Teachers and ASD

My recent post on autism has apparently sparked some interest (hello Trinity students!), which I’m not altogether surprised at: autism is a hot topic these days, and for good reason. It’s especially a matter of concern for teachers, who are now faced with a greater likelihood of having a student on the spectrum mainstreamed into one of their classes.

Well, besides all of the nice comments that the last article sparked (despite the fact that it was mostly about my own personal dealings with autism as the parent of an autistic child and not really about education in general), I happened to get a message through facebook from a former classmate of mine who student taught and graduated at the same time as I did back in the spring. This message, however, was not about teaching and ASD but instead about teaching with ASD.

 

More garbage in the teachers’ lounge

Seriously, I get tired of writing about the teachers’ lounge. If it weren’t for the fact that I do like socializing with my colleagues during the one real time I get to see any of them (besides my lunch duty, which I share with another new teacher), I think I would avoid it. It seems like when I pay attention to what’s actually in there (which I do somewhat out of necessity, since my lunch period starts 15 minutes before the rest of the group), I inevitably find something that makes me go through what seems like the stages of grief: anger that someone in my hallowed profession would applaud something so stupid, depression that someone would actually disseminate bad information when our job is to promote knowledge and understanding, and finally acceptance (or maybe resignation) that I can’t change everything.

But then the idealist in me says, What do you mean, you can’t change everything? How will you know if you can’t do something about this if you don’t make an effort?

 

A great opportunity for learning

And it’s not from me!

Actually, I’m really excited about this opportunity. I had the idea several weeks ago to try and find guest speakers from various cultures that would align with units of literature that our senior English course is studying. The first one was virtually a no-brainer for me: looking at the literature of Latin America would provide a wealth of opportunities to find speakers with experience in these countries so that my students could have a first-hand account of these places.

So I sent an E-mail asking for potential speakers to the chair of the modern languages department of my alma mater, and (somewhat to my surprise) I received an E-mail back saying that the information had been forwarded on to someone who was interested, even naming the individual and their majors. I was ecstatic, to say the least.

Well, my excitement faded as the days passed and I had no E-mails from this individual. I contemplated sending them an E-mail but thought better of it. If they want to come, they’ll contact me, right?

 

Fun as behavior modification

This Youtube video was posted by a friend on facebook, and it got me thinking…

About what? you might ask. Well, I’m glad you did!

One of the most remarkable things that this experiment suggests is that fun can be a viable method of behavior modification. If you want people to start using stairs (which is beneficial to them in terms of health, but don’t ask people to listen to reason on something like that), then find a fun way to entice people into using them: make the stairs a friggin’ piano.

I see a very logical extension of this “fun theory” into the classroom – if you want students to modify their behavior so that learning can occur, make the classroom fun. Throw out the stuffiness and stifling atmosphere and encourage one that pushes students to get up, to take risks, to let comfort go and reach for the unknown.

I don’t know an easy way to do this – and certainly I would be open to suggestions – but I think it can be achieved. It is, if nothing else, food for thought.

 

Challenges and reassurances

We’re now eight weeks out, with the quarter approaching imminently (it ends on this coming Friday). I’m glad that the quarter’s almost done, although I feel like I have so much to get taken care of in the meantime.

Looking back on just this week, it feels like so much has happened, so much that I want to talk about (and some of which I already have). So here it goes, I suppose (sorry about the unintentional rhyme):

 

Some personal musings on autism

Disclaimer: For those of you who are used to my edublogging, this is a brief respite. Every so often, I need to blog about myself as a person, without my “teacher hat” on. If you don’t care to continue, I won’t begrudge you that.

Ever since my elder son’s diagnosis in November of last year – almost a year now, which is unfathomable to me – the subject of autism has been on my mind frequently. Okay, it’s probably been on my mind longer than that, since the diagnosis was no real surprise to us: all the stereotypies were there, as well as the developmental delays. I had done a fair amount of research on autism and its symptoms, having done a presentation on the subject in college for my special education course, and the speech therapist working with him had talked to us about it, since she had worked with several children on the spectrum. Since the diagnosis, I have tried to stay apprised of happenings in the autism community, most specifically the crazy antivaccinationists that use autism as a vehicle for their crazy conspiracies about “Big Pharma” and the evils of vaccines (like those dreaded “toxins”). In my time on the Internet, I’ve run into more than a few people who have made wild claims, and I keep up with them so that I can be prepared to counter them when I encounter them, just like I do my research on crazy ideas like FEMA death camps. (That’s not a joke, either; I had a student seriously ask me about these, his only evidence proffered being a YouTube video.)

But autism for me is a bigger issue than nutjobs like this. It is something that I live with daily, and not just in my son.

 

Post-observation notes

Okay, so I had my observation earlier today, and I was very pleased with how things went. My lesson flowed just how I wanted it to: brief mini-lesson on complete sentences (amazing how many of my sophomores didn’t know how to identify the verb in a sentence), followed by another mini-lesson on run-on sentences, with guided practice throughout. It was practically an ideal situation (well, except for the amount of unprompted student response, but I chalk that up to grammar). I happened to be talking to a student as the principal left the room, and she gave me a thumbs-up as she left. Great feeling, I must admit.

Now on the other hand, I wanted to sell my juniors to the highest bidder (and at this point, it wouldn’t probably take too much of an offer). My nice lesson on McCarthyism and the “red scare”? Drowned out to “Why can’t we have time to work on our projects?” and “We’ll just forget this by Tuesday” and other various examples of whinery.* Nothing wears me out (not down) like complaining, especially when I know that I can’t give in and must push on with material.

Sigh. At least we only have one more day this week, and then a four-day weekend!

I have needed this so badly…

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*I think this is my own coinage, although in truth, it’s a pun off of the name of a bar that was nearby the university I attended.

 

The (dreaded?) first evaluation

Today is my first official observation and evaluation by my principal. I would be more worried except that 1) I like my principal and am not generally intimidated by her because I am fairly confident that she won’t just slam me but instead will provide constructive comments and 2) the class she’ll be observing is one of my better sophomore classes. (I pretty much abandoned any hope of her observing the juniors now, although my plans worked out such that today’s lesson for them should be pretty good – we’re covering McCarthyism in preparation for reading The Crucible next week, and I have some transparencies of Herblock political cartoons to help connect our previous discussion of the Salem witch trials on Monday.)

The only thing that leaves me a little worried is the fact that I opted to go for a language lesson today. We’ve been doing narrative essays in this course, and I found out pretty quickly that many students did not realize, for instance, that essays are generally not one long paragraph. I had to go through several of the initial drafts and say, “Hey, you need to break this up because your reader is not going to want to read one huge chunk of text.” I also have a lot of problems with sentence construction, particularly with run-ons, and that’s what I’m going to focus on today. It should be a relatively straightforward lesson, with little room for students to run away with the class (discussions about literature can get this way if I’m not careful), so I hope that will minimize problems.

On the bright side, only two more days left in this week, and then week eight is finished. Another short week next week, and the quarter is over and 25% of the year has passed. All in all, I think I’ve kept my head above water nicely, and I think at least some of my students have learned something – that’s a plus, right?

 

Bridging generations

I always seem to find myself in weird places when it comes to generations: I obviously fit into the Generation Y timeframe (mid-’80s) but have some of an appreciation for both the old and the new. I have a soft spot for tradition but embrace progress and change – it’s a somewhat bizarre mix at times.

Since becoming a teacher, I have found certain things causing me to engage my place on the generational fence, confronted on one hand by some of my older colleagues (although there are a handful who are roughly my age) and on the other by my students, who have their own ways of making me feel old. My own stance provides me an interesting position, though, to engage the thoughts of both the older Generation X and the newer Generation Z.*

 

Soliciting feedback: Images?

I don’t often have time to surf other edublogs (which does make me feel a little bit guilty – how can I expect other people to read my blog if I can’t do the same?), but I’ve noticed something on several blogs: some type of image that goes along with the topic of the post. (For some examples: So You Want to Teach?, I’m a Dreamer, sometimes Epic Adventures.)

So, as one both interested in learning a better way to do things and interested in appealing to my audience, I ask: Does it get boring reading my largely image-less and certainly text-heavy posts? Would images make the reading experience more enjoyable for you?

Leave some feedback as to your thoughts in comments, or if you prefer anonymity, you can use the following poll: