There has been a discussion over at So You Want to Teach? (currently my favorite education blog) about Asperger’s and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) more generally. This is an issue that has struck a chord with me in recent weeks, so I was glad to see how other educators and parents have dealt with the education of autistic individuals.
The reason is one I’ve been gradually becoming more comfortable discussing: My oldest son Christian, who will turn three in January, was diagnosed with severe autism in November. My wife and I were not surprised at the diagnosis: Christian has never really been verbal except for a few pseudo-babbling words (e.g. “Mama,” “Dada”), which have since left his use. He has been working with various therapists (speech language pathology, occupational therapy, developmental therapy, nutrition) from our state’s Early Intervention program for about 18 months now, and we have seen a great deal of progress, including some communication in the form of signs (he can sign “more,” “please,” “eat,” “drink,” “bye,” and more recently, “thank you”). We credit this primarily to the Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) that his speech therapist has initiated with him.
With this diagnosis from the developmental pediatrician we visited, we were able to get Christian into an early childhood special education program when he turns three. (Odd coincidence with this: The woman who taught my special education class at the university I attend is now my son’s special ed administrator. Even stranger: I was part of a group that presented on autism in that class! She must have done a decent job with the class, since I understood his IEP readily when I looked over it.) I am fairly confident as a result that my son will be able to receive the kind of education he really needs to thrive here, but this is only temporary until he reaches school age. What then?
We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, of course. We may not be living in the same small district at that point, since I’ll be looking for teaching positions this spring and we might consider moving to another town depending on where I can get a job. It has, however, made me think more about my own educational philosophy.
How does the educational struggle of my son affect my approach toward teaching? Simply, I have become increasingly more aware of how my instruction can succeed for some students and fail miserably for others if I am not careful to consider differences in learning ability and styles in my preparation.
This was the question at SYWTT?, specifically how to alter instruction to accommodate a student with Asperger’s (a less severe form of ASD than classical autism), and this was my primary contribution to the thread:
I will wholeheartedly agree with you [Mrs C.] that understanding Asperger’s or any form of ASD is about getting to know the individual student. There’s a reason that we use ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) more frequently than PDD (Pervasive Developmental Disorder): it really is a spectrum, and no two individuals with ASD will be the same. You can understand stereotypical behaviors, learn strategies to help with some of the deficiencies (like poor verbal or social skills), and so forth, but you have to individualize instruction to some degree. Fairness in the classroom is not always about giving equal tasks; it is sometimes about giving students an equal chance to succeed, and clearly a student with Asperger’s will need a different way to demonstrate learning than his or her “typical” peers. (no underline in original)
The blog’s author, Joel, called this last underlined sentence and said as well:
I had always been under impression that fair and equal were the same thing. … But equality is often unfair. Fairness is often unequal.
Commenter Nancy further remarked:
Thomas Jefferson once said “There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people”. In a truly differentiated classroom what is fair for one is not always fair for all.
I cannot, of course, lay claim to this idea; I actually was introduced to the notion that fairness and equality are not identical in the classroom by an English teacher who I interned under at my own high school – who, not coincidentally, has a daughter with special needs, I believe. He actually presented it as a principle of classroom management – a teacher must not worry about carrying out a different disciplinary action on two different students if there is good reason to enforce a more strict action on a student who requires a more drastic action to correct an inappropriate behavior – but the principle is equally applicable (no pun intended) in the context of instruction.
Bottom line: We cannot adopt a “one-size-fits-all” model when it comes to classroom instruction. We must know our students and their individual needs, keeping them when we prepare our lessons and implement them. When we reflect on a lesson, we must additionally gather inferential data about which students did not succeed and attempt to find ways to meet needs that we did not meet in the instruction of this day. Most importantly, we must never take the easy road of giving equal tasks to unequal students but instead must find a way to help every student succeed as much as is possible. Every child – special needs or not – deserves this from their education.
Update (12/30) – Nancy left another comment with a JFK quote that seems appropriate to add as well:
“Not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or equal motivation; but children have the equal right to develop their talent, their ability, and their motivation.”
December 31, 2008 at 11:38 am
[…] then later fleshed out that idea on his own blog with the post Fairness and equality in the classroom. Please check out his post to read some of these […]
December 31, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I absolutely agree. Before we started grouping our students by ability at my school site, we had mixed ability classrooms. I often had students in my history class who went to Resource for either Math and/or Language Arts. When grading their work, they were graded according to their ability and not by what other students were doing in the classroom. Furthermore, I always modified their tests according to their abilities.
I think for some people who have never had the privilege of having a special needs child or adult in their life, it is hard for them to understand why these modifications are necessary. As an older sister to a brother who has Prader-Willi, it is something that has been a part of my life from a very early age.
December 31, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I wish I could just have you and your wife by for coffee and welcome you to the autism parenting club you never wanted to join. :]
My Woodjie is not verbal either. He is about 25 months and can say “hi” and “nigh-nigh.” He gets therapy four times a week through the same program. I’m guessing you are doing workboxes. We should compare notes sometime.
The bright side is, like you were posting a while back about expectations, and people rising to meet them… the bright side is that our children for the most part do NOT need to be institutionalized. We can usually find a way for them to fit in to our society today. And I think also our expectations on SOCIETY accepting disabled or non-neurotypical people has helped. It isn’t always our expectation of what the CHILD can do. Sorry to ramble, but was excited to see your link.
Well… welcome to the club. I will teach you the secret handshake later. :]
January 1, 2009 at 1:16 pm
A “big idea” in our new social studies curriculum is the difference between equality and equity. It is so refreshing to hear 11 year olds discussing how an equitable society is what they want!
In our class the motto is “everybody gets what they need” and if someone needs an accommodation it is to make their learning environment equitable. If the accommodation works for other students in the class, then they can have it too! I do not require a special card or diagnosis to get what you need to learn.
Rick Wormeli’s book “Fair Isn’t Always Equal” is a great book on differentiation that you might enjoy.
Thanks for the discussion – I followed the post from So You Think You Can Teach.
January 1, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Sorry for the wrong reference to Joel’s blog – his blog is “So You Want to Teach?”. I’ve been watching too much “So You Think You Can Dance” and made the wrong connection!
January 1, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Well done, the issue of “fairness” has been on my mind for 25 years, even though my focus is different than yours. I teach gifted kids. I will never understand why many educators can’t see that very bright kids need something different.