Hopefully, all of my students have learned something from me. I like to think that some have learned more than skills related to speech and language! There are also some students that have taught me incredibly valuable lessons. Lessons that have made me a better therapist, teacher and person. I have a few of these students engrained in my memory. I'd like to tell you about one such student, "Johnny," (not his real name) for Johnny was an amazing teacher to me.
I first evaluated Johnny under a picnic table at a day-care center when he was four. I don't typically conduct my speech and language evaluations under tables, but that's where this evaluation ended up. Johnny was anxious and he found the rocks under the table calming and more interesting than my testing materials. While sitting with Johnny under the table and attempting to get him back to the TOP of the table, Johnny taught me the first lesson. Follow your student's interests!! The next day, I brought some rocks from my own personal collection, (I'm a bit of a rock hound) and showed them to Johnny. He enjoyed holding one in particular and I was thrilled to have his attention for brief periods of testing that day!
Since one of Johnny's main IEP goals was to improve his social communication, we spent many sunny days outside together at his day-care center, working on initiating language with his peers. Johnny's love of nature and the outdoors provided a perfect foundation for improving language interactions. Through the use of social stories, modeling, teachable moments, and picture cues, Johnny learned to use the names of his peers to get their attention. While we caught bugs together, he learned to use language to interact with his peers, "Look what I caught," and to negotiate a play scheme "let's catch bugs first, then we'll ride bikes." He was making connections with his peers and enjoying interacting with other children his age, a skill that had been challenging for this child with autism.
Johnny and I spent the next few school years together, Speech Pathologist and student, one of the benefits of working within a smaller school district. He had a successful year in kindergarten. He loved school, interacted with his peers and was able to participate full-time in the kindergarten classroom with supports! When Johnny moved from kindergarten to first grade, he taught me the next big lesson. Every year is different for a student with autism. Celebrate when your student has a successful year but also think ahead to what new challenges may face this student the following school year and plan for them. For Johnny, first grade presented significant challenges. He was in a different, much larger school and was expected to sit at a desk!! These changes challenged his sensory system and fueled his anxiety like never-before. As a team, we ended up pulling him out of the classroom and slowly reintegrating him.
Lesson number three came later that year. Johnny and I worked diligently on identifying comments that were better left in his head. This seemed like a good goal after he asked me if he could "see into my brain through the pore (OK...it's slightly enlarged) on my cheek"!! As the year progressed, Johnny was having difficulties attending to some aspects of his school day in the regular ed classroom. As he and I explored the reasons for the inattention, he shared that he was playing video games in his head. He had one game in particular that he would replay over and over... in his head. Curious, I had him draw a picture of this video game. In the picture, he had controls for moving the characters in the game back and forth but no pause button. I asked him, "where is the pause button?" He said there was one but he never used it! He agreed to add the pause button to the picture. After all, all games have pause buttons, right? That made sense to him. We reviewed rules for when he could play the game in his head at school and when he should put it on pause so he could pay attention in class. We had a few practice sessions where he put his game on "pause" when it was time to attend in class. Within a short time, he used his pause button without any external supports.
This experience with Johnny was fascinating. I recalled reading Dr. Temple Grandin's, an adult with autism, book, "Thinking in Pictures," where she stated that "visual thinkers, like me, think in photographically specific images." Johnny could play a video game in his head whenever he wanted!!! Dr. Grandin also said, "I can run a machine in my head with full motion." Johnny could run the video game in his head in full motion. Johnny taught me that there can be significant advantages to autism. I, in no way am trivializing autism as a disability. However, I am saying that children with autism have some pretty awesome ABILITIES!! I felt privileged to be the person to tell Johnny that most people could not play video games in their heads. Us neurotypical folks don't see the detailed images in full motion like Johnny. Check out these exerts from Dr. Temple Grandin's book, "Thinking in Pictures," to find out more about the visual imagery abilities of people with autism.
Johnny was a great teacher. You might find this last piece of information interesting. According to Johnny, when the time was right for him to resume his game (in his head), he could resume the game where he had left off when he put it on pause. That's pretty amazing to me but if you knew Johnny, that wouldn't surprise you...he's one pretty amazing kid and an even more amazing teacher!
Donna
Donna
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