Here are some simple but important suggestions for structuring the days in ways that will ease anxiety and maximize learning time. These will be helpful for all of your students, but may be game-changers for those on the spectrum:
I have encountered many children on the autism spectrum whose precise address along the spectrum remains unclear or inconsistent. And what I’ve discovered is that the diagnosis alone does not dictate the details of their functioning, education, or identity.
Most child development milestones are monitored closely by parents from a very young age: Can my child walk? Check! Use a cup to drink? Check! Jump on one foot? Recite the ABCs? Check and check! Then there are child development “soft skills”—social and emotional skills that can be harder to judge and even more challenging to teach.
Last week I had the opportunity to provide an in-service training to all of the teachers’ aides in the Bronxville, NY school district. The workshop was called, “Making a Difference in the Classroom: Support for Supporters.”
Every student on the spectrum will enter your classroom bearing a backpack full of worries. If they can’t put those worries down on Day One, then toting that heavy load will become a way of life at school, a learned behavior. Each day they will return burdened and compromised by the worries on their backs.
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