Teaching While Autistic

To the outside world, I’ve had an incredibly successful 10 year career as a special education teacher. (You could argue 20 year career, if you count the time I spent working in residential services before getting my teaching certificate.) But under the surface lies a deeper struggle. A struggle not just with trying to reconcile my professional identity as a special education teacher with my personal identity as an autistic person, but to try to figure out how to survive as an autistic person in the incredibly ableist educational environment.

Part of my problem was, because I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30, I had no experience requesting accommodations. And since most people still think “wheelchair” or maybe “blind person” when they hear “accommodations” my supervisors had no idea what to do either. (Even at schools for students with autism! Especially at schools for students with autism!)

And so my journey progressed from “how are you going to help yourself” to “We’ll help you” without any clear understanding on anybody’s part (mine included) as to what that “help” was going to look like, or exactly what I needed “help” with.

Should we be surprised that those positions didn’t work out?

So before I try again, it’s obvious there’s something I need to make clear to myself and to my prospective employers. I need to know, in concrete definable terms, exactly what I need from them in order to be successful in the position they are hiring me for. And if we cannot define clear, concrete supports that will make the position successful, either because what I would need to be successful is too abstract or because we are unclear on what would be required, then the position is not a good match for me and I shouldn’t apply.

I’m tired of hiding and trying to pretend there isn’t an issue here. I’m tired of supports that are really just attempts to recognize and fix things after the fact. I love what I do, and I’m not going to give up on my career. But it’s time to find a place where I can do it without pretending to be someone I’m not.

Coping Strategies

One of my personal projects recently has developing a system to track and analyze my energy regulation. I’ve been trying to figure out if I can predict and even out the highs and lows I’ve been having lately with more better self accommodation. The jury’s out on whether I’ve made any significant breakthrough (and that’s a different post) but as always it brought me back to the question of instruction.

I wrote about my emotion-based instructional curriculum a couple of years ago and what I’ve been doing hasn’t changed significantly in the intervening time. But thinking about it from this perspective, there’s an obvious piece missing. There’s an obvious ableism embedded in that curriculum that I didn’t even notice. Nothing there teaches students to recognize the coping strategies *that they are already using.* Nothing there teaches them to understand how they might need to modify their current coping strategies to function more effectively in a neurotypical society. (Which, like it or not, is the one we live in.) It assumed that the student didn’t have any coping strategy (not very likely for my older teen students!) and tried to teach them the ones that neurotypicals thought were a good idea. Yet we know that the  best teaching is building on skills *that are already there* not trying to build new skills without a foundation.

It seems so obvious when I say it like that, doesn’t it? Time to put it into practice!

Autistic Life Skills: Toothbrushing

Full Disclosure: I don’t get any money for telling you what products I use, like, or don’t like. My opinions are just that, my opinions. There are no product links on this page. I assume you know how to use google.

My goal, in this “Autistic Life Skills” series is simple. To, hopefully, provide a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of developing skills that incorporate sensory challenges, so that other teachers and parents (and other autistics who struggle with those same skills) might find some guidance to approach the teaching of these skills with less frustration on everyone’s part. Hopefully, a way to end the episodes of “wrestling a crocodile” (as the parent of one of my students describes their nightly toothbrushing routine.)

As a child, I was lucky that toothbrushing was never a battle my mother chose to pick. I thought I was very clever in the ways I hid the fact that I wouldn’t do it from her. I wasn’t; she just chose not to fight me about it. Through the luck of good genetics and floride in the water, I never got a cavity, but that luck certainly had nothing to do with my (lack of) toothbrushing.

I was in my 30s when I stopped getting nauseous and sometimes physically sick at the dentist, because I was able to advocate for myself to not get any flavored pastes (they make me sick) and to skip the floride treatment (the texture and taste - yes I can taste it!) makes me gag.

I was nearly 40 when I finally developed a tolerance for the electric toothbrushes that the dentist recommended. I still hate the Sonicare ones and won’t use them. But I worked my way up with the pulsar ones (the vibrating ones that look like manual toothbrushes) and now can use the Oral-B electric toothbrush (well, the CVS generic version!) They have a smaller brush head that means the vibrational input in my mouth is more localized, and the handle doesn’t vibrate as dramatically, so I get the input (and cleaning power) without my whole face, hand, and arm vibrating, which I never could stand. I’m still waiting for the dentist to tell me that my toothbrushing has gotten good enough that I can stop going every three months. Maybe next time?

Why do I tell that story? Because most of my students do not have the language to explain things as clearly as I just did. And yet, as verbal and generally self-aware as I am, look at how long it took for me to figure it out and find relief. I’m not saying that everyone with sensory challenges experiences dental hygiene the same way I did. I’m saying these are the places to start looking when a student struggles.

Especially when working with an older student, it’s important to recognize that there is likely a trauma component to the resistance to learning this skill. Do your research: what’s been tried in the past? How does the routine go at home? What are dental visits like? For many of our students, it’s a battle of wills with the parent at home, and either restraint or sedation at the dentist office. This is a breeding ground for trauma. You can’t start with sensory desensitization, or do sensory desensitization alone, and expect it to be effective. It might be effective in the classroom if they have a positive relationship with you, but it won’t transfer to the home environment. You have to work with the student and the parent to build trust around the routine and more positive associations.

What does that look like in practice?

We start by getting the student to hold the toothbrush.

Then we work on bringing to their face (any part accepted)

Slowly we work toward bringing to the lips.

Next is getting them to open their mouth.

Once they will hold it in their mouth for a count of 10 we can start putting it in each section of the mouth.

Then work toward top and bottom of each section.

Only after that do I introduce the “brushing” motion.

Some students can and will skip steps.

Some students do better starting with the vibration on.

The vibration scares some students away (like it did me.)

For some students we alternate: do each step without and then with vibration before moving on to the next step.

That’s going to depend on their sensory profile, and also where their sensory regulation is that day. (I know I’m more sensory defensive when I’m anxious or tired.)

Toothbrushing is a challenge, but it shouldn’t be a battle. Take on the challenge, work with your student, but know when to pick your battles and don’t make it a battle you choose to pick. 

When We Were Alone: Teaching our (Current) History with Residential Schools

The picture book study for this year’s Global Read Aloud was a pair of indigenous authors and illustrators. The use of language in the books was rich, and gave us ample opportunities to make connections to our own use of multiple communication strategies, as all of my students this year are multimodal AAC communicators. The themes fit beautifully into our social-emotional instruction, as we have been focusing on working together and what it means to be a community.

Then we reached the last book in the book study, “When We Were Alone” by Richard Anderson, illustrated by Julie Flett. The book makes great use of repetitive language that helps make the complex topic of indigenous residential schools more cognitively accessible. I have a student in my classroom who was previously placed at a residential school “far away from home” (as the story says) and who has a trauma history from that placement. I was initially a little apprehensive about reading this story with him. Would he understand it? Would he make the connection? From the first read-through, this student, who usually has difficulty sitting for lessons, sat with rapt attention for this story. His eyes were glued to every page as I read. It was clear the story had his interest. 

I did not draw, or ask him to draw, explicit connections to his own residential school experience. What we did was make explicit comparisons between the meaning behind the rules in the story “to make everyone the same” and the rules in our classroom “to be safe” “to get our work done” and “so everyone can participate.” My students’ active participation in these activities reinforced our classroom values more than any explicit teaching could have done.

I will say it explicitly here: My student’s former placement was a residential ABA program. While the stories are different, at far too many programs the strategies and intentions are the same as the story we read. ABA-based strategies, applied to appropriate skills, are not, by themselves, the problem. It’s the values and intentions that drive them that are deeply problematic and lead to student trauma. For teachers looking to broach this controversial topic with their class, this book may be a great place to start.

The Mask in My Teacher Toolkit

I try very hard to create a classroom that is welcoming of students natural ways of moving, of interacting with the world, and of expressing themselves. In the adult autistic community, we talk a lot about masking, and the effects of it on self-esteem. And then I watch my neurotypical colleagues, completely unaware of what they’re doing, expect those masking behaviors. And I watch myself use them all the time as well. And in makes me wonder, am I doing a disservice to my students by not teaching those skills?

Masking is a skill. The more skills you have, the more opportunities are available to you. But what if our students grew up knowing, not just that masking exists, but that it is a choice? The social skills curriculums currently out there teach “this is what you have to do” but how different would the educational experience of the next generation of autistic children be if we taught it as “this is what the NT population does/expects.” What if our behavior expectations where “here is how to do it/fake it” and “here are reasons/times when you might want to.” 

I know full well that my ability to pass, and thus have control over disclosure, has given me opportunities I might not otherwise have gotten. (There’s a reason this blog is anonymous.) My students may never pass for NT due to other disabilities, but don’t I owe it to them to give them the skills to try if they want to? When I have struggled with social interactions, I’ve gotten instruction (I, personally, found Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking at Work and Ian Ford’s Field Guide to Earthings particularly useful.) Why shouldn’t they benefit from the same opportunities? As a special educator, isn’t that my job? To make the general education curriculum accessible to my students?

(Neuro)Divergent: The Classroom

It’s funny, I used to be called “the mean teacher” because I would insist on students doing everything they could independently, no matter how long it took, and not letting others “save” them. Because I insisted on teaching grade-level content to all my students, no matter their academic skill access level.

Now, I’ve changed schools. To the school that was closest aligned to my values that I could find in the state. And all of the sudden, I’ve developed a reputation as that teacher that is too permissive. You know the one, the one that lets her kids get away with everything and doesn’t actually teach? Yeah, that’s how I’m being perceived.

So what happened?

I could point to any number of things. I do have a really hard class this year. Certainly harder than I’ve had in a while. Groups don’t look very group-ish most of the time. And certainly, I’ve had more lessons fail than I had gotten used to. That’s only a problem when I’m okay with it and don’t learn from it. (And it’s the cause of my discomfort, not the school community perception.)

No, this reputation came about because I have found the hard edge of their tolerance for neurodiverisity. I knew it had to be there: schools are staffed by neurotypicals and even the respectful ones are limited by their perceptions of the world if they’re not listening to the voices of the neurodivergent community. And I noticed that from day one when I started at this school. It was far more respectful and understanding of the neurodivergent community than any place I had been before. But it was still an “us” and a “them” and the voices of the neurodivergent community were conspicuously missing from the conversation. (I left feedback saying as much on my evaluation. I doubt it made a difference.)

That’s what the perceived “permissiveness” is: I’m being too neurodiversity friendly. And, as often happens, it’s being perceived through neurotypical eyes as letting them get away with too much: because it makes them uncomfortable, because if they were me they would not let him do it. And so the “he needs to learn he can’t do that out in a job setting” argument gets invoked.

I literally got told that I’m really good at keeping kids calm and preventing them from getting upset so they can learn. And that that is a bad thing. Because they need to learn to handle being more uncomfortable. (Them being comfortable is making the staff around them uncomfortable.) We need to sacrifice their learning so they can accept more “appropriate boundaries.”

And to some degree, of course, they’re right. Because outside my neurodivergent-friendly classroom, the cold neurotypical world won’t accept them for who they are. And they will be forced to accept arbitrary social rules in the name of “appropriate boundaries” in order to be successful. And we all want them to be successful.

So, where do we go from here?

• We use a more typical token or points system on are goal-directed-learning project. (Honestly, that was probably the next step in understanding how to reach our goal anyway. We needed to make it more concrete.)*

• We set up clearer physical boundaries in the classroom. (I’ve already bought painters tape. Wish I could remember the name of the teacher I met on Twitter who gave me the idea a couple years ago! Thank you, Awesome Autism Teacher Who’s Name I Forget!)

• I have some social skills curriculum to write. And some social stories. They need to come from me because they need to come from a neurodivergent perspective. (Unless someone else out there has already written one? I don’t need to reinvent the wheel!)

I’ve got my work cut out for me changing the perception of myself at my students at my new school. But I think it’s worth it. Because this school really does have the right idea and the right values. It’s why I chose to work there. 

Even when we have neurodiversity acceptance in our society I don’t think we’ll ever have neurodivergent-friendly classrooms the way we have neurotypical-friendly classrooms now. And that is what I was trying to create. And honestly, if I believe in inclusion, which I say I do, that shouldn’t be what I want. Our goal should be a neurodiveristy-friendly room. One that works for all of us, neurotypical and neurodivergent. They are right, I went too far to one side. It’s time to re-build the classroom that works for all of us, because that’s the classroom that is really going to prepare students for “the working world” after graduation.

*I know the research on reinforcers. I’ve read Punished by Rewards. I’ve read Mindset. But I work in a PBIS school that wants to increase its use of PBIS. That means using rewards. I have some ideas about how to make this work following the TTOG principles. I’d been trying it before everything fell apart in the last month or two and having some really awesome successes, even in the DTT context, that I hope to get to write up at some point.

Presume Competence

Since I work with students best described as "consistently inconsistent" I frequently find myself going around and around with well meaning colleagues on the idea that students need to "prove" that they know A or B (usually vocabulary.) (As if any typically developing child is required to "prove" their knowledge of every vocabulary word they can utter.) We usually get stuck because most of my students will not consent to participate in assessment-style activities. They will produce inconsistent or meaningless responses because they simply cannot be motivated to identify a "fork" from a field of 4 pictures. And so, the skeptics tell me I cannot "assume they have the skills:" I have to teach them.

By presuming competence, I refuse to do either. My teaching does not assume that my student can identify a picture of a fork (or numbers, or whatever other vocabulary is in question.) Nor do I spend my time direct teaching basic pre-school vocabulary. I can teach the 8th grade math curriculum (geometry and equations) without knowing for certain if my student knows number symbols. Will I teach number symbols in the process? Absolutely. I can teach mid-grade literature without knowing if my students can identify so-called "functional" vocabulary or know what a "wh" question is. Will they learn that in the process? Probably. They'll also read some really good literature that is appropriate to their age. (Please don't get me started on "wh" questions - I have found that when most people say a student doesn't know "wh" questions they really mean the student doesn't have a certain level of general knowledge, which is generally to be expected of students with complex disabilities and fundamentally Not. The. Same. Thing. One is skill, the other is content. Can you guess which one I care about more?)

My students, like all other students, will use vocabulary to answer questions and create assignments. That will tell me what they know. I don't need them to identify pictures on an assessment they don't care about. I need them to use them in a meaningful context. My students, for whom formal language continues to be a weakness, will demonstrate comprehension of concepts in a myriad of non-linguistic ways, and I will accept those as equally valid measures of their comprehension. Because I understand that, especially for students just learning formal and symbolic language, the symbolic representation and the concept are not the same thing.

That is what Presuming Competence means to me. It means not letting the fact that I cannot prove whether or not a student knows a concept or has a skill through formal assessment hold me back from teaching them higher level materials. Simply put, it means believing that all students can learn and teaching them.