"Front of the Class"is a film based on the true story of a boy with Tourette's disease, Brad, who has been treated unfairly due to his twitching and making strange noises from time to time, but through his continuous efforts to break through the difficult situation, achieve self-worth and prove to the world that people with Tourette's disease should not be treated differently. Because they are just as good, just as capable of achieving self-worth. After watching this movie, our team had a great feeling that due to some physiological problems, the vast majority of Tourette's patients have encountered a lot of unfair treatment on the road to pursue their dreams, and many of them are interested in science and eager to learn. Therefore, our team hopes to draw widespread attention from the society through this opportunity, so that more people can understand and pay attention to people with Tourette's disease, help them solve the difficulties they face, strive for equal education opportunities and improve the respect and attention of the society to them.Despite many misconceptions, Tourette's has nothing to do with intelligence, and sufferers have the same ability to learn and work as the average person.
Through the Little Red Book, we contacted some Tourette's patients and interviewed them. Through the interviews, we learned that Tourette's disease has no impact on intelligence, and all of our interviewees have undergraduate degrees or even higher. And there are now drugs like tiapride, aripiprazole that are specifically developed for diseases like Tourette's, and one of our interviewees had surgery and he reported that it was very effective. One respondent was found different from other children of the same age by his parents when he was in primary school, and he was taken to the hospital for examination without being diagnosed with Tourette's disease. Then he tried many methods, such as seeking the help of a psychiatrist and forcing control by himself. The feedback result after using these two methods was that the effect of forcing control by himself was not good. There is one point that after these two methods, the interviewees are very resistant to continue to understand their symptoms and continue to treat. We learned from her that it was her husband who led her out of this dilemma. After we interviewed her husband, we learned that it was the husband who searched relevant papers and tried to understand his wife's symptoms. After understanding and communicating with scholars in related industries, he finally confirmed that his wife was a Tourette's patient. By persuading his wife to accept the treatment, he finally had a good therapeutic effect.
We looked for organizations on major social platforms around the world, including Wechat, TikTok, Twitter, Xiaohongshu, Weibo. We did found some. However, these organizations either they don't meet our requirements, or they don't give interviews. We are still working in this part, finding organizations about Tourette's disease and comunicating with which we already found.
People with Tourette's syndrome are unable to learn in class because they make strange noises involuntarily. At the same time, due to the high cost of one-to-one tutoring, it is not economical to solve the STEM education problem of Tourette's disease population through one-to-one tutoring. Therefore, in order to ensure that this population has a fair educational opportunity, we decided to create a public education organization based on high school and college students to provide high school biology content free of charge to people with Tourette's disease in the form of videocasts and online courses.
We finished a total of 7 lessons:
- The molecules that make up cells.
- The basic structure of cells.
- Discovery of genetic factors.
- Relationship between genes and chromosomes.
- Nature and expression of genes.
- Genetic mutations and other variations.
- Evolution of living things.
Due to professional limitations, our team members did not complete the fourth and fifth lessons. Instead, we found a college student to help us complete those two lessons.
We joined a wechat group to record the lesson,this wechat group is our Help Tourette's group as a precursor to an organization of Partoret's patients.
We set up a Tourette's counseling hotline to help these patients.
In addition to online courses, we also offer offline booking services. Consider working with schools or communities in the future to provide a comfortable and understanding environment for people with Tourette's because we understand that they want to be treated like normal people, but not study in special schools.
Create a public media account:
We completed the establishment of Wechat public account and published five articles：
- Survey on the understanding and acceptance of Tourette's disease in society.
- Introduction to Tourette's disease.
- Interview with a couple with Tourette's.
- Interview with Tourette's patient.
- Interview with Tourette's patient.
We created this public account to raise people's awareness, let people treat them like ordinary people, and give them access to education
We are willing to:
- Work with more medical institutions, schools and businesses to provide more support and opportunities for people with Tourette's.
- Establish scholarships or grant programs to encourage more patients to continue their studies and careers.
- Develop training programs to help educators and employers better understand and support people with Tourette's.
- Create a social network or APP for people with Tourette's so they can easily communicate and help each other.
- Organize activities like family meetings.
- Plan to organize Tourette's disease awareness Month regionally.