Dave Manson: So first of all, I really am grateful to both of you for your willingness to be highlighted in our upcoming newsletter and for carving time out of your day today to help with this by doing this interview. So thank you both for that.
Excellent. So let me just start off, tell me a little bit about Meristem. Tell me what your mission is. Tell me a little bit about how long the organization’s been around, who do you serve?
Harry Lane: So Meristem has been around since 2015. It’s a transitional school for young adults with autism and neurodiversity. We say neurodiversity, because it covers more people than just autism. A lot of what we do is loosely based off of Waldorf education if you’re familiar with Waldorf education. (EDITOR’S NOTE: at its roots, Waldorf education’s learning process is threefold – engaging head, heart and hands – or thinking, feeling, and doing).
So we do things such as woodworking, metalworking, textiles, different things like that. All things that are done with the hands, they take time. We don’t use too much electricity, electronics, things that plug into a wall when you’re cutting wood. We saw the wood by hand, things like that, and it really helps. It is an amazing program that is able to help neurodiverse individuals gain skills and even transferable skills to the workplace, even if they’re not going to be a woodworker, just the patience of sanding down a piece of wood or working on shaping a piece of metal. It can be transferable. We have a whole farm, so we’re on 13 acres of land in Fair Oaks.
Dave Manson: Wow. I want to hear more!
Harry Lane: I would say right now I consider it a farm program. We just got chickens again, but it’s really broken down into two sectors. You have the garden and then you have the landscape. And that’s actually a Transformative Autism Program (TAP) thing. When we get to that, we turn that into an internship. But basically, the landscaping is working the perimeter of the property. Anywhere there’s tall grass that needs mowing, just maintaining it, making it look pleasant for guests and also dealing with fire hazards. And then the garden specifically is actually a regenerative garden. It’s actually a seed to plate program. They actually plant the seed. They have a greenhouse, so they plant the seed in the greenhouse and then they transpose it to the garden. And when the vegetable grows, we use it in our kitchen. We have a whole culinary arts program.
Dave Manson: No kidding! Let me stop, because what you’ve just shared with me is so rich with so many different things. My head is about to explode.
Harry Lane: I’ll slow down.
Dave Manson: So first of all, let me circle back to something that you said earlier. For those folks who are reading our newsletter who may not know, you mentioned that neurodiversity is more than just autism. What are some other conditions or terminology? What would folks see other than autism that fits under the umbrella of neurodiversity that you folks serve?
Harry Lane: So this is not an exhaustive list, because I’m not an expert, but neurodiversity, are things like auditory processing disorder. I’ve got a friend of mine who has auditory processing disorder, never been diagnosed with autism or on the autism spectrum, but he has an auditory processing disorder. I’ve even heard of things like dyslexia, which is with writing, right? Dysgraphia, which is with math, you get your math numbers mixed up. Even ADHD, or anything like even OCD or OCD-like tendencies.
Eric Steward: Anxiety is a huge one, Dave. How anxiety manifests in you. So on a cognitive level, you might be operating as good as anybody else on the planet, but being able to manage how the world moves towards you, the anxiety makes it to where your characteristics might come across. You’re dealing with autism, so you’re not actually diagnosed with autism, but then anxiety can be so crippling. That’s a big one.
Harry Lane: For older people, people that are a little bit older, it can be tougher to get that autism diagnosis. So they might be seeing a psychologist, but they have another thing like ADHD or there would be anxiety. So then the question is, can they get the supports like somebody that has autism, but they’ve never been diagnosed when they were five and now it’s real challenging to get the diagnosis. So by using the word neurodiversity, it’s a fine line of maybe they even do have autism, but they’ve never been formally diagnosed.
Dave Manson: That’s such a super-helpful thing for us to be able to share with the general public! It helps folks to be able to recognize that neurodiversity is a pretty large umbrella. It covers a lot of area. The second thing that popped into my head is you mentioned that a lot of the skills that are picked up in everything from the woodworking to the vegetables, all of those different things are not just workforce skills, but they’re useful in processing everyday things. You want to talk a little bit more about that?
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