Amy Mackin joins the Spotlight to chat about her memoir, Henry’s Classroom

Author Name: Amy Mackin

Book Title: Henry’s Classroom: A Special Education in American Motherhood

Book Genre: Memoir

Release Date: May 6, 2025

Publisher: Apprentice House Press (Loyola University)

Welcome, Amy! Please tell us a bit about your book.

Henry’s Classroom follows one mother’s tenacious commitment to ensure the best outcome for her child while revealing a larger story of outdated and ineffective systems that are failing millions of families across America.

What drew you to write a memoir about this experience? What made you want to tell this particular story? What do you hope readers will gain or learn from reading about your experience?

Approximately 7.5 million students ages 3–21 across the United States receive special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. My son, Henry, was one of them. But I was not prepared for the extraordinary obstacles I would find within the public education and medical systems as I tried to ensure my son received the instruction and services he needed to thrive. No one seemed to be talking about these challenges, and I felt very isolated in my experience.

In 2012, feeling like we had no other options, I took Henry out of traditional school altogether. That decision dominated my thinking at the time, and I wrote an essay about it that was later published by The Atlantic. The response to that article inspired me to continue documenting Henry’s and my experiences as we designed an individualized, creative education system that would work for him. In 2016—over three years into our alternative schooling journey—I started pulling the pieces together into a manuscript. I believed that what we’d discovered was worth sharing.

I hope this book will spark meaningful discussion around the ways that parents, public schools, and community organizations can effectively work together to support all students, particularly those who learn differently. If someone reads Henry’s Classroom and feels a little less alone or, alternatively, is inspired to reach out to a person they know who might be feeling isolated and overwhelmed by complex parenting, I’ll be happy.

What was your research process like for Henry’s Classroom?

In addition to my own family’s journey and all of the education and medical literature that accompanied it, I read many parenting memoirs as well as nonfiction books on autism and neurodiversity advocacy. But it was not until I started sifting through all of the academic research studies that I realized there was a much bigger story to tell. Those individual memoirs and advocacy books offered a specific perspective, which was certainly interesting and useful for me, but the statistical data I reviewed took these personal viewpoints to a more universal realm.

Parents from all around the globe had been sharing the economic, physical, and mental health impacts of complex parenting for years, but often in decentralized silos. Research across decades found a shortage of community and educational resources for families with children who have disabilities, as well as a lack of training and awareness among typically abled peers, school staff, and even medical providers. And women were overwhelmingly taking on the majority of the caregiving work, impacting their ability to access higher education, self-sustaining jobs, and secure housing.

The understanding that people were studying this was a revelation, and I devoured all of it. I relished evaluating sources and analyzing methodologies. I think so many women feel like there’s something wrong with us because we’re struggling to keep it all under control. Knowing that we’re not alone is invaluable.

What’s capturing your imagination these days outside of reading and writing?

I have a full-time day job, a busy home life, and my own writing and research, so there’s not much time left in my day. But when I have a free couple of hours, I go to the movies. I love the cinematic experience—it’s the only activity where I can turn off all the noise in my mind and totally focus on the art in front of me. I’m particularly intrigued by what modern filmmakers are doing within the horror genre. So many interesting social and cultural issues can be explored (and explained) through fear. It’s fascinating.

What was the last book you read? What did you think of it?

I just finished re-reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed for a nonfiction book club that I’m a part of. It was the 20^th anniversary addition with a foreword by Matthew Desmond, whose work I greatly admire.

I hadn’t read Nickel and Dimed in many years and was quickly reminded of the force that Ehrenreich was—a true champion of the working class with a writing style that made you feel like your next-door neighbor was talking to you over the fence. She boldly defied the predominant rhetoric of the late 1990s (which still continues today) that blamed people living in poverty for their circumstances and she contradicted the idea that they could magically pull themselves out of that situation by sheer will. I wish I wasn’t reading it in an economic environment where the wealth gap is even wider than it was when Ehrenreich wrote that book, but here we are.

Where can readers find you?

Website: www.amymackin.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amymackin/

Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/AmyMackinWriter/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mackinwriting.bsky.social

X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/mackinwriting

Thank you, Amy! Henry’s Classroom: A Special Education in American Motherhood is out NOW.

Henry’s Classroom: A Special Education in American Motherhood

Over 7 million students ages 3-21 across the United States receive special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Amy Mackin’s son, Henry, is one of them.

As she navigates the medical, social, and educational systems that are designed to help families like hers, she discovers that staffing shortages, budget restrictions, ineffective communication practices, and a resistance to innovative ideas all threaten her son’s ability to reach his full potential.

Henry’s Classroom takes readers on Amy’s often frustrating, sometimes funny journey with her son-from the initial signs of a developmental delay, through early intervention, eventual diagnosis, and Henry’s challenges within the public education system-until they finally turn away from traditional structures and create something new instead. As much a work of cultural criticism as it is a memoir, Henry’s Classroom argues that an expanded, more flexible vision of American schools and workplaces is essential for our society to realize true equity and inclusion.

Author Bio:

Amy Mackin writes at the intersection of education, cultural history, public health, and social equity. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, Chalkbeat, The Washington Post, Literary Mama, The Writers Chronicle, Witness, and elsewhere. Her hybrid memoir, Henry’s Classroom: A Special Education in American Motherhood, is forthcoming from Apprentice House/Loyola University Press in May 2025.