Sometimes Helpers Need Help! Help Kate Fight!

Hi! my name is Lauren (Enders) Gonzales and I’m a speech-language pathologist who supports students with complex needs that require augmentative and alternative methods of communication (AAC) to express themselves. My good friend, colleague, and mentor, Kate Ahern, is a fixture in the worldwide AAC and Special Education communities and a perpetual helper. It’s now Kate that desperately needs OUR help. Kate gives everything she has to her students, their families, and professionals, but is now engaged in a battle she can no longer fight alone.

Kate is fighting several life-threatening health issues. On top of atrial fibrillation, type 1 diabetes, past cancer history, significant traumatic life events, and other health challenges, Kate has a rare disease called Immune Thrombocytopenia. Treatments are extraordinarily expensive and have low success rates. It’s a trial and error process with frequent infusions and repeated setbacks and hospitalizations. Most trips to the hospital or inpatient stays prevent Kate from teaching her students. She laments not only her students’ loss of instructional time but also the loss of the income she desperately needs. With monthly bills mounting and limited time to work between treatments and hospitalizations, Kate is forced to focus on how to pay, when she needs all of her energies to fight her health battles.

Kate is an incredibly gifted masters level special education teacher with extensive experience supporting students with some of the most complex medical, intellectual, and communication needs. During the Corona Virus/Covid19 pandemic, when the schools closed, Kate saw that the students she supported (in person) were no longer able to access quality educational services. She also realized that parents all over the world were scrambling to find viable educational options for their children. With an idea and plenty of educational skill, she launched AAC Voices Online, on online school that offers group sessions for children and young adults who use AAC. Though it was a learning process, the results of Kate’s efforts were nothing short of remarkable. Kate’s AAC Voices Online students have shown clear progress across multiple subjects, have developed greatly improved communication skills AND have become a true school community. These students and their families need their teacher to continue their educational journeys. If you have been touched by Kate’s unending gifts to the disability community, boundless compassion, and ability to presume potential in EVERYONE, please support her during this stressful and terrifying time.