SARASOTA, Fla. — It was time for the valedictorian to address the assembly, so Emma Howey rose from her seat in the front row of the auditorium, left her walker behind, and, with the help of her favorite teacher, made her way to the edge of the stage.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she remembered thinking last May as she graduated from CES Academy of Bradenton.
Emma was born with cerebral palsy and has used a walker since she was 3. But, two years earlier, at the end of her sophomore year, Emma set a goal of walking across the stage at graduation.
Emma’s only concession was that CES Academy teacher Charlie Stephenson would walk beside her holding her hand to help her balance. The rest would be all Emma, the result of 24 months of carefully planned occupational and physical therapy.
Also, determination.
And grit.
Emma’s walk of a lifetime required her to climb the six steps to the stage, turn left, and then walk 25 steps to the podium.
“I gotta do this,” she remembered thinking when she reached the foot of the staircase.
And she did.
The audience clapped, and someone shouted, “EMMA!” as she marched before them. She smiled as her goal became reality.
Emma’s voice grew with confidence as she read her speech that ended with this message:
“Graduates, always remember to keep focused, don’t lose hope, and never give up.”
A few minutes later, Emma made the trip again, this time to receive her diploma.
“It was,” she would tell her family afterward, “the best night of my life.”
A big idea
Emma, now 19, attended CES Academy with the help of the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities. Managed by Step Up For Students, the scholarship functions as an education savings account (ESA), which gives families more flexibility in how they spend their students’ funds. Over the years, Emma has used the ESA to purchase a therapy swing, an exercise trampoline, and an iPad. It paid for her hippotherapy, a type of equine-assisted therapy. The ESA also covered tuition at her private K-12 school that serves children with educational exceptionalities.
“I really learned to be on my own there,” she said.
Emma, who lives in Sarasota with her mom, Jennifer, attended her district school through the fifth grade but struggled with the large class sizes. Navigating hallways was difficult given the number of students trying to get to classes. Opening doors can be a chore for Emma, and her schoolmates weren’t always eager to lend a hand.
CES Academy could better accommodate her needs, especially when she met Charlie Stephenson.
“He always focused on what I could do, instead of what I couldn’t. That was something different,” Emma said.
Emma thrived in CES Academy’s academic setting. She was an honor student who tutored other students and was a star in the school’s Mighty Knights program, where juniors and seniors were paired with K-3 students.
“Emma was awesome working with those little kids,” said Mike Van Hoven, who was CES’s principal last year and now teaches science at the school.
Emma was born prematurely and suffered a brain injury at birth, that led to cerebral palsy which affects most of her muscles. She also has neuromuscular scoliosis. She’s had surgeries to lengthen her legs and to correct fatigue in her eye muscles. She wears braces on her legs while using her walker or crutches.
She also plays the piano and can speak Spanish, Italian, and sign language. Among the items on her bucket list are trips to Paris and Italy.
She loves to swim.
“I can walk in the pool. I still don’t understand that,”” she said. “How can I get on land and not do it? It’s like the reverse Ariel, like the Little Mermaid.”
Emma is currently in vocational rehab as she looks for a job. She’s applied for positions to work the front desk at a hotel, the reception desk at a nursing home, and for a position at a library.
“I’m a people person,” she said.
Emma refers to herself as disabled but won’t let that define her.
“I don’t let that limit me (trying) to be the best of my ability,” she said. “There’s stuff I can’t do, but I try not to let that get in the way.”
One thing that does get in the way is her walker when it comes to climbing stairs. She always stood in front of the stage when she received awards at school while her classmates walked across the stage.
In 2019, Emma’s brother Jonathan graduated from high school. She watched him walk with his class and had an idea.
‘This is going to happen’
Ouida Wellenberger was a physical therapist and Sharon Yadven was an occupational therapist at Kidspot in Palmetto. They worked with Emma for years.
Emma told them about watching Jonathan walk with his class.
I want to do that,” Emma said.
“Let’s go for it,” Wellenberger said.
“This is going to happen,” Yadven said.
In 2022, the three began working toward that goal.
Emma’s mom, Jennifer, knew it was an ambitious quest. Could her daughter physically reach such a demanding goal? Possibly. After all, this is the same girl who spent one summer learning to hit a pitched baseball from Jonathan after she learned she was the only player in her age group in the Miracle League of Manasota still hitting off a batting tee.
“She’s always been very strong-willed and determined,” Jennifer said. “She’s done a lot of things in therapy that she did not like, but she knew she had to do it, so she did it.”
“No matter what we threw at her, she accepted it, worked on it, and did it,” Wellenberger said. “The neat thing was that it was her goal, and it wasn’t someone else’s.”
Team Emma immediately went to work on increasing Emma’s strength and stamina with incredible attention to detail. They walked the city block from Kidspot to the old Palmetto library to build Emma’s tolerance. They used the stairs in front of the building to strengthen Emma’s legs so she could lift them high enough to clear a step.
Once Emma decided Stephenson would walk with her, Yadven walked alongside Emma with her left hand at the same height as Stephenson’s so Emma was used to holding her right hand at that height.
Emma practiced letting go of Stephenson’s hand so she could turn and receive her diploma with her right hand.
A few months before graduation Emma learned she was valedictorian. That threw a wrench into the plans. Now Emma had to build endurance so she could stand for three minutes, which was the allotted time for her speech.
And walk across the stage – twice.
Emma has a startle reflex, which is an involuntary response to sudden noises. Because of that, Wellenberger and Yadven blasted “Pomp and Circumstance” and “He’s a Pirate” from the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean” to get Emma used to sudden noises she might hear on her big night, like someone shouting her name as she walked across the stage or the standing ovation she received after her speech. That could cause her to lose her balance.
“We covered everything and more because we wanted to overprepare,” Emma said.
Stephenson attended a couple of Emma’s therapy sessions to practice the walk. Wellenberger and Yadven visited Bayside Community Church in Bradenton – the site of the graduation ceremony – to measure the height and width of the steps to the stage.
“So many things that so many of us take for granted, she has to work really hard to do, and she did not falter in her commitment toward working toward that goal,” Yadven said. “And not only did she not falter, really, but she grew in her determination and her excitement. It was an amazing process to share with her.”
‘I feel I can do anything’
Emma wasn’t sure how to approach Stephenson about assisting her, so she wrote him a letter. She explained how much he meant to her and why he was the right person for the job. Stephenson cried when he read it.
“I was overwhelmed,” he said. “It was a huge honor.”
Then Stephenson left his job at CES Academy and returned to his native Michigan to attend to a personal matter. But he told Emma he would be back for graduation.
“There wasn’t a chance I was going to miss that,” said Stephenson, who retired as a teacher after last school year. “I couldn’t have asked for a better sendoff from my teaching career. It was magical.”
Van Hoven, her former principal, said in his 40 years of teaching he’s never had a student whom he respected as much as he respected Emma.
“Every teacher in that school, she’s touched their heart,” he said.
Emma’s walk was the talk of CES Academy of Bradenton’s 2024 graduation.
“In the sense of goal setting, that proved to me and everyone else that I have the ability – anyone has the ability – to set a goal and hit it, no matter what obstacles,” Emma said. “I feel I can do anything, really.”
