Chris Ulmer

Christopher Ulmer (born March 4, 1989) is an American disability-rights advocate, former special education teacher, YouTuber, and founder of the non-profit Special Books by Special Kids.

Early life and education

Ulmer was born on March 4, 1989 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Pennsylvania State University, where he majored in media effects. He received a master's degree in special education from the University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, where he was a student teacher.

Career

After graduation, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and began teaching special education to students aged 7 to 10. As a special education teacher, he taught students with Autism, Aspergers, agenesis of the corpus callosum and traumatic brain injury.

With permission from his students’ parents, in the classroom Ulmer "began to film interviews with his students and post them on social media," which attracted an online presence. After 12 months, Special Books by Special Kids "evolved into an acceptance movement that’s reached over one billion people."

Ulmer began his online presence through Facebook in 2016 and a year later reached 1.2 million followers. In 2017, Ulmer created the YouTube channel Special Books by Special Kids (commonly abbreviated as SBSK). On November 19, 2018, the Special Books by Special Kids YouTube channel, co-founded by Ulmer, reached 1 million subscribers.

He crisscrossed the country interviewing special-needs children to give them, as ABC News put it, "an opportunity to be seen and accepted." As a result, Ulmer has created more than 500 videos of those interviews. A partial transcript, as an example of an interview of a child by Ulmer, is included in the book Flying Starts for Unique Children by author and special-needs teacher Adele Devine.

Awards and nominations