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By AMY CALDER
Staff Writer

enlarge Staff photo by Jim Evans

I’M GOING TO DISNEY WORLD: Thomas College student Ashley Pooler is going to Disney World in Florida for a five-month paid internship.

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Born profoundly deaf, Pooler has gone from a shy and insecure child who had to work twice as hard as other kids in school, to a confident, happy and successful college student who is about to spend the fall semester working at Walt Disney World. There, she will get hands-on business experience, college credit -- and a paycheck. She departs today.

For Pooler, now 20 and a Thomas College junior, it took hard work and a lot of courage to get to this point.

"Given the struggles she's had to overcome, she's just an excellent example of, if you have the will and determination to succeed, all doors are open to you," said Thomas Edwards, vice president for academic affairs at Thomas.

Pooler, a business management major, talks confidently about her plans to own a family business such as a salon or restaurant -- or move up the ladder at Hannaford. In addition to attending college, she has worked since 2004 as a cashier at the Elm Plaza store.

"I'm a hard worker," she says. "I like to work. I'm motivated."

She was not always so self-assured.

Enrolled in public schools as a child, she said she had a hard time competing with other students who could hear. If a teacher turned her back to the class and spoke, Pooler was out of the loop.

While other children were socializing after school, she was spending long hours at home working with speech and language therapists.

Her parents, Paula and Carl Pooler, decided when Ashley was very young that she should learn cued speech, a system of communication in which a person uses hand shapes near the mouth to represent the sounds of the English language.

Using those cues and lip movements of speech helps a deaf person to understand the difference between words that appear alike when spoken.

Cued speech differs from American Sign Language.

At 13, she went to New York City to get a cochlear implant, an electronic hearing device that produces useful hearing sensations.

That procedure involved inserting 22 electrodes inside Ashley's head, according to her mother. When she first left the clinic, the sounds were overwhelming.

"She collapsed in New York City in the street," Paula Pooler said. "They wanted us to walk around the block. We never got around the block. We went out the front door and were just ready to cross the street and were waiting for the light to turn. She ran back inside. It was way too much, the noise, the brakes, the traffic."

Ultimately, though, the world started opening up for Ashley Pooler, who began to hear sounds she had never heard before, such as a siren, a telephone ringing, her parents' voices. She went from having no hearing to about 50 percent hearing, according to her mother, who is finance director for Waterville schools.

"Between her implant and her lip-reading, she was able to communicate pretty well with people at that point," she said.

But life was anything but easy. Ashley Pooler remembers having a wonderful teacher's aide with her every day of high school but feeling as if the aide's constant presence hindered her socialization with other students. She also recalls wanting to drop down to a lower level U.S. history class when she was a junior at Winslow High School because she felt inadequate when trying to keep up with other college-bound students.

But her teacher, Jeff Wickman, convinced her to stay, saying he believed in her and her ability to succeed. She ended up being a solid student in the college-preparatory level class. Wickman's encouragement was a turning point in her life, according to both Ashley and her mother.

"I think that was the biggest self-esteem booster to her," Paula Pooler said.

Wickman stays in close contact with his former student, through visits and e-mails.

"Her growth is unbelievable," he said.

Wendy Martin, director of admissions at Thomas, sees Ashley frequently. Martin said she is impressed with Pooler's progress at Thomas, where she plays soccer, earned all A's last semester and has a 3.2 grade point average.

"It's just a really exciting adventure," Martin said of Pooler's Disney internship. "I think we're going to see her evolve even more. Her whole educational experience has been in the central Maine area. For her to be on her own down there, I think, is going to be a good thing. She's a great kid. She's very passionate about what she does."

Today, Ashley Pooler plans to fly to Orlando with her parents to get settled into an apartment on the Disney grounds. She said she is not nervous.

"I want to know what it's like to live on my own, out of state," she says. "I want to know what's out there."

She has been to Walt Disney World before. Every year since she was four, she and her parents have escaped there for a vacation in March.

She joins between 7,000 and 8,000 students from all over the country who take part yearly in the Walt Disney World College Program, according to Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger. Each semester, students from about 350 schools intern there. Finger said Wednesday that Ashley Pooler was chosen for her enthusiasm, strong communications skills and positive attitude. She likely will be working at the World of Disney, one of the largest stores in downtown Disney, Finger said.

She will learn merchandising at the store, which carries everything from pins to coloring books, clothing and collectibles.

Among others, Ashley Pooler credits her parents with giving her the guidance and encouragement she needed to leave the nest.

"They've been wonderful and they've been wonderful letting me do things I wanted to do and they never stopped me," she said. "I go with my heart with whatever I want to do."

Amy Calder -- 861-9247

acalder@centralmaine.com

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