Living with Aspergers

My students were inspired and entertained in equal measure by our closing keynote speaker at Plymouth University this week. The conference was organised for my second year student teachers, and focused upon special educational needs and inclusive education. Our closing keynote speaker was Dean Beadle, a 24 year old journalist who speaks on the subject of 'Living with Aspergers'. Diagnosed very early in his school life with Aspergers Syndrome, Dean struggled with a variety of challenging social issues and behaviours, and retold many humourous and at times emotional stories about how he gradually learnt to cope with his condition.

Many of his stories struck chords of recognition with his audience, and all went away inspired and enthused by his speech. As I escorted Dean back to the train station later, he told me that he had been very nervous about speaking in front of a group of student teachers. He was anxious, he told me, because he was more used to speaking in front of groups of much older people, and was worried that a group his own age might not be as receptive to his message. He needn't have worried. He rocked his audience of just over 200 students, with his courageous and brutally honest narrative, and left them wanting more. For those who missed the event, and for those who do want more, here is a YouTube video of Dean at the top of his game:




Living with Aspergers by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.