The year is 1969, and fresh-out-of-college smart-aleck Howard Shane has just landed his first teaching job--at Belchertown State School, a bleak institution where people with disabilities endure endless days of silence, tedium, and neglect. Howard is stunned by the conditions at Belchertown and the challenges of his new job, but as he gets to know his diverse, endearing, and intelligent students, he becomes consumed with a mission: to unlock their communication skills and help them reach their full potential. Pitting his youthful idealism and passion against the rigidity of a rule-bound administrator, Howard battles his way to small joys and victories with his students--and, along the way, learns just as much as he teaches. A stirring and spellbinding memoir from internationally renowned AAC expert Howard Shane (Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School), Unsilenced is a candid look at a pivotal era in disability history and a deeply personal account of how all human beings can flourish when we care for each other and fight for change. Hear an Excerpt Read by Howard Shane, Ph.D.

An accounting of the celebrated, historically significant and precedent-setting class action suit, Robert Simpson Ricci et. al., plaintiffs v. Milton Greenblatt, M.D. et. al., defendants was authored by Benjamin Ricci, retired professor emeritus, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, father and next friend of Robert Simpson Ricci principal plaintiff.

In the first decade of the 20th century, the state of Massachusetts established itself as a leader in the education of individuals with disabilities. The third state school for the feebleminded was built in rural Belchertown, in the western part of the state. Opened in 1915, Belchertown State School would eventually encompass almost 900 acres of land and would become the largest employer in town. For nearly 60 years, the state school educated individuals with disabilities who were otherwise excluded from public education, training the "residents" to become independent members of their families and of society. The model was a success until reports of abuse and neglect began to surface, culminating in the landmark 1972 Ricci v. Greenblatt case, which ultimately led to the state school's closure in 1992. The state school's rich history, maintained and curated by the late Donald LaBrecque, chronicles the rise of special education and developmental services and the ultimate collapse of the state school system.

Shane rides into the valley where Bob Starrett's family lives, and Bob, 15, tells about Shane's winning ways.

Discover the Visual Immersion System (VIS), a practical, research-based intervention framework that taps into the strong visual processing skills many children on the spectrum have.

During much of the twentieth century, people labeled "feeble-minded," "mentally deficient," and "mentally retarded" were often confined in large, publicly funded, residential institutions located on the edges of small towns and villages some distance from major population centers. At the peak of their development in the late 1960s, these institutions--frequently called "schools" or "homes" --housed 190,000 men, women, and children in the United States. The Girls and Boys of Belchertown offers the first detailed history of an American public institution for intellectually disabled persons. Robert Hornick recounts the story of the Belchertown State School in Belchertown, Massachusetts, from its beginnings in the 1920s to its closure in the 1990s following a scandalous exposé and unprecedented court case that put the institution under direct supervision of a federal judge. He draws on personal interviews, private letters, and other unpublished sources as well as local newspapers, long out-of-print materials, and government reports to re-create what it was like to live and work at the school. More broadly, he gauges the impact of changing social attitudes toward intellectual disability and examines the relationship that developed over time between the school and the town where it was located. What emerges is a candid and complex portrait of the Belchertown State School that neither vilifies those in charge nor excuses the injustices perpetrated on its residents, but makes clear that despite the court-ordered reforms of its final decades, the institution needed to be closed.