A junior at Yorktown High School, Daniel made each of the figurines by hand and the amount of time he spent on them is readily apparent; many of the ships feature detailed international flags no larger than a quarter of an inch.
They’ve taken him years to amass but, according to Daniel’s mother, Victoria, he can make one “almost without looking.”
“He’ll sit there with the TV on and his fingers are going a mile a minute and all of a sudden he’ll have this little critter,” she said.
Daniel is a tall, exuberant and talented 18 year old who likes basketball, swimming, tugboats, SpongeBob SquarePants, the movie Cars and anime, not necessarily in that order.
Daniel is also autistic. He has difficulty communicating with other people and at times gets lots in his own train of thought. When Daniel was a toddler, doctors told his parents that he’d never be able to live independently.
But now, a decade and a half later, Daniel is thriving. He is engaged in numerous extracurricular activities and is set to become the first graduate of Yorktown who has been diagnosed as autistic.
“We’ve always pushed Danny to get to the next level and he’s always exceeded our expectations,” Victoria Starr said. “When we thought it was going to be hard he would just do it.”
IN RECOGNITION of his accomplishment, Daniel was given the Yes I Can! award from the Council for Exceptional Children, an international organization for special education teachers, at a ceremony in Boston last week.
The awards were developed in 1982 to honor students who achieve despite their disabilities. “Students with disabilities often have outstanding accomplishments but are not often recognized,” Council for Exceptional Children spokesperson Linda Van Kuren said. “We wanted to raise the awareness of these students.”
Daniel was one of 29 students to receive the award out of 250 nominees from across the country.
“It’s just incredible,” said Ilene Schwartz, an educational consultant who worked with the Starrs in charting Daniel’s academic course. “He was a child that no one thought he could graduate with any kind of academic skills and now he is going to have a full diploma.”
Schwartz was responsible for nominating Daniel for the award. “Danny is setting the example for other kids and showing the example for what other kids can do,” she said. “I really just see him as a model… I just wanted to make sure he was recognized.”
Daniel himself has a modest attitude towards the plaudit. “I wasn’t focused on winning the award,” he said, recalling how he felt when his parents told him he had won. “But I think I got a little excited.”
THE AWARD is especially gratifying for Daniel’s parents. When he was a toddler, doctors told them that Daniel would never be able to lead a normal life. Daniel didn’t start talking until the fourth grade and struggled throughout elementary and middle school.
Desperate to find an academic foothold for Daniel, his parents enrolled him at the Arlington Career Center when he started high school. “For our family, that was a huge, huge turning point,” Victoria Starr said.
At the Career Center, Daniel got involved with media production and began to make his own Claymation movies using the figurines he had been constructing. Making the movies was painstaking work but, according to Career Center multimedia instructor Tom O’Day, “It came easy… In minutes he would put together these detailed little trains.”
O’Day has been working with Daniel for six year. In that time, O’Day said, he has progressed from being uncooperative with those around him to being the subject of awe from his classmates.
“In the beginning students would see that Dan was a little different,” O’Day said. “But as soon as they’d see his work the respect factor went up. It was immediate respect amongst his peers.”
GETTING INVOLVED with filmmaking at the Career Center opened up a whole new world for Daniel. He began interacting with his classmates and started doing much better in school.
In ninth grade, Daniel didn’t pass any of his Standards Of Learning tests, which are required to graduate. This year, he passed all but one. “It gave him something to look forward to every day,” Victoria Starr said. “The Career Center has been phenomenal.”
Daniel is also working on an ambitious film project. He is planning on making over 100 short films about the British cartoon series Thomas the Tank Engine, which he adores. So far, he’s written the scripts for almost half of the films and has commissioned his classmates to lend their voices to his project.
“He’d say ‘I need you to read these lines,’” O’Day recalled. “He’d get a big, intimidating kid and say ‘I need you over here.’ I couldn’t get them to do these things but Danny would be able to sweet talk them.”
“Daniel has been able to focus his efforts,” Van Kuren said. “He has a gift and he uses it in many different areas.”
“I film whatever I want to shoot,” Daniel said. “I have this urge to get it done.”
DANIEL’S PARENTS say that communication and determination were two things that have been essential to ensuring their son’s education over the years.
“You have to keep up communication with the school,” Daniel’s mother said. “We’ve been more lucky in that we are in regular contact with the school and the teachers. They’ve always been amiable to us.”
The Starrs also have a 13-year-old, Daisy, who was diagnosed with Down Syndrome so they are all too aware of the effort that special needs children require. “Parents have to fight for opportunities for their kids,” Victoria Starr said. “And it doesn’t stop. It’s year after year.”
She called Daniel an “18-year project.” “To raise this kid there’s a lot going on behind the scenes,” she said.
But the Starrs aren’t alone. An entire community of children with autism and their parents are trying to navigate the same educational hazards that Daniel faced. According to a recent CDC report, autism now affects one in every 150 children and almost one in 94 boys.
“He’s on the tip of this tidal wave that’s coming at the schools,” Daniel’s mother said. But Daniel is not letting his condition define him and is turning his disability into a strength, all thanks to determined and supportive set of parents, educators and friends.
“Don’t ever give up,” Victoria Starr said about the lessons she’s learned from raising her children. “Everybody can be educated.”
