This video is a reenactment of how Alex started talking. Alex had started talking, in a session just like this, with this little friend Ashley (see therunman.blogspot.com/2007/03/detour-ashley-clarkes-year-to-remember.html) about 2 weeks earlier in February 1994 (although one of the TAs -not his- says it's "May" at the beginning of the video it wasn't, it was March, 1994). Alex was 6 years & 2 months old at the time and in grade 1.

At the end Alex gives a demonstration of some of his math and literacy skills. Alex's TA "MJ" is leading the session.

Alex left the class for 20 minutes every day for speech therapy and was always accompanied by a classmate. Every classmate (and their parents) were offered the opportunity to be a peer helper during Alex's speech sessions and each and every one of them wanted to and was given parental permission to participate. Ashley and Alex were very close in grade 1, she moved away after grade 1 and did not see him again until she moved back to PEI during high school.

Although Alex had been through years of situations like this with his SLP & "MJ", and his parents, siblings, family and friends had all tried to elicit words from him, it was Ashley that held the key to his speech and it came after his 6th birthday. From that point on he repeated anything you asked him to and read aloud everything he had, until then, been reading to himself.