Talent Show as Senior Project

Senior students at our local high school Nevada Joint Unified School District may select Community Service as the focus of their mandatory Senior Projects. This has been a source of great assistance to the Special Needs community in our area.

This year, Arkady Unterleidner and Bailey Gonzalez organized a talent show featuring over a dozen performers who played to a standing-room-only house full of joy and satisfaction. It was covered by the Union newspaper.

Excerpts from the show are shown in two parts on YouTube:


The senior class organizers really enjoyed putting on the show and are hoping that someone will do the same thing next year, like Abilities Basketball, now a regular winter semester activity, which was started as a Senior Project in 2002 by Janell Adams.

Prepare the Child for the Path ... or Not?

There's a tile in one of my friend's dining rooms that reads: "Prepare the Child for the Path, not the Path for the Child."

On the other hand, since my daughter's Selective Mutism kicked in after some heavy teasing in her public school classroom, I'm inclined to take the opposite approach with some special needs kids.

I would love to open the conversation on this.

Teachers Come in All Shapes

The Natalie Academy is a home school with a cosmopolitan faculty. We take the best of tradition and the best of innovation for a dynamic and effective customized program, made official by our IEP - the Individual Educational Plan.

We partner with Vantage Point Charter School, which in turn is under the umbrella of the Ready Springs Unified School District, to get our Speech and Adaptive Physical Education services, and are honored to work with the great Janet Borba for effective Speech delivery and the awesome and keenly experienced David Potter on Adaptive Physical Education.

Natalie's curriculum also includes Fashion Drawing with former New York Fashion Designer Lily Nova.

She takes Earth Science with Geologist Mary Ann Westgard.

Jewel McInroy cooks with Natalie in creating alkaline-focused meals, and they have become popular locally for their own Cranberry Orange cookies.