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: Noise Blocking Headphones

Disclaimer: I receive no financial incentive to write this post. I don’t generally post product links because I assume you know how to use google. Sometimes I do, just to make my point clearer. I don’t get any compensation if you make a purchase using those links. The point of this post, as with all of this blog, is simply to share my experience in the hope that it will make education better for the students who come next.

Probably the most common association with autism and sensory challenges are the over-ear noise blocking headphones that many children and adults wear due to extreme sounds sensitivity. I’m not generally sounds sensitive (which is a very good thing since to say my classroom is loud would qualify in the runnings for “understatement of the year.”) However, I do get sound sensitive when I have a migraine or when my anxiety is very triggered. So, after a bit of research on the difference between noise cancelling and noise blocking headphones (I found this article particularly helpful) I decided to invest in a pair of Pro for Sho noise blocking headphones. (Primary positive attributes: under $20 price point and they came in purple!)

They worked exactly as advertised. My husband was able to watch Game of Thrones in the living room while I went about my life in the rest of the house without my being bothered by it in the least. (I may be the only person in the world, but I really don’t like Game of Thrones.) But they also had two other benefits that I didn’t expect, which are the point of this post.

The first was that wearing it seemed to have the effect of dampening all of my senses, not just my hearing. I assume that has to do with the way in which the sensory system is all interconnected. However, I was able to do several cleaning tasks, which are usually very draining due to the onslaught of tactile and olfactory input, and barely notice the effect.

The second, and this was the real surprise, is that I almost immediately started craving the input they gave. (I’m a very strong sensory seeker.) I wore them later in the evening when I was alone in the quiet house just because I liked the way they felt on my head and made the world sound.

I did not anticipate that this type of sensory support would have the same type of psychological benefits as stimming, but it does. I haven’t seen anyone writing or talking about that benefit before, and I think as parents and professional begin to understand the benefits on fidgeting and stimming on the neuro-atypical brain, we need to explain the other use of sensory interventions with that same model. I know it will be part of my explanatory arsenal going forward. (And those purple headphones are going to find a permanent home in my bag!)

Starting to Explore Together

It’s way too easy to fall into a rut of un-reflective discrete trial training (DTT) use. The data is hard to argue with: students work their way methodically to mastery of each item, and when you’re talking about basic identification skills they do master item after item. For many students, they fall into the same rut. It’s comfortably predictable: “I point to this, I get what I want.” Is it any wonder that so many students (and their teachers) have trouble “going beyond” DTT practices? It’s a monster of their own creation.

And so, the question remains: how can we give students that predictable instructional environment without feeding that monster? How can we encourage them to grow as learners while supporting their need for security and sameness in a world that, often, doesn’t make any sense to them? 

The first answer is easy: let students stim. That’s a no-brainer. But the second isn’t that far behind: Build on the objects and properties that interest the student. Our students tend to notice and focus on properties no one else is paying attention to. It’s one of their strengths and it’s one of the reasons neurotypical teachers find them hard to reach. They’re busy focusing on how the object tastes or if it flies when the teacher wants them to count! Let students get to know all the properties of the objects you’re working on. (Yes, explore the textures, tastes, how far they fly, if they bounce, etc.) It might take longer to learn to count, but if you step into the learning, use your language learning strategies (e.g. aided language modeling), the student will actually come out ahead on the other side. More importantly, they will come out with their sense of self intact and validated. They will be ready to take on bigger and more complex learning challenges because they have the foundational skills and because they have the belief in themselves as learners. Even the best intended teacher-driven task memorization cannot accomplish that.