***Teach The Teacher Tuesday***
This week (27/3- 2/4) marks Autism Awareness Week. In effort to promote awareness and acceptance, this post will spotlight how autism falls under the neurodiverse umbrella, celebrate the common strengths of autistic people and identify simple classroom techniques that help support autistic students.
Autistic people have neurodiverse brains, which means the way they perceive, process and interact with our environment may look very different to the way we do. Commonly, communication, ways to emotionally regulate. and processing sensory information (like sounds) can be the main point of difference. This is ok! Often, when we think of autism, we think of the challenges that it can bring, however it is time to shift the focus from challenges to celebrating the strengths that autism can bring. Although every autistic person is individual and diverse, just as we all are, in general autistic people often show strength in their:
attention to visual details, which often makes autistic people excellent artists
ability to think mathematically and logically
interests. Autistic people will often have a strong passion in a certain topic. Because of this interest, they will very passionately explore and learn about this topic, which in turn renders them to have expertise knowledge.
personal character. Autistic people are often very honest in their encounters and loyal.
If it’s our job as educators to support each student to reach their full potential, then we must provide autistic students the opportunity to showcase their strengths, and celebrate these. Additionally, educators need to acknowledge the challenges that autistic students may face in the classroom and build support strategies to help minimize the negative impact these challenges may have on students’ learning. So what are some common challenges autistic students may face in the classroom, and how can we minimize their impact?
Autistic students often need movement to learn. Considering this, it is clear that sitting still during whole class learning would be challenging. To support learning during these times, autistic children may benefit from a wobble cushion, small fidget toys, or even doodling in a book.
Many autistic children find eye contact challenging, so let’s not force it!
Some sensory stimuli can be overwhelming for autistic students. These may include lights and sounds. To support autistic students, educators can allow students to wear headphones in noisy situations (knowing that we ourselves may not find these situations noisy, but the student may), and having flexible seating, so that autistic students can find a learning spot that isn’t too bright or glary.
Provide students the opportunity to incorporate their passion and expertise on a certain topic into their learning. For example, if you’re writing a persuasive text, students could incorporate their interest and persuade on this topic, rather than the generic topic the class is focusing on. This allows them to be engaged as well as build their knowledge on the writing genre.
Autistics students can have their own way of communicating, let’s not force them to solely adopt typical forms of communication
Above all else, let’s remember that autistics students are unique individuals just like us all. The best way to support any student is to build rapport with them and their support group, so that you can best incorporate their strengths and support their challenges in the classroom.