Posts
Welcome to my new blog.
While I have been a special education teacher for over 10 years and an
author of a special education book, Let’s Talk About Being in Special Ed.,
this is my first attempt at blogging. My
goal for this blog is to create an outlet for some of the aha moments that have
helped me become a better teacher.
I am currently teaching a self-contained class in middle
school for academic- life skills students.
What does that mean? We focus on
the application of reading, writing and math skills to real world life and work
situations. The majority of my class
consists of students on the autism spectrum; however, I do have students with other disabilities
ranging from Downs Syndrome to Intellectual Disability (ID).
Enough about me, the first and biggest aha moment I had was
a few years ago when I went to a New Horizons Autism Conference. One of the presenters said something that guides
me with my interactions with students with autism: the primary reactionary
emotion for students on the spectrum is fear.
Take a minute and let that soak in.
Think about what you know about autism and all the sensory input they
have. The lack of comprehension of
social cues and language nuances and emotional immaturity they are dealing
with. It makes sense. Now think about how important creating a safe
environment is for them and what that would mean for each student. It might be something completely different
for each of them. Once I took this to
heart, my life and my classroom changed.
So how
did I go about making my classroom a safer place for my students? I always thought my room was a safe place
until I tried to walk through it in the shoes of a student with autism. I looked around my room, and like most teachers
I had posters telling my kids motivational things like to reach for the stars
and to never give up. I stopped and
thought about how my students would read those, and then I shuddered. What a frightening thing to think that my
teacher expected me to be able to actually reach a star or always do my best
and never make a mistake or have a bad day.
I saw the picture of the periodic table the 8th graders were
working on and thought that my poor 6th graders must be petrified
that they needed to learn that too. I
pulled everything down and the next day when the kids came in some asked what
had happened. I just said I wanted a
change. When I asked if they liked it,
even the ADHD kids said yes, very much.
It has been difficult for the teacher in me, but the walls have stayed
clear ever since. As for noise in the room, I noticed one of my kids putting
his hands over his ears. I took an old
pair of head phones cut off the wires and gave them to him. When others asked
for some, I found some sound reducing earphones a teacher was going to throw
out and now the kids have them when they need them. Sometimes they just like quiet. Sometimes
they like to make some extra noise, and now they can without disturbing others.
They are free to be themselves without fear of getting consequences as long as
their work gets done. The soothers or
fidgets are the newest addition to my “toolbox”. Each student has something
that makes them feel calmer: blocks, Lego’s, a book, play dough, whatever. I allow them to keep these at their desk and
give them time at the end of each period to use them. You cannot take the autism out of the child;
instead, you need to give them that stimulus relief. They need to feel safe to release and not
have to hold it in. Being safe in the classroom extended beyond my four
walls. My administrators have been a key
in this as well. They give me notice of
schedule changes and unscheduled announcements so that I can let my students
know what will be happening. This way they are not startled by unexpected and
unexplained changes to their routine.
Giving students a safe environment is a key to a great
learning environment. It was just
figuring out what safe really meant.
AHA. Don’t fight it. Embrace it on mutual terms.
For more information on fear and autism I recommend the
following two articles to begin with:
No comments:
Post a Comment