The topic of the 18th Annual Timothy B. and Jane A. Burnett Seminar for Academic Achievement is Thinking Beyond Normal: How to Live, Learn and Thrive Outside the Lines, featuring Jonathan Mooney, renowned writer, neuro-diversity activist and author.

This presentation draws on the best practices of inclusion to challenge the audience to commit to inclusive educational environments that view learning disabilities not as individual flaws but as a result of environmental constraints. Mooney describes how inclusive educational environments frame learning disabilities as a form of human diversity and thus take steps to include them within a larger diversity and civil rights paradigm. These environments have a strength-based, human-centered design approach to engaging and empowering, rather than pathologizing, people with cognitive and physical differences. Mooney draws on research in inclusion and neuro-diversity to share best practices from communities around the world, affirming and celebrating the inclusive movement as a fight for every human being’s right to be different.