Brenda Rogers

2005

Brenda Rogers

Access Center for Education

http://www.sadtoglad.org/

Irvine, California, United States

Education & Youth Leadership

The Bold Idea:

Enabling the achievement of disabled students by fostering parental involvement in the special education IEP process and conducting advocacy trainings.

Access Center for Education believes every disabled student should graduate public school reading, writing, performing calculations and functioning socially to the best of his/her ability. They do this by helping parents participate in the special education IEP process and by conducting parent advocacy training and growing advocacy staff.

Biography:

Brenda, a recognized parent leader, became impassioned through her personal experience advocating for her learning disabled son who was not provided with the adequate early intervention to learn how to read prior to middle school. Determined to understand the system that had failed her son, Brenda re-focused her own college and graduate education to learn more about special education. Her PhD dissertation from the University of California, Irvine focuses on legal consciousness in special education.

Moment of Obligation: When and why did you decide to start your organization?
The experience of watching my son change from a happy and curious young boy to a mean, self-hating student who couldn't read was so painful, I sacrificed my education and career plans to do what I knew was right and fight for my child. After losing the opportunities I had, I made the very thing that dominated my life the new opportunity. In so doing, I created a way to minister to the needs of others in a similar situation, provide new job opportunities, and challenge the injustice that almost broke me.

Who do you look up to and why?
I look up to my friend and 1996 Echoing Green Fellow Diana Spatz. Diana founded Low Income Families Empowerment Through Education (LIFETIME) after experiencing the irrationality of the welfare bureaucracy while trying to go to college and become a self-sufficient parent. Today, LIFETIME is a statewide organization that creates lasting changes for welfare recipients in school, like the homework and study time included in the 1998 welfare reform implementation in California. Meeting Diana years ago inspired me to believe average citizens can create real and lasting social change.

A snapshot in ten years: What is your dream of what's happening? What impact has your organization had?
ACE will have a highly developed decentralized advocacy system and be a central location for parent-advocate training, employment, empowerment and community accountability in special education. We will employ peer advocates and monitors who work out of their homes but have a central base station at ACE where we hold regular trainings and retreats. We will also have developed a body of literature derived from the research conducted during our activities that will both inform our trainings and the special education community. Our model will be replicated in the state and in other places in the nation. People will know where to find accessible quality advocacy as easily as they know where to find and purchase books, video games, or DVDs.

What's in your CD player right now?
My iTunes library includes a wide range of music. Some of my favorites are: Old Spiritual Hymns by Mahalia Jackson and renditions by Sweet Honey in the Rock, folk music by the Mamas and the Papas, Cat Stevens, and Jim Croce, the Cuban music of Company Segundo and political music by the Dead Kennedys.

What are a few book recommendations (pleasure, work and anything in between)?
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, The Policing of Families by Jacques Donzelot, Rules versus Relationships by John Conley and William Obarr, Just Words: Law, Language and Power by John Conley and WIlliam Obarr, The Executive Way: Conflict Management in Corporations by Calvin Morrill, Rights, Remembrance, and the Reconciliation of Difference (1996) by David Engel and Frank Munger in the Law and Society Review, Origin Myths: Narratives of Authority, Resistance, Disability, and Law (1993) by David Engel in the Law and Society Review, Why the "haves" come out ahead: speculations on the setting and limits of legal change (1972) by Marc Galanter in Working paper number 7: Yale law school, Program in Law and Modernization, Law as a Weapon in Social Conflict (1976) by Austin Turk in Social Problems.

What websites do you go to often (work and personal)?

• www.craigslist.org
• www.biblegateway.com
• www.google.com
• www.theonion.com
• www.google.com
• www.findlaw.com
• www.copaa.com
• www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se
• www.ldanatl.org
• www.autism-society.org
• www.iser.com
• www.amazon.com
• www.libraries.uci.edu

Quick piece of advice for people starting social change organizations.
Believe you can do it and do not doubt. Get near and get to know people who started a business or nonprofit! Read about other organizations in the same field and about how to get started, like how to file your state incorporation papers. Finally, get a couple of friends and/or colleagues involved and you will do it.