My path into special education did not begin in a classroom, but at a summer camp. One summer, I was teaching a camp session when a mother asked to meet with me before her son enrolled.  She wanted to know if his diagnosis would disqualify him from participating. Her son had autism, and like so many parents, she had learned to ask that question first because too many people had answered it wrong.

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I met her son and welcomed him to camp with open arms. Then the most amazing thing happened, he thrived.  That experience changed everything for me. I saw a child who needed the right environment, the right support, and someone who believed in what he was capable of. That belief has driven every decision I have made since.

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I went on to earn my Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of Texas at Austin, become a certified Educational Diagnostician, and spent years inside school districts training hundreds of educators, evaluating programs, and helping systems get better at serving the kids who need them most. I have worked in classrooms, district offices, and corporate learning environments, and what I have carried into every single one of those spaces is the same conviction: every child deserves to belong.

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Today, through McCoy-Pickett Consulting, I partner with school districts, organizations, and faith communities to build the systems, the training, and the capacity that make that belonging possible. Not as an ideal, but as a reality.

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If you are trying to get this right for the kids in your care, I would love to talk.

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