, but I don’t want to forget just how unique this is. Most counties don’t have something like this. Most towns don’t have something like this.

[00:05:08] And have to struggle through the public school system, which tries, you know, there’s a lot of criticism and I get it. And people have had difficult situations, and I don’t want to take away from that. But there are a lot of great professionals trying, but the resources aren’t there and the concentrated resources aren’t there, which we have here, and we need more, but it is concentrated on a particular population.

[00:05:31] Kids with disabilities, neurodivergent folks find their worlds shrink and shrink and shrink. It was a lot easier when Tasha was little and cute. She might have been wacky, but people invited her to birthday parties. They were willing to bring her into, you know, Eugene Park Rec and Willamalane and stuff.

But when you get to be what looks like an adult, and Tash has all the outer trappings of a neurotypical kiddo, but her behaviors are neurodivergent, it’s harder for her and it’s harder for people to continue engaging with her.

So this sort of almost family network in the school, means that there’s at least some continuity of people who care for her and know her and tell her she’s great. And it’s harder and harder to have in just natural life, and you’ll hear this from other folks with kids and the young adults with disabilities.

[00:06:20] So I think that the way they’ve structured it is really important. And Tasha is quite active. And so the smaller classroom, having a good ratio of adults to the students helps her get focused, helps her not create distraction for others. Like they can take her out and go to the gym and get some of that energy out and bring her back.

[00:06:44] If a classmate’s getting all stirred up, they can go out, jump on the trampoline, or go on the exercise bicycle, come back, and so she can then do her academics and so they have enough adults to make it happen. (And help the teacher kind of keep things moving forward.)

You know, at Pleasant Hill, I think every one of the general ed teachers wanted to mainstream with Tash, but they just didn’t have the in-room help. And by the time they got to fourth grade, it was just too much. And they had 32 fourth-graders with a part-time aide.

[00:07:22] So, I’ve just felt so fortunate for her.

[00:07:26] So, like anything else that supports folks with lots of needs, it’s really expensive. And Bridgeway does a lot with a little and for the broader community to keep providing support with or through resources directly to Bridgeway, or going to their own local school boards and making sure that special education is supported by the district, by the state, and by the federal government, making their voices heard is so important, particularly right now.

[00:07:58] And particularly in Bridgeway’s moment as well, where finances are (obviously) stretched really thin.

[00:08:04] Presenter: You can donate to Bridgeway House at the website BridgewayHouse.org, or call  (541) 345-0805.

During summer break, calls to Bridgeway House will be automatically transferred to school admin team cell phones. For faster service, call the cell phones directly: (541) 743-5159 and (505) 930-6910.