Glenn is a speech-language pathologist. He recently retired from his full-time job providing direct speech therapy. Glenn began his 45-year career with ten years on the Oregon Health and Sciences University campus in Portland at the community speech and hearing clinic. In 1984 he started a private practice in speech-language pathology and retired from there in 2019.
In the 1970s and early 80s, when Fairview Hospital and Training Center, the Oregon state institution for people with developmental disabilities, was being downsized, Glenn began working with our formerly institutionalized adults, many with Down syndrome, who were our first residents at Edwards group homes.
Glenn showed our residents that now that they lived in the community, they needed to TALK. He encouraged and enhanced their communication skills, which were very much atrophied by living in an institutional environment for most of their lives. Based on that experience, He wrote a book called Listen: We Are Beginning to Talk, 1988, and developed an accompanying training helpful video for our parents and staff members working with adults in group homes. The stories in this book are the stories of Edwards Center residents who used his teaching to help them learn to work and play and have more fulfilling lives.
But speech pathology was more than a profession for Glenn. It was his calling and his passion. He engaged with our residents away from our group homes, inviting them to join his family for Sunday dinner or to tag along on a family outing. In these informal environments, they learned to use language most practically.
Glenn will share some of his journey with Edwards Center and help us know better how to encourage communication with our children, their housemates, and co-workers. Improving communication is a life-long process, and Glenn will help us understand better how to foster communication.