The Path to OFS: Charlie’s Story
When Charlie Donegan was getting ready to leave preschool, his teachers took his mother, Carla, aside. “They told me, ‘all of the warm fuzzies of this place are going to evaporate; his experience in kindergarten is going to be different.’”
And it was. Charlie’s auditory processing difficulties, sensory integration dysfunction, and dyscalculia made learning difficult, but were also relatively easy for him to mask. Kindergarten was a bad experience, so the Donegans placed Charlie in the Catholic school his older brother, Jack, attended. “The school had magnificent special education teachers,” remembers Carla. “But none of them had any experience with auditory processing difficulties. By the end of third grade, they said, ‘you know, we’re just not reaching him anymore; I really think you ought to consider another school.’”
The Donegans spent fourth grade in a holding pattern with Charlie’s education while managing a whirlwind of appointments and consultations. By the end of the year, they announced their intent to re-enroll Charlie in their public school district, only to be told by the school’s IEP leader, “don’t send him here; we don’t have what he needs.”
A few days later, Carla happened to see an ad for Orchard Friends in the paper, and, curious, attended a parent meeting. “When I heard them talking, I knew this place was exactly what Charlie needed!”
By his own admission, Charlie came to Orchard Friends a little defensive. “I knew I was finally in a place where people understood me. But there was also this realization that, well, I’m outside the mainstream. I knew I was going to miss the social interactions of a bigger school and that my goal was to eventually transfer back.”
Charlie not only achieved this goal; he thrived once he transferred. “I’m a very visual learner, but going off books is not enough—even now, in my automotive technology classes [in college], the diagrams in the books are stale to me; it’s hard to understand motion when they are explaining something like the flow of coolant. I now know to ask for or look for videos, because when I can see it moving, I’m like, now I understand it. Orchard is good at pinpointing what works with and for every kid. Whenever I was feeling distraught because I wasn’t understanding something, they broke it down until I got it. They were very patient. It’s an approach I try to bring to my work as a martial arts instructor for kids.”
Carla was struck by the level of self-awareness in Charlie and his peers: the way they didn’t just learn; they learned how they learned, and felt comfortable asking for what they needed. “As part of Charlie’s 8th grade graduation, each graduate went up to the podium in front of a gym full of people, and talked about how they learn best. To build a learner who’s self-aware means building a lifelong learner. And that, to me, is the essence of what OFS is.”
Charlie left OFS at the end of his sophomore year of high school and graduated from a vocational program where his aptitude for mechanics and kinesthetic learning style shone. “My OFS teachers came to the IEP meeting at my new school before I transferred,” he remembers. “They helped me make this a smooth transition: they were like, what do you want to do there? You can’t just go there and not have a career path in mind; that’s what this school is intended for.”
Today, Charlie is 26. He’s got an apartment with his brother and a circle of supportive friends. He’s a martial arts instructor, works at Toyota as an express technician, and is about to finish his degree in automotive technology. Carla couldn’t be happier.
“I’m so proud. If you could have seen the little boy that first walked through the doors of OFS that first day…I remember feeling like, ‘something’s gotta change, but I don’t know what it is.’ And then to look at him today, I just can’t believe it. It’s more than I could have ever hoped for.”