Meet Conner Edwards: Capable of Anything

BY DAROLYN “LYN” JONES

Meet Conner Edwards, a young teacher, leader, and activist intent on making impactful and lifelong changes for adults with severe and profound disabilities.

To understand what Conner Edwards is setting out to do, you must first understand his journey. Conner joined Best Buddies his freshman year at Center Grove High School, in Greenwood, Indiana, as a peer tutor in a Life Skills class. A friend suggested that he might like it, so he tried it. He loved it. And it set him on a life path of dedication, commitment, and purpose. In his first year of participating in Best Buddies, he learned that with the right supports, individuals with moderate-to-severe disabilities are capable of anything.

Family tie-dye event

During high school and college, Conner also volunteered for, and then worked at, Camp Riley. He worked there for 9 summers and still works at the weekend winter retreats.

Most disability advocates have a personal connection to the disability world. Conner is no exception. His mother had a stroke and was physically disabled before he was born. She still lives with some physical limitations and now has epilepsy as well. Despite her challenges, she raised her children and worked. Conner saw every day how she was able to do that with the right tools and support system.

Conner knew he wanted to be a special education teacher, and he knew he wanted to work with the most severely disabled population. Ball State University has one of the few programs that prepares preservice teachers specifically for working with students needing moderate to severe interventions.

Adaptive Yoga family caregiver training

Conner and his dad took a Ball State tour and met with Dr. Lisa Pufpaff, Chair of the Special Education Department. Conner shared that this meeting was one of the most significant interactions he has had in his life. He walked away knowing he had chosen the right career path, the right program, and the right school.

Conner did very well at Ball State. He always made the Dean’s List and was the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) student of the year in 2016. And he was literally a poster boy for Ball State, appearing on billboards on the I-465 loop advertising student success at the university.

Conner—of course —did not choose the typical student teaching placement with local schools. He sought out a program at Indiana University called Global Gateway for Teachers, which places student teachers in other states and countries. Ball State partnered with IU to make this program available to Conner.

By choice, Conner was placed in a residential school on a Navajo Reservation, where students needing moderate interventions lived and went to school Monday through Friday. The school was residential because the reservation is huge, and students often live far away. Conner not only taught but lived with the students, helping take care of them well as educating them. They were some of the most underserved students in the country, living in extreme poverty with very few supports or access to services.

A lot of responsibility was placed on Conner’s 22-year-old shoulders. Most student teachers have their local family, friends, and a university support system. Conner was 16 hours away from home and the only student teacher on the reservation. The days and nights were physically demanding. The school had 16-18 programs— including academic, recreational, and therapy. Conner describes this experience as one of the hardest, yet most rewarding things he has ever done.

After graduation, Conner applied to several special education programs in the greater Indianapolis area, but was hoping to be hired by Ben Davis High School because he had heard many positive things about their programs. The positions are widely sought after by applicants. After his interview, he had barely walked back to his car before he received a call--he got his job offer while he was still in the parking lot!

After seven years of working with students who require severe interventions, he still loves his work, and he loves his students.

Unfortunately, when special education students graduate at age 21, they age out of the supports that the school system provides, and are often forgotten. Conner is setting out to change that. He keeps in touch with his former students and families and has discovered that the only options for adults with severe disabilities aren’t good ones. Some work in sheltered workshops where they do rote tasks for little or no money. Some attend day programs where they don’t do much more than sit in front of a television. They are the same awful options that haven’t changed much in 50 years. In the worst case scenarios, these young adults are placed in residential nursing homes that are not equipped to care for them or engage with them.

Conner visited some of these places and saw how clearly they were lacking--there was no learning, no therapy, no engagement, and often a misunderstanding of the individual and their needs. He felt that some reinvention was needed. For example, a sheltered workshop could use a business or entrepreneurial model that would engage not only the individuals, but the community they serve as well.

The lack of options made Conner take pause: What could he do? He thought back to his earlier realization:

Board member Katie Griffin's son, Jack, at a PT session

With the right supports, individuals with moderate and severe disabilities are capable of anything.

And once Conner decides he is going to do something, he does it. “Advocacy,” he says, “has to be at the forefront of what we are doing to serve adults with severe disabilities.”

After immersing himself in focus groups with families and other advocates, he started his own nonprofit, Limitless Ability. With an active board, vision, and mission, he is currently fundraising and hopes to open a fully operational day center by the fall of 2025.

Family tie-dye event

Limitless Ability’s clinical team will provide evidence-based occupational, speech, and physical therapies to clients with disabilities to promote independence at home, in the workplace, and in community settings, through day-programming services. Recreational and music therapies will be contracted out. Clients will be grouped crosscategorically by needs.

Being physically active is a key focus of Limitless Ability. Once individuals age out of school, they lose their school-based therapy services and become sedentary. A sedentary lifestyle leads to more co-morbidities on top of the medical issues adults with severe disabilities already have.

Conner wants to help guide families to what is next, an adult day center that focuses on fun, function, and community. Community integration is critical. Adults who have the most challenging behaviors or medical needs are the ones who are the most sheltered. What these individuals need is the opposite--they need even more access and practice. “You don’t shelter them, you lean into it and make their world more inclusive,” Conner explained.

A question that guided Conner’s community integration plan was this: From what spaces and places are adults with severe disabilities missing? They are missing from concerts, yoga studios, community centers, and sporting events, among many other spaces. He wants to partner with these spaces and let these individuals and their families experience the space the way others do, so they understand that it is going to be okay, and that these spaces can be inclusive.

Limitless Ability has been hosting monthly pop-up events around the greater Indianapolis area that are meant to engage the community and create inclusive opportunities for adults with disabilities.

Those pop-up events have included adaptive yoga where individuals get out of their wheelchairs to stretch and experience range of motion yoga, and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) events where non-AAC users learn how to communicate back with someone’s AAC device. An upcoming July concert at a local concert arena is also planned.

Conner hopes to make the greater Indy area limitless, a space where the world isn’t defined by those who have disabilities and those who do not; a space where with the right tools and supports, adults with severe disabilities can thrive.

TO HELP AND TO LEARN MORE:

• Follow Limitless Ability on Instagram, Facebook, or at www. limitlessabilityindiana.org.

• Donate through their website

• Share about their work with families looking for services

• Attend community events to see the mission in action

• Sponsor the organization or individual events through your workplace. The work of Limitless Ability is highlighted while the employer receives the benefits of donating to and supporting a registered 501(c)3 charity.