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People have nightmares about public speaking, but tonight, four students with disabilities from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda will stand before a room of adults and celebrate their speaking debuts.

The students, members of the school's newly formed Montgomery Exceptional Speakers Bureau, will talk about the challenges of their disabilities; in the audience will be members of The Arc of Montgomery County, a nonprofit that supports people with disabilities and helps them find opportunities to be involved in their communities.

"I felt great; I've been practicing a lot," 19-year-old Dylan Kuhnhenn, a senior who will graduate in 2012, said March 23 after delivering his speech at practice.

Kuhnhenn has Down syndrome and said he joined the club because he wanted to express his feelings. He said he was nervous about speaking before a large group "but not completely."

"I am a very intelligent person and I want to improve," he said.

Nineteen students are in the Whitman club that speech pathologist Lynn Chvotkin started this year.

It is based loosely on Montgomery Exceptional Leaders, a program offered to special education students at county high schools in the 1990s, Chvotkin said.

She hopes the speaker's bureau will expand and that there could be a stipend for teachers who devote their time preparing special needs students for public speaking. The program is run by volunteers.

"I've seen real growth in terms of confidence and being a little more assertive. It's a stepping stone, a springboard, that makes them deal with their disabilities," Chvotkin said.

Gwendolyn Mason, director of Special Education Services in the school system, agrees that the speakers' bureau provides expanded horizons for special education students.

"It's a wonderful opportunity for students with disabilities to be able to express to a wide audience the challenges of having disabilities. It enlightens our society to hear from an individual that has a disability. It opens the doors that will allow them to participate in society in general," she said.

Sophomore Katie Guarino, 16, has cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder that affects body movement and muscle coordination. She uses crutches, and because of the effects of the disorder on her eyesight, she has a hard time tracking words as she reads.

"I work to not have my disability affect my academics," Katie said in her practice speech, adding that she takes Honors and Advanced Placement classes.

Explaining how she meets some of the challenges of her disability, she said she uses audio books and has extended time for testing, but the extended time can sometimes be a problem.

"The downside of extended time is that sometimes it goes into lunch and that affects my social time," she said.

As for speaking in public, Katie said it was a choice she made for two reasons.

"I like doing this kind of thing because I want to be independent, to face challenges on my own," she said. "I decided it would be an important thing for me to do because I've had a lot of opportunities as a student with disabilities."

Also practicing his speech last week was 17-year-old Geoffrey Mikol-Caldwell, a junior with Down syndrome who has trouble with reading and writing. Using Board Maker Plus, a software program that helps him create images for words that are difficult, Geoffrey created an introduction for Katie for his speech. He was assisted by Nina Avila, 17, a senior with learning disabilities and speech impairment.

Nina gave her own speech saying that one of her biggest challenges was "feeling singled out as an LD child."

She has learned that she has to be her own advocate.

"Smart ones ask for help, dumb ones don't," she said. "In life, there will always be challenges, whether you have disabilities or not."

pmcewan@gazette.net