By Steve Seepersaud
“I felt neurodiverse kids could and should be producers of digital culture and not just consumers,” Rosenberg said. “I thought, ‘Why can’t these students be makers and tinkerers like other kids are?’ Many times, technology classes aren’t offered to kids like my child because the school day is filled with speech services, occupational therapy, tutoring and more.”
Feeling that it wasn't fair for kids and families, Rosenberg created a one-week stop-motion animation course at a community center in the city. From there, TKU blossomed with programs in coding, game design, video editing, artificial intelligence and other topics for kids with autism, ADHD, language-based learning disabilities, executive processing and auditory challenges, and learning disabilities.
Curricula combine the pedagogies of universal design for learning, social-emotional learning and design thinking. In-person programs take place at The Ability Project, part of New York University's Tandon School of Engineering in downtown Brooklyn through a partnership in which Rosenberg is an adjunct professor in the Department of Technology, Culture and Society. TKU’s online programs allow children from all over the country to participate.
TKU also has a work-based learning program called Career Ladder; it's a suite of five programs where students ages 15 to 24 can become proficient in industry standard tech skills while gaining work-related social skills and career readiness. In the online afterschool program Digital Agency, students work on projects for actual clients and are paid a stipend.
After graduating from Binghamton, Rosenberg leveraged an alumni connection to land her first job at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where she worked for 10 years in the education department. She was subsequently the founding director of education for Eyebeam.org, an art and technology nonprofit, a position she says gave her a technology base helpful for founding TKU.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do all of this if I didn’t have the interdisciplinary background and criticality that Binghamton gave me. I look at my career trajectory and it makes sense. The personal is political and that’s why I started this organization — to help neurodiverse students find their place in society. I hope to leave the world a better place than I found it for students with special needs.”
Since its founding more than a decade ago, her son has turned 25 and TKU has served more than 500 kids. She hopes the programming will empower former students to set long-term goals and advocate for themselves in the workforce.
“When I started [TKU], I was worried my kid would be sitting on the couch at age 22,” she said. “That happens a lot to kids with disabilities. They graduate at 21, there’s no support for them and they haven’t developed career skills, so they go home and collect Social Security. How do you live on $6,000 a year?
“My goal is to teach kids to think critically. My hope is that we can create a next generation of special needs students that isn’t going to be shelving vitamins at a drug store. I want to see them on social media teams making videos or working for a creative agency. There is a place in the world for all sorts of minds, but we can’t just talk about it, we have to make it happen.”
Want to learn more? Contact the organization at info@techkidsunlimited.org.