Alumni & Advancement

Before Franklin: “My K through 12 education was just abundantly terrible until I got to Franklin. I am diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disability. I had experienced trauma. I was coming out of a very severe depression. My grandfather had just passed away. So I was very much a kind of a broken human and I was 17.”

After Franklin: “Franklin gave me my confidence back. Like I just needed someone to believe in me and believe that I could do things and that really helped me believe in myself. I felt free to kind of make mistakes, explore what I was good at and practice skills. I made friends.”

Lauren was admitted to 13 of 15 colleges she applied to, many with merit scholarships.

She earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Catholic University and is working toward a PhD. She is employed as a hospice social worker.

Community: “You feel very welcomed immediately. From minute one, people were like, ‘Do you want to come sit with me in the dining hall? Do you want to hang out in the common room?’ It really makes you feel safe right away, which is something I needed.”

Teachers: “They really believed in me. They really cared. They listened to my feelings. They encouraged me. They believed that I could go to college and be successful, which is not something I had gotten from school before.”

Before Franklin: “When I was a younger kid, I didn’t really see a future for myself. My peers were telling me that I was worse, dumb, slower. And to be frank, in a lot of ways in the tests and measures, I was. I was internalizing that I was worthless. I spent a lot of time crying underneath my desk. I just struggled and was isolated.” He was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (now part of the autism spectrum).

After Franklin: “Franklin has changed the trajectory of my life. To be rather candid, I thought I was probably going to be flipping burgers or have hurt myself. It has left a profound impact on me. I realized I do have all these skills. It was really that the way that I was getting taught and how I was expected to perform did not complement my skills.”

Royce has earned a bachelor’s of science in child psychology from Eastern Connecticut State University and a master’s of education in rehabilitation counseling from Pennsylvania State University. He has returned to Franklin to work as a residential dean.

On embracing neurodiversity: “We have a community that doesn’t see this as a flaw. They see it as a strength. People want to hang out with you and nerd out about D & D or something like that. You can relate to them. You’re not only making growth and struggling yourself, but you can see other people struggle and make growth. You can be part of helping them with their struggle and their growth as you grow up in the program.”

How Academics are Different at Franklin: “Quality over quantity is what comes to mind. Other school systems, you have to do 40 examples of the problem set in math to prove that you know it. We spend a lot of time focusing on the process and how to be a student, how to do the specific skills we’re teaching. We don’t do a lot of the busy work that you see at other schools.”

Preparation for college: “In college, I didn’t have to try harder than my Franklin classes until my senior year. Franklin got me prepared. I knew how to be a student.”

Before Franklin: He was diagnosed with anxiety when he was young and eventually an autism spectrum diagnosis was added as well. “It was my senior year. I technically passed, but I was not prepared for anything. I wasn’t brushing my teeth. I wasn’t washing my hair. It was awful.”

After Franklin: He earned a bachelor’s degree from Fairleigh Dickinson and a master’s from Pennsylvania State University. He works as a counselor on Team Heron at Franklin.

“Just being in this environment pushed me. I had friends for the first time that felt like real friends. I cannot stress how much this going here changed my life. Absolutely and utterly. There is another Billy out there in a different timeline that looks very different from the Billy of today.”

What he hears now that he works with parents of Franklin students: “Before Franklin, students are barely scraping by. Generally it is one of the parents’ full time jobs to just advocate and keep that kid going. And they’re really just barely scraping by and not really fitting in.

I hear from parents all the time, ‘My daughter has only been there a week. She’s made five friends. She hasn’t had a single friend in the last four or five years.’”