Cottonwood Outreach

I’m planning an exploratory outreach to Cottonwood, AZ, and the surrounding area, to see if I can be of greater service to the Autism community who resides in the area that stretches from Prescott to Flagstaff. I’ve selected Cottonwood because it’s centrally located between those two points. I’m hoping that an area that is underserved by Autism experts with extensive academic credentials would be more open to the ideas of someone like me.
My background, and the those who’ve mentored me
I’m an Autistic with 56 years of life experience, the first 40 of which were pre-diagnosis due to me being raised in the 70s and 80s. After receiving my diagnosis in 2009, I sat under the mentorship of the most brilliant Autism expert you could ever ask to come across your path, Sue Golubock. A now retired Occupational Therapist, she didn’t get her diagnosis until her 50s due to her being raised in the 50s and 60s.
She, along with another Autistic who didn’t get her diagnosis until her late 20s, due to her being raised in the 80s and 90s, organized the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix’s Adult Autistic/Aspie support group. I’m not mentioning her name because she has since gotten in extremely partisan politics to the extent that I feel her commitment to them supersedes her commitment to her commitment to the Autism community.
I’ve also been mentored by a number of experts in a variety of non-Autism specific areas of understanding that provide me with the most diverse understanding of the human being referred to as Autistic or Aspies. These range from 12 step principle I learned while overcoming codependency, as well as the stress management and other social skills struggle that I now know are defining characteristics of Autism, to becoming a mature man of God. From the most effective childcare technics taught to me by a church’s Early Childhood Director who kept telling us about special consideration that we needed to show certain children, which I later figured out was her recognizing the need for Autistic/Aspie accommodations prior to Asperger’s becoming an official diagnosis, to a neurologist who critiqued my explanation of the neurological roots of Autism to make it consistent with the consensus scientific understanding back in 2013.
My YouTube Videos
My channel that’s up and running is “Teachersaurus’ Autism Advocacy,” 4 or 5 others dedicated mostly to non-Autism related topics are in the works. To understand what I’m wanting to bring to northern Arizona, the three playlist you should focus on would be “Autism Ambassadors Corps,” “My Critique of the Educational System” and Core Concepts for Upstanding Autistics.”
What my outreach is, and is not, going to be about
Both times I’ve done a public outreach in front of an educational establishment; bystanders have immediately assumed that I’m an angry protest who was there to cause trouble and called the police on me. Both situations proved to be a waist of law-enforcements’ time as my true intent was to engage in constructive dialogue about my ideas to anyone who wanted to talk to me. That, and the fact that my knowledge of both privet property laws and the first amendment meant that I was conducting myself in a manner they couldn’t have done anything about if I was a troublemaker.
I’m planning on being in front of the entrance to the district office between the hours of 7am – 12pm on Thursday, September 18, 2025, which is the latest I’d be able to stay before reporting to my one day 3pm – 3am job assignment in Sedona. My Friday outreach will be from 7am – 5pm, at which time I hope to have on invitation to join someone local to continue to our conversation in greater detail. So, if you live in the target area, or know someone who does, please let everyone know about my plan.
You can contact me personally by PMing me through meetup.com or emailing me at [aacphoenix@outlook.com](mailto:aacphoenix@outlook.com).