| Chris Ulmer | ||||||||||
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 Ulmer in 2022 | ||||||||||
| Personal information | ||||||||||
| Born | Christopher Ulmer 4 March 1989 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. | |||||||||
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| Website | https://sbsk.org/ | |||||||||
| YouTube information | ||||||||||
| Years active | 2016–present | |||||||||
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| Subscribers | 3.59 million | |||||||||
| Total views | 915 million | |||||||||
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Last updated: 21 January 2025 | ||||||||||
Christopher Ulmer is an American disability-rights advocate, former special education teacher, YouTuber, and founder of the non-profit Special Books by Special Kids.
Ulmer was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Upper Moreland High School. He attended Pennsylvania State University, where he majored in media effects. He received a master's degree in special education from the University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, where he was a student teacher. [1]
After graduation, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida. He coached soccer at a university and was offered a free degree in special education. He began teaching special education to students aged 7 to 10. [1] As a special education teacher, he taught students with autism, agenesis of the corpus callosum and traumatic brain injury. [2]
With permission from his students’ parents, in the classroom Ulmer "began to film interviews with his students and post them on social media," [3] which attracted an online presence. After 12 months, Special Books by Special Kids "evolved into an acceptance movement that’s reached over one billion people." [4]
Ulmer began his online presence through Facebook in 2016 and a year later reached 1.2 million followers. [1] In 2017, Ulmer created the YouTube channel Special Books by Special Kids (commonly abbreviated as SBSK). On November 19, 2018, the Special Books by Special Kids YouTube channel reached 1 million subscribers. [5]
He crisscrossed the country interviewing disabled children to give them, as ABC News put it, "an opportunity to be seen and accepted." As a result, Ulmer has created more than 500 videos of those interviews. [6] A partial transcript, as an example of an interview of a child by Ulmer, is included in the book Flying Starts for Unique Children [7] by author and special-needs teacher Adele Devine.
| Year | Nominated | Award | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | National Organization for Rare Disorders | Rare Impact Award | Won |
| 2018 | Streamys Purpose Awards | Nonprofit or NGO Award | Won |
Special education is the practice of educating students in a way that accommodates their individual differences, disabilities, and special needs. This involves the individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of teaching procedures, adapted equipment and materials, and accessible settings. These interventions are designed to help individuals with special needs achieve a higher level of personal self-sufficiency and success in school and in their community, which may not be available if the student were only given access to a typical classroom education.
The ABC of Sex Education for Trainables is a 1975 short educational film hosted by Richard Dix. It was intended to inform people about the need to educate the mentally disabled about sex and sexuality. Reflecting the views held at the time, the film explains that "trainables" cannot learn in the same manner as those of normal intelligence, but must instead be trained through repetition.
Mainstreaming, in the context of education, is the practice of placing students with special education needs in a general education classroom during specific time periods based on their skills. This means students who are a part of the special education classroom will join the regular education classroom at certain times which are fitting for the special education student. These students may attend art or physical education in the regular education classrooms. Sometimes these students will attend math and science in a separate classroom, but attend English in a general education classroom. Schools that practice mainstreaming believe that students with special needs who cannot function in a general education classroom to a certain extent belong in the special education environment.
Pathlight School is a special school for children with autism in Singapore. Founded in 2004, it is run by the non-profit Autism Resource Centre and comprises one half of the national educational provision for autistic children. The school educates students in social and life skills, teaches them mainstream curriculum subjects and prepares them for employment in an autism friendly environment.
Inclusion in education refers to including all students to equal access to equal opportunities of education and learning, and is distinct from educational equality or educational equity. It arose in the context of special education with an individualized education program or 504 plan, and is built on the notion that it is more effective for students with special needs to have the said mixed experience for them to be more successful in social interactions leading to further success in life. The philosophy behind the implementation of the inclusion model does not prioritize, but still provides for the utilization of special classrooms and special schools for the education of students with disabilities. Inclusive education models are brought into force by educational administrators with the intention of moving away from seclusion models of special education to the fullest extent practical, the idea being that it is to the social benefit of general education students and special education students alike, with the more able students serving as peer models and those less able serving as motivation for general education students to learn empathy.
Special education in the United States enables students with exceptional learning needs to access resources through special education programs. "The idea of excluding students with any disability from public school education can be traced back to 1893, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court expelled a student merely due to poor academic ability". This exclusion would be the basis of education for all individuals with special needs for years to come. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education sparked the belief that the right to a public education applies to all individuals regardless of race, gender, or disability. Finally, special education programs in the United States were made mandatory in 1975 when the United States Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) "(sometimes referred to using the acronyms EAHCA or EHA, or Public Law 94-142) was enacted by the United States Congress in 1975, in response to discriminatory treatment by public educational agencies against students with disabilities." The EAHCA was later modified to strengthen protections to students with disabilities and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA requires states to provide special education and related services consistent with federal standards as a condition of receiving federal funds.
Ron Jones is an American writer and formerly a teacher in Palo Alto, California. He is best known for his classroom exercise called "The Third Wave" and the book he wrote about the event, which inspired the made-for-TV movie The Wave and other works, including a theatrical film in 2008. The original TV movie won the Emmy and Peabody Awards. His books The Acorn People and B-Ball have also been made into TV dramas. Jones lives in San Francisco, California where he regularly performs as a storyteller.
Denise Phua Lay Peng is a Singaporean politician who has been serving as Mayor of Central Singapore District since 2014. A member of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), she has been the Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Kampong Glam division of Jalan Besar GRC since 2015.
The term twice-exceptional or 2e refers to individuals acknowledged as gifted and neurodivergent. On literal sense, it means a person, is at the same time, very strong or gifted at some task, and very weak or unable in some other task. Due to this duality of their cognitive profile, the strengths as well as weaknesses and struggles may remain unnoticed or unsupported. Also conditions like hyperlexia or precocious development in some aspects, while having difficulties in common or day-to day tasks, these people may frequently face contradictory situations which lead to disbelief, judgements, alienation, and other forms of epistemic injustice. Some related terms are "performace discrepancy", "cognitive discrepancy", "uneven cognitive profile", and "spikey profile". Due to simultaneous combination of abilities and inabilities, these people do not often fit into an age-appropriate or socially-appropriate niche. An extreme form of twice-exceptionalism is Savant syndrome. The individuals often identify with the description of twice-exceptional due to their unique combination of exceptional abilities and neurodivergent traits. The term twice-exceptional first appeared in Dr. James J. Gallagher's 1988 article titled National Agenda for Educating Gifted Students: Statement of Priorities. Twice-exceptional individuals embody two distinct forms of exceptionalism: one being giftedness and the other including at least one aspect of neurodivergence. Giftedness is often defined in various ways and is influenced by entities ranging from local educational boards to national governments; however, one constant among every definition is that a gifted individual has high ability compared to their age-level neurotypical peers. The term neurodivergent describes an individual whose cognitive processes differ from those considered neurotypical and who possesses strengths that exceed beyond the neurotypical population. Therefore, the non-clinical designation of twice-exceptional identifies a gifted person with at least one neurodivergent trait.
Normal People Scare Me: A Film about Autism is a 2006 American documentary film about autism, produced by Joey Travolta. The project began as a 10-minute short film co-directed by an autistic teenager named Taylor Cross, and his mother Keri Bowers. Travolta first met Cross at a program Travolta led teaching the art of filmmaking to children with special needs. He mentored Cross, and the documentary was expanded into a feature-length film.
The Vanguard School is an approved private school in Malvern, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States, approximately twenty-two miles northwest of Philadelphia on the campus of Valley Forge Educational Services.
Special education in China provides education for all disabled students.
GetVidya was a registered non-profit charitable trust under government of India and worked to spread education and support schools and young students, especially the have-nots of Indian society. GetVidya was founded in April 2007 by few students of IIT Bombay and IT BHU. The website is no longer accessible as of June ― 2016.
Mithu Alur is the founder chairperson of The Spastic Society of India – now rechristened ADAPT – Able Disable All People Together. She is an educator, disability rights activist, researcher, writer and published author on issues concerning people with disability in India.
StoryBots is an American children's media franchise that produces educational TV series, books, videos, music, video games, and classroom activities. Its productions include Netflix series, Ask the StoryBots, StoryBots: Answer Time, StoryBots: Super Silly Stories with Bo, and StoryBots Super Songs.
GlenBridge Special School and Resource Centre is an English medium Grade 1 – 12 public school in Cape Town, South Africa that offers remedial activities for children with intellectual impairments. Students here may have had accidents or they may have Foetal alcohol syndrome, Down syndrome or Williams syndrome in addition to other disabilities. GlenBridge is a member of Autism South Africa, an organisation which aims to improve the lives of people with autism.
Uma Tuli is an Indian social worker, educationist and the founder of Amar Jyoti Charitable Trust, a Delhi-based non-governmental organisation, working for the rehabilitation of physically disabled people. She was honoured by the Government of India, in 2012, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.
Jennifer Cook (formerly O'Toole) (born October 24, 1975) is an American author and speaker. She is known for her six Asperkids books, which have been translated into six languages and include the winner of the Autism Society of America's Book of the Year Award. Her memoir Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum is a Wall Street Journal Bestseller, a "Best Book" title winner by Publishers Weekly, and named a "Best Memoir" and one of both the "Best Autism Books of All Time" and "Best-Selling Autism Books of All Time" by BookAuthority. She is the on-camera autism expert in Netflix's series Love on the Spectrum.
Shannon Dingle is an American Christian writer and activist. Her writings on life, race, and disability first garnered widespread attention leading up to the 2016 US presidential election. She is a contributor to USA Today, Teen Vogue and The Washington Post.
Inclusive Classroom is a term used within American pedagogy to describe a classroom in which all students, irrespective of their abilities or skills, are welcomed holistically. It is built on the notion that being in a non-segregated classroom will better prepare special-needs students for later life. In the United States, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 guaranteed civil rights to disabled people, though inclusion of disabled students progressed slowly until the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, after which almost half of US students with disabilities were soon in general classrooms.
