My stutter radicalized me. Being a stuttering educator who loves learning and speaking new languages taught me that speech and language were not barriers to my success—intersectional ableism was. As a child, I loathed introducing myself. Instead of monsters under my bed, mine lived in my throat. I did not know what it was, only that it terrified me. Adults assumed I was shy or unwilling to speak, while others dismissed it as an occasional stumble. Because of this, I feared I could never become an effective educator. Still, I pursued my passions anyway. In my first college course on special education, I realized my monster was not a monster at all—it was a disability. This fact had long been denied because I did not struggle academically and was perceived as a quiet, well-behaved child rather than a struggling stutterer. Suddenly, my lifelong anxiety around speaking made sense. Motivated by this revelation, I asked my professor what accommodations I could have received in school. He described supports ranging from Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices to time-limit exemptions on verbal presentations. I grieved for my younger self, who could have thrived with such supports. Taking American Sign Language the following semester affirmed this realization. I became one of the most “talkative” students in the room, sharing ideas without fear. I had never imagined ASL would feel so natural as part of my voice until I was gifted the opportunity to try. Later, in a course on teaching students with low-incidence disabilities, I examined how AAC devices are used in educational settings. I followed practitioners working with AAC-users while centering adult AAC-users’ perspectives on the importance of communication access in my research. At the same time, my research on teaching STEM content to multilingual learners (MLLs) revealed strong parallels with disability-related communication supports. Translanguaging theory aligns closely with multimodal communication in disabled spaces: both emphasize drawing on multiple forms of language to construct meaning. A multilingual student using gestures to express an idea they lack vocabulary for mirrors a nonspeaking student using pictures or text to communicate. Recognizing this interconnectedness opened new possibilities at the intersection of my academic interests. Throughout my student teaching and part-time teaching career, I have focused on supporting disabled and multilingual students, particularly at the intersections between the two. I have developed presentations, differentiated lessons, and unit plans addressing both theoretical and practical supports across content areas. After graduating, I deepened this work by attending two summer learning summits on supporting young autistic learners, focusing on AAC-users. Yet the overlap I see between multilingualism and alternative communication was absent from both spaces. This gap in research worries me. How many children today, like my younger self, navigate interconnected language and communication barriers without adequate support? My lived experiences and growing expertise drive my commitment to advancing linguistically inclusive, school-based alternative communication supports. Beginning this summer, I will pursue a Master’s of Education in Learning Design, Innovation, and Technology. Through this program, I will develop skills in user-centered learning design and evaluation to create assistive educational technologies that support multilingual and multimodal communication for young learners. I ultimately hope to develop widely applicable and accessible multilingual AAC technologies for nonspeaking MLLs. As a child, I considered my monster my greatest weakness. As an adult, I see it as my greatest strength. Because of my stutter, I know fostering fluency in speech or language is not the key to finding one’s voice. Liberation from ableism and access to individualized tools are what give someone the voice they always had, but can now finally share with others.

In seventh grade, I woke up every morning wishing I had not. Every day, I had to tell myself to get through just one more day. My entire early adolescence and teenage years were focused on survival rather than living. Several coexisting factors contributed to my deep struggle with mental health. For one, I lived as a closeted queer child in a hostile queerphobic environment. Hearing my parents throw around homophobic slurs to others while questioning my own gender and sexuality terrified me. I asked myself, “what would they call me if they found out? How else might they hurt me?” I denied my identity to myself to secure my safety in my house that did not feel like a home. At the same time, I was struggling with undiagnosed and undersupported speech and anxiety disorders. I developed a stutter later in life, which is very rare and often attributed to traumatic brain injury or deep emotional trauma. My internalized ableism regarding my newfound stutter caused me to develop severe social anxiety. Being in situations where I had to speak triggered panic attacks. Ruminating about forced social interactions that did not go well spiraled into desires to self harm. I longed to live in silence and solitude, yet craved authentic connection and love that I rarely felt at home or school. My social anxiety made it much harder for me to reach out to professionals for help with these struggles. I spent months fighting symptoms of depression and suicidality in solitude. Daily life began to feel not worth living at all. When I did try to talk to a professional for the first time in middle school, I shut down due to the verbal demands of my meeting with my guidance counselor. No alternative ways of communicating my struggles were offered to me. My counselor also betrayed my understanding of confidentiality and safety from my family knowing of my thoughts and struggles. After that negative experience, it took me years to build the courage and desperation to try reaching out for help again. Once I found mental health professionals that prioritized my well-being, I found the courage to dream for a brighter future. During the depths of my struggles, I could not picture myself growing older and being happy. I only saw more depression, dread, and wishing for the end of an unlived life. But when I found counselors and therapists who honored all methods of my communication, had the patience and care to truly listen to my struggles, and provided me with quality care and resources, I went from languishing to flourishing in life. Finally, over a decade later, I wake up looking forward to the day ahead of me. I live more comfortably in my identity as a non-binary and bisexual person. I have unlearned my internalized ableism and feel more secure in my skin and about my access needs as a stutterer. I can dream of a life where my happiness stems from within myself. It was only after building effective support systems for my mental health that I was able to start dreaming of bigger prospects for my future, like pursuing graduate study in a field that would allow me to support young children similar to my past self thrive and feel seen. Therefore, an opportunity to help fund a dream that once seemed unattainable is something I am willing to work for. With external funding support, I will use my graduate studies to extend essential queer-affirming and disability-affirming supports to more young children, so they can also live to dream instead of dream to live.