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Outreach Program

PAL provides a wide range of dynamic speakers for various outreach engagements including students and faculty. Many schools have invited us to attend college nights and other special evenings devoted to exploring college transition for students with learning disabilities. Our student speakers have presented to elementary schools about overcoming disability. We have also hosted a variety of highly successful events for guidance counselors and educational consultants including major conferences and a biannual workshop entitled "Helping Students with LD Navigate the College Search."

PAL Publications

Changing Lives Through Metacognitive Relationships: LD/ADHD and College Success - DOWNLOAD A COPY
Senior Editor - Laurie Fox, Ed.D.,ET/P
Editor - Lisa Ijiri, Ph.D.

"Changing Lives... explores the value of consistent metacognitive relationships that are less likely to occur in typical college program models. It describes processes that inspire a ‘changed life,' picking up where texts and advice guides leave off."

Book Contents:

  • Working from the Soul - Lynn Abrahams, M.Ed.
  • Reigniting the Light for Lifelong Learning - Paula Cocce, M.Ed.
  • We Make the Road by Walking: Transformative Learning in the Adult Center at PAL - Diane Goss, Ed.D.
  • Safe Passage - Jeanne Vandenberg, M.Ed.
  • Reading Ourselves - Michelle Gabow,M.F.A.
  • Meta-Metacognition: A Wave Unfurled - Patty Kean, M.Ed., ET/P
  • On Painting and Teaching: Analogies - George Herman, M.A.
  • The Professors' New Shoes: Finding the Right Fit in Classrooms Full of Differences - Diane Webber, Ph.D.
  • Executive Functioning: Doing Something Right All Along - Laurie Fox, Ed.D., ET/P
  • How We Proceed - Lori Lubeski, M.A.
  • An Inclusive Model for Articulating Curriculum in Higher Education - Maria Bacigalupo, Ed.D.
  • Learning Conversations That Foster Metacognitive Development: A Magician's Work - Susan Pennini, Ph.D.
  • The Locker - Andrea Baldi, Ed.D.
  • PAL for Multilingual Students with Learning Disabilities - Pat Mytkowicz, Ed.D., Grace Rooney, M.Ed., M.A.
  • Metacognition and Mandarin - Jeannette Landrie, M.Ed., Sanne Dinkel, M.Ed.
  • Changing Lives with Assistive Technology - Marie Saulnier, M.Ed.
  • Testing for Accommodations - Not a "Done Deal": An Exploration of Testing and Accommodations for Post-Secondary Level Education - Nancy Winbury, Ph.D.
  • Adults Transforming Their Lives: The Adult Center at the Program for Advancement of Learning - Jane Adelizzi, Ph.D., ATR, BCET
  • From High School to College: Preparing Students with LD/ADHD - Lori Lubeski, M.A., Jeannette Landrie, M.Ed.
  • The Change Process - Laurie Fox, Ed.D., ET/P

The profession's thinnest textbook for those who like things simplified and short. Created for faculty and helpful to parents and others, too. Provides definitions, common accommodations, sources of processing difficulty, common types of LD & ADHD, strategies and more. An 8 ½ x 11 inch brochure to keep as a handy desk reference ($2). Authors are Lisa Ijiri, Ph.D. and Laurie Fox, Ed.D., ET/P.

Download the Learning Disabilities Reference

A Closer Look: Perspectives and Reflections on College Students with Learning Disabilities

Edited by Jane Utley Adelizzi and Diane B. Goss

A Curry College publication, this book is a collection of personal accounts by teachers and students describing their teaching and learning experiences. The authors are teachers and learners from the Curry College Program for Advancement of Learning (PAL), an internationally renowned support program for college students with learning disabilities. They are highly skilled educational specialists at the leading edge of the learning disabilities field. Collectively, they bring a wide spectrum of experience and perspectives to this work.

A Closer Look is a valuable resource for:

  • Faculty members teaching undergraduate and graduate level courses in special education
  • Counselors and therapists
  • Adults with learning disabilities
  • Secondary and post-secondary teachers
  • Those interested in the study of teaching, teacher lore, and effective educational practices
  • Parents of young adults with learning disabilities

By Jane Utley Adelizzi and Diane B. Goss
(Bergin & Garvey/Greenwood, 2001)

In a straightforward and empathetic tone, Dr. Jane Utley Adelizzi and Dr. Diane Goss, both professors in the PAL program, sensitively offer support to parents of children with learning disabilities who wish to see their children grow to their full potential. While juggling the complex expectations imposed upon them, parents often combat confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and frustration. This book will help diffuse these overwhelming feelings, empowering parents with the ability to provide the academic and personal support their children need to thrive.

Adelizzi and Goss demystify the very fuzzy world of LD terminology and theory and clarify the complicated process of diagnosis and treatment. They shed light on the way children and adolescents with learning disabilities function in the home environment, in social relationships, and at school. Parents will find new understanding and hope as the authors-with the collective voice of parents and children who deal with LD every day-lead them through the maze of issues they must confront.

Reviews:

"This is a book for parents. It is a book about the child with learning problems. It is, importantly, a book about balance in an arena fraught with anguish, anger, and accusation. It is about the balance between recognizing a real problem, but appreciating the whole child; between watching, but also listening; between using your own educated common sense, but also seeking specialist assistance; between promoting academic success, but also fostering emotional well-being; between helping, but also not helping so your child enjoys mastery and learns independence. The authors encourage self-advocacy but make it clear how good professionals can help. They address abstract topics but make them vividly and often poignantly alive in all too real examples. This is an intensely real, wonderfully balanced book full of empathy, wisdom and downright practical help. I recommend it highly to parents and to the professionals whose assistance they seek." - Dr. Jane Holmes Bernstein, Director of the Neuropsychology Program, Department of Psychiatry, Children's Hospital, Boston/Harvard Medical School

"Bravo to Drs. Adelizzi and Goss for giving us a book, at last, that we can recommend to parents without qualification! Only the experienced clinician's eye could have given us such a wide-angle view of the puzzles faced by help-seeking parents of individuals with learning disabilities. This sound, honest, comprehensive and comprehendible approach addresses the entire range of parents' questions: from diagnosis, to intervention techniques on all affected academic, language, and organizational issues, and finally to the emotional and social ramifications. In a positive, compassionate tone, the uncluttered text interweaves soundly researched information with examples of clients' personal stories. If you have only one book on your shelf as a reference, a support system, and a literary ‘friend,' this should be the one. My only wish is that I had written it myself!" - Dorothy Ungerleider, Founding President, Association of Educational Therapists, Author:  'Reading, Writing and Rage'

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