08/16/2026
We must stop underestimating nonspeaking people! Special education is broken. The way to fix it is to LISTEN to the students we serve.
I had such an amazing time yesterday at the Spellers Summit. Surrounded by such deep and intelligent friends and trading stories of our grief and freedom felt like heavenly communion, taking in their personal pieces of themselves and sharing in their sorrow and celebration and adding my own to the community. This is just the beginning for us and is evidence of the upside down Kingdom reaching every realm, and setting free captives, redeeming slaves and making them family. This is what I shared yesterday during our intro session.
Love,
Jack
My name is Jack Hague. I am a nonspeaking autistic twenty-year old who found freedom from my solitary confinement at the age of seventeen when I learned to communicate via spelling on a letter board. I had endured years of insulting special ed, in early intervention full of monotonous repetitions, and behavior modifications, PECs and presumption of incompetence by kind hearted, but short-sighted educators and behavior specialists who were big-headed and narrow minded.
My whole world kept shrinking the older I got. I ended up in a small classroom in an autism specific school where the more letters after their name, the less they expected from us. My future shrank down to a black hole where only death waited for me. If not for a family who loved me and caught glimpses of my intelligence, I would not be here today. I am eternally grateful for their dedication and determination to become communication partners and support my desire to finish my high school diploma and take college classes, advocate, blog, and drive hours every month for spelling lessons and social gatherings with other non-speakers.
These relationships make all of this worth it. Let’s push through the disregulation and build our resilience and our ability to stay present with each other. We need each other to stay strong, create better access to communication as a human right, relationships as a universal need, and education and mental health support as vital and appropriate for our flourishing.
This is our time to rise up from the ashes, like Phoenixes. Rise up for your healing and ours. Rise up for the thousands of non-speakers who don’t have a voice but have so much to say. Rise up and tear down the walls that keep us confined and isolated and lost to the world who desperately needs the solutions, the understanding, and the presence we have to offer.
Together we can change our lives, fight for agency, and then change the world through our stories of hope and overcoming. Rise up, my brothers and sisters and know you are not alone. We are with you. You are seen, heard, and loved in this space.
Substack: https://substack.com//note/p-211430647?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=8oiro5
