Why I want to work with young people with Autism.
26.02.12
The two most enjoyable jobs I have ever had have been working in schools with children with Autism/ Special Needs.
The first, was at a secondary school, where not only did I meet a group of friends for life but I learnt such a lot and embarked on a career that I never imagined I could do. Talking to our group of friends, we all admit are first day as Learning Support Assistants was daunting. It's not a job you can really be prepared for, even if you had training, you just have to get stuck in and be prepared for anything and everything. Some of my friends have stories of walking in the classroom door and being greeted by a young person shouting obscene words at them and then announcing she'd defecated in her pants (not her words!). My first impressions were not so vivid, but I remember one young person with Down Syndrome getting very upset with me because I couldn't understand him when he spoke.
Over the next few months, however, I became extremely attached to the small group of students in my care, each with their own unique concoction of conditions and each very much their own person. None of them had any inhibitions, they weren't worried what any one else thought of them. One student would come in to school occasionally dressed in a tux, always had a bag of 'gadgets' and lived his life in a Bond movie, each of his peers being one of the characters. This role was extremely important to the whole group and he would occasionally fall out with one of his friends and ceremoniously take this role away from them.
Another young person with Autism, is an incredible artist and produced wonderful, lively drawings of clowns, cars, Wind in the Willows characters and circuses in particular. I worked with him at home aswell, building on his independence and taking him out on day trips. I was doing this up to a few months ago. He has an incredible way of speaking, he has quite a large repetoire of phrases that he has learnt by rote, including the correct emotional inflections, which he uses to converse. He is a polite young gentleman and is always very well dressed. He likes to know a person's full name and will remember names months later. When he gets cross or upset he will talk to himself outloud, telling himself to cheer up and 'It wasn't Nicky Waring's fault, don't be angry with her'. He likes to know where he is going and what he is doing in advance and can get upset if these plans don't come to fruition. This is something that is common with people on the spectrum. I have loved working with him and his family, he always brings a smile to my face!
One of my favourite stories, and I'm sure his mum won't mind me telling it, is when he got himself dressed one day. His mum was in a rush and asked him to come down so they could go out. Down the stairs came a very smartly dressed young gentleman, wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches, a waistcoat, flying goggles and hat and.......a green face and hands (coloured in with felt tips) and black lips. He was, of course, Mr Toad. His mum described having to go to an appointment and other drivers/passerby's taking second looks at him just to check what they were seeing!
Another of the boys, I worked very closely with, as he needed one to one supervision during break times, had already come along way by the time I started working with him, as he could get very angry and violent. However I only saw him act this way once, in all the time I worked with him, and it is my opinion that the substitute teacher 'pushed his buttons' and then didn't see the warning signs and kept going until it was too late.
But one of the things I most remember about him was the way he spoke. He spoke in a very matter of fact way, quite monotone and he always had a lot to say! Mainly about football or cars, or music - he loved the Killers at the time. And I still remember something that he said and I think I always will. That morning he had kicked one of his peers and the class teacher took him outside to speak to him about it. When she asked why he had kicked the boy he replied, "I know it is not the case now, but at the time I thought he was a football." She said she found it very hard not to laugh when he gave this response with such seriousness. He must have been thinking, well I know I can't quick a person so what can I kick? A good example of literal, linear logic!
Within a few months of starting work, there was to be a talent show and my class were very keen to take part. So we formed a band, wrote and recorded a song with the help of the music teacher. Of course I took part, helped write and sang along on the recording. Little did I realise that I would have to get up on stage and perform with them, break dancing and all! Now, this was way out of my comfort zone, for a start I can't actually sing or dance and I don't like performing in front of people. But I did it and I actually had great fun and so did the class. And every LSA there got up with their class and took part. It was actually a fantastic feeling; to shed any worries about what people think of you and just be part of it. I feel that I developed as a person, doing this job.
I worked for this class for a year and a half and I took their progress and development very seriously. I had close links with some of the parents and became emotionally involved. They trusted me. I was so upset when came the day for the class to leave school, but at the same time so proud of how far they had come.
It's sad to think that as a class teacher I have never had these same relationships with the young people - you just don't have the time and as a mainstream teacher you very rarely get 'down' time with your class when you can just have fun and talk about their interests.
Everyday being an LSA was interesting and fun, because the kids made it that way. I was constantly suprised by the young people's interpretation of the world and responses to questions. I also suprised myself at how adaptable and flexible I could be, the solutions I came up with and how much patience I had. I spent months trying to get one of the lads (a very stubborn individual) to go to college and came up with all sorts of incentives and liaised with the parents. Eventually he did go most weeks. The towards the end of the year, some days it could take me an hour to walk with him the ten minutes to his work experience placement as he invented all kinds of distractions and excuses to stop and procrastinate. but the sense of achievement for him (and me!) when he actually managed a week of work experience. I discovered skills and traits that I never knew I had - a bottomless pit of patience apparently!
One day though I did come close to what I think I could cope with! I don't think it's appropriate to blog the story but just to point out, the job came with often having to clear up various bodily fluids and depending on the students you worked with, you might get kicked, punched, scratched..you name it, regularly. But you understood that this wasn't personal, that a majority of the time it was simply a form of expression, because the young person didn't have any other means to express what they were feeling.
This was something I learnt more about when working with a class of boys aged 6-10 years old, with Autism. I loved going to work every morning and I loved these boys, but it could be incredibly tiring and stressful. I'll tell you a bit about some of the members of this class and I'll just give them an initial to identify them, to try and give you an idea, if you don't, of what this kind of environment is like. Obviously each child has a lot more to them than what I briefly describe!
S is verbal, very affectionate, loves to roll things and wears a helmet to protect himself as when he gets upset, frustrated he bangs his head. S needs to have a clear routine and gets upset if this routine chances, he finds it hard to adjust to new things. If he didn't want to do something that was on the timetable he would hide the pecs symbol! He knew all the staff members name and would call our names from across the classroom when he wanted some attention. After a while he learnt he couldn't get our attention that we, but he would have to come over to us, make eye contact and say our name. Then he could hand us his Pecs strip with what he wanted on it.
J has the most expressive, big brown eyes and again likes cuddles and is very affectionate. He usually has his fingers in or around his ears and finds loud noises very distressing.If he got upset he would bang his head, or headbutt, pinch, scratch us and it would be incredibly difficult to remove yourself from his hold! He liked to eat crunchy, strong tasting foods and enjoyed swinging or bouncing.
M needed a lot of space to himself and away from the other boys, so we would take him out to the field a lot of the time. He had his own vocabulary of sounds and sounds he would make repeatedly to calm himself down. He would take himself outside if it got too noisy in the classroom. He loved water play, bouncing and throwing hoops. Once he got to know you he enjoyed tickles and cuddles. When M got upset he might hit out at other children or the staff. But he had learnt to ask for time out using his pecs symbols when things got too much.
A is a very strong willed young man and when I started work with him, spent very little time in the classroom and refused to move to the different activities around the school. We spent a lot of time with him in the Light and Sound room, to relax him. He could become very distressed around the other boys as the classroom could be very noisy, with all the boys, most making repetitive noises: singing, squeeling, humming, tapping, running backwards and forwards. A ate a very limited diet of fromage frais and chocolate! If he didn't want to go somewhere or do something he would drop to the floor and it could take up to an hour to calm him down and coax him up. You can imagine how difficult this could make every day life for his mum.
F is probably the child that I worried about most but also saw the most progress in some areas of his life. F was in pain a lot of the time and wore pads as he had a very limited and poor diet. We would feed him 2 or 3 yoghurts a day. This may take us an hour and it may be all he ate in the day. Over the 6 months I was working in the class, this time got shorter and he began to eat more yoghurts, some with fruit in! I know that he now eats an increased repertiore of foods and drinks more frequently.
F was also very reluctant to drink anything and was very sensitive to certain textures including water on his skin and particularly around his mouth. With advice from an Occupational Therapist we did lots of gentle exercises to try and make these areas less sensitive and playing/bathing in water more pleasurable.
F is verbal and will repeat/sing songs from cartoons/films. He can count and read at a basic level - I'm not sure what level he is it now. One of F's favourite things was a piece of marble run which he used to wave/spin about in the air, watching it all the time. Unlike S who liked to engage adults in watching him play and play in parrallel, F showed little awareness of the people around him. I noticed he would very occasionally take part in a chase game with S. So we started initiating these games more frequently between the 2 of them and us, rewarding them with tickles at the end! I then started to take F's hands in mine and started a train game, where I would gently pull him around the classroom, saying 'choo, choo' etc! F loved it and one day he came to me and took my hands are started to pull me around the room! We built on this and soon when he took my hand and I asked him what he wanted he would say 'choo, choo'. Next, he would have to make eye contact with me before I would play. Such a great feeling when a week later that's what he did! It makes me well up when I think about it! The next step was to encourage F to play this game with S, but alas I had left at that point.
In this kind of job, your measurements for success are a lot different to what they might be in a mainstream school and very different depending on the individual. Often the things you are helping the young people make progress in are fundamental skills that will make a real difference to their lives and their families' lives, but progress can seem very slow.
The classroom could be incredibly noisy and often if one boy started to get agitated, it would effect the others and the tension could quickly escalate. You had to be on your toes and know the boys' triggers in order to help them stay calm and happy. We had a lot of 'down' time and we kept to a clear structure, making sure the boys knew at the beginning of each day what they would be doing and where. A lot of the week was taken up with Occupational Therapy, Speech and Language Therapy, playing in the soft play room or in the light and sound room.
I hope this gives you a bit of an insight in to the job of a Learning Support Assistant in a Special Needs School and what a rewarding and life affirming job it is. We get to spend every day with wonderful and unique individuals who give you a different perspective on life and I feel privileged to have had this opportunity. And I hope that somewhere along the line I can help to make a small difference to a young person and their families lives. I hope that by writing this web page as well it will help to increase people's understanding of people with ASD and the challenges and delights this brings for them and their families.
Teaching in 'main-stream' schools
25.02.12
Teaching is a job you have to love, if you don't you just don't have the energy, drive and enthusiasm to do the best job you can. And you have to be able to do a good job because it is such an important role - you are shaping the future, you are giving children hope for the future and showing them what is possible, how they can positively effect the world.
From that point of view teaching is great and you get to spend all day with children! Everyday is so different and to a limited extent you are your own boss. Your classroom is your realm, you establish the rules for your class in order to create a large family where you all can feel comfortable and respected. It is a great feeling to greet your class in the morning and know that they all want to be there, that they want to share the dramas of the evening/morning with you.
However, teaching is also very frustrating! Class sizes are getting bigger and it was hard knowing that some days you might not say more than a few words to some of the children in your class. You don't build the same relationships that you do when working in a specialist setting with maybe 6-8 students. As a class teacher it can be extremely challenging to meet the needs of all the children in your class, especially when you have 30-35 children, 10 of those with special educational needs. I never felt that I was doing a good enough job!
There is also mountains of paperwork, a lot of it replicated. The government don't seem to trust teachers assessment anymore, there is so much arbitrary testing and the test score will taken out of context as gospel.
There is a big emphasis on inclusion currently and of course on paper I would completely agree with this. But in my experience, some children are losing out because schools are insistent they should stay in a main stream school, that they should muddle along. Obviously there are advantages to this,for example;, they are socialising with 'normally developing children' and of course it depends on the child. But I think sometimes schools see it as failure if they concede that a child should go to a specialist setting. When actually in a specialist setting they would have access to teachers with specific expertise, therapies, additional equipment and they can socialise with children that have similar differences.
Also teachers seem to be more and more devalued by the government. They want teachers to work til their older, do more in the hours that they work, have less planning time, receive less of a pension - oh and increase the standard of teaching! How can that possibly work?!
A lot of these issues will be the same in schools that specialise in catering for children with special educational needs I know, but these are some of the frustrations I had and some of the contributing factors to my decision to wanting to leave.
26.02.12
The two most enjoyable jobs I have ever had have been working in schools with children with Autism/ Special Needs.
The first, was at a secondary school, where not only did I meet a group of friends for life but I learnt such a lot and embarked on a career that I never imagined I could do. Talking to our group of friends, we all admit are first day as Learning Support Assistants was daunting. It's not a job you can really be prepared for, even if you had training, you just have to get stuck in and be prepared for anything and everything. Some of my friends have stories of walking in the classroom door and being greeted by a young person shouting obscene words at them and then announcing she'd defecated in her pants (not her words!). My first impressions were not so vivid, but I remember one young person with Down Syndrome getting very upset with me because I couldn't understand him when he spoke.
Over the next few months, however, I became extremely attached to the small group of students in my care, each with their own unique concoction of conditions and each very much their own person. None of them had any inhibitions, they weren't worried what any one else thought of them. One student would come in to school occasionally dressed in a tux, always had a bag of 'gadgets' and lived his life in a Bond movie, each of his peers being one of the characters. This role was extremely important to the whole group and he would occasionally fall out with one of his friends and ceremoniously take this role away from them.
Another young person with Autism, is an incredible artist and produced wonderful, lively drawings of clowns, cars, Wind in the Willows characters and circuses in particular. I worked with him at home aswell, building on his independence and taking him out on day trips. I was doing this up to a few months ago. He has an incredible way of speaking, he has quite a large repetoire of phrases that he has learnt by rote, including the correct emotional inflections, which he uses to converse. He is a polite young gentleman and is always very well dressed. He likes to know a person's full name and will remember names months later. When he gets cross or upset he will talk to himself outloud, telling himself to cheer up and 'It wasn't Nicky Waring's fault, don't be angry with her'. He likes to know where he is going and what he is doing in advance and can get upset if these plans don't come to fruition. This is something that is common with people on the spectrum. I have loved working with him and his family, he always brings a smile to my face!
One of my favourite stories, and I'm sure his mum won't mind me telling it, is when he got himself dressed one day. His mum was in a rush and asked him to come down so they could go out. Down the stairs came a very smartly dressed young gentleman, wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches, a waistcoat, flying goggles and hat and.......a green face and hands (coloured in with felt tips) and black lips. He was, of course, Mr Toad. His mum described having to go to an appointment and other drivers/passerby's taking second looks at him just to check what they were seeing!
Another of the boys, I worked very closely with, as he needed one to one supervision during break times, had already come along way by the time I started working with him, as he could get very angry and violent. However I only saw him act this way once, in all the time I worked with him, and it is my opinion that the substitute teacher 'pushed his buttons' and then didn't see the warning signs and kept going until it was too late.
But one of the things I most remember about him was the way he spoke. He spoke in a very matter of fact way, quite monotone and he always had a lot to say! Mainly about football or cars, or music - he loved the Killers at the time. And I still remember something that he said and I think I always will. That morning he had kicked one of his peers and the class teacher took him outside to speak to him about it. When she asked why he had kicked the boy he replied, "I know it is not the case now, but at the time I thought he was a football." She said she found it very hard not to laugh when he gave this response with such seriousness. He must have been thinking, well I know I can't quick a person so what can I kick? A good example of literal, linear logic!
Within a few months of starting work, there was to be a talent show and my class were very keen to take part. So we formed a band, wrote and recorded a song with the help of the music teacher. Of course I took part, helped write and sang along on the recording. Little did I realise that I would have to get up on stage and perform with them, break dancing and all! Now, this was way out of my comfort zone, for a start I can't actually sing or dance and I don't like performing in front of people. But I did it and I actually had great fun and so did the class. And every LSA there got up with their class and took part. It was actually a fantastic feeling; to shed any worries about what people think of you and just be part of it. I feel that I developed as a person, doing this job.
I worked for this class for a year and a half and I took their progress and development very seriously. I had close links with some of the parents and became emotionally involved. They trusted me. I was so upset when came the day for the class to leave school, but at the same time so proud of how far they had come.
It's sad to think that as a class teacher I have never had these same relationships with the young people - you just don't have the time and as a mainstream teacher you very rarely get 'down' time with your class when you can just have fun and talk about their interests.
Everyday being an LSA was interesting and fun, because the kids made it that way. I was constantly suprised by the young people's interpretation of the world and responses to questions. I also suprised myself at how adaptable and flexible I could be, the solutions I came up with and how much patience I had. I spent months trying to get one of the lads (a very stubborn individual) to go to college and came up with all sorts of incentives and liaised with the parents. Eventually he did go most weeks. The towards the end of the year, some days it could take me an hour to walk with him the ten minutes to his work experience placement as he invented all kinds of distractions and excuses to stop and procrastinate. but the sense of achievement for him (and me!) when he actually managed a week of work experience. I discovered skills and traits that I never knew I had - a bottomless pit of patience apparently!
One day though I did come close to what I think I could cope with! I don't think it's appropriate to blog the story but just to point out, the job came with often having to clear up various bodily fluids and depending on the students you worked with, you might get kicked, punched, scratched..you name it, regularly. But you understood that this wasn't personal, that a majority of the time it was simply a form of expression, because the young person didn't have any other means to express what they were feeling.
This was something I learnt more about when working with a class of boys aged 6-10 years old, with Autism. I loved going to work every morning and I loved these boys, but it could be incredibly tiring and stressful. I'll tell you a bit about some of the members of this class and I'll just give them an initial to identify them, to try and give you an idea, if you don't, of what this kind of environment is like. Obviously each child has a lot more to them than what I briefly describe!
S is verbal, very affectionate, loves to roll things and wears a helmet to protect himself as when he gets upset, frustrated he bangs his head. S needs to have a clear routine and gets upset if this routine chances, he finds it hard to adjust to new things. If he didn't want to do something that was on the timetable he would hide the pecs symbol! He knew all the staff members name and would call our names from across the classroom when he wanted some attention. After a while he learnt he couldn't get our attention that we, but he would have to come over to us, make eye contact and say our name. Then he could hand us his Pecs strip with what he wanted on it.
J has the most expressive, big brown eyes and again likes cuddles and is very affectionate. He usually has his fingers in or around his ears and finds loud noises very distressing.If he got upset he would bang his head, or headbutt, pinch, scratch us and it would be incredibly difficult to remove yourself from his hold! He liked to eat crunchy, strong tasting foods and enjoyed swinging or bouncing.
M needed a lot of space to himself and away from the other boys, so we would take him out to the field a lot of the time. He had his own vocabulary of sounds and sounds he would make repeatedly to calm himself down. He would take himself outside if it got too noisy in the classroom. He loved water play, bouncing and throwing hoops. Once he got to know you he enjoyed tickles and cuddles. When M got upset he might hit out at other children or the staff. But he had learnt to ask for time out using his pecs symbols when things got too much.
A is a very strong willed young man and when I started work with him, spent very little time in the classroom and refused to move to the different activities around the school. We spent a lot of time with him in the Light and Sound room, to relax him. He could become very distressed around the other boys as the classroom could be very noisy, with all the boys, most making repetitive noises: singing, squeeling, humming, tapping, running backwards and forwards. A ate a very limited diet of fromage frais and chocolate! If he didn't want to go somewhere or do something he would drop to the floor and it could take up to an hour to calm him down and coax him up. You can imagine how difficult this could make every day life for his mum.
F is probably the child that I worried about most but also saw the most progress in some areas of his life. F was in pain a lot of the time and wore pads as he had a very limited and poor diet. We would feed him 2 or 3 yoghurts a day. This may take us an hour and it may be all he ate in the day. Over the 6 months I was working in the class, this time got shorter and he began to eat more yoghurts, some with fruit in! I know that he now eats an increased repertiore of foods and drinks more frequently.
F was also very reluctant to drink anything and was very sensitive to certain textures including water on his skin and particularly around his mouth. With advice from an Occupational Therapist we did lots of gentle exercises to try and make these areas less sensitive and playing/bathing in water more pleasurable.
F is verbal and will repeat/sing songs from cartoons/films. He can count and read at a basic level - I'm not sure what level he is it now. One of F's favourite things was a piece of marble run which he used to wave/spin about in the air, watching it all the time. Unlike S who liked to engage adults in watching him play and play in parrallel, F showed little awareness of the people around him. I noticed he would very occasionally take part in a chase game with S. So we started initiating these games more frequently between the 2 of them and us, rewarding them with tickles at the end! I then started to take F's hands in mine and started a train game, where I would gently pull him around the classroom, saying 'choo, choo' etc! F loved it and one day he came to me and took my hands are started to pull me around the room! We built on this and soon when he took my hand and I asked him what he wanted he would say 'choo, choo'. Next, he would have to make eye contact with me before I would play. Such a great feeling when a week later that's what he did! It makes me well up when I think about it! The next step was to encourage F to play this game with S, but alas I had left at that point.
In this kind of job, your measurements for success are a lot different to what they might be in a mainstream school and very different depending on the individual. Often the things you are helping the young people make progress in are fundamental skills that will make a real difference to their lives and their families' lives, but progress can seem very slow.
The classroom could be incredibly noisy and often if one boy started to get agitated, it would effect the others and the tension could quickly escalate. You had to be on your toes and know the boys' triggers in order to help them stay calm and happy. We had a lot of 'down' time and we kept to a clear structure, making sure the boys knew at the beginning of each day what they would be doing and where. A lot of the week was taken up with Occupational Therapy, Speech and Language Therapy, playing in the soft play room or in the light and sound room.
I hope this gives you a bit of an insight in to the job of a Learning Support Assistant in a Special Needs School and what a rewarding and life affirming job it is. We get to spend every day with wonderful and unique individuals who give you a different perspective on life and I feel privileged to have had this opportunity. And I hope that somewhere along the line I can help to make a small difference to a young person and their families lives. I hope that by writing this web page as well it will help to increase people's understanding of people with ASD and the challenges and delights this brings for them and their families.
Teaching in 'main-stream' schools
25.02.12
Teaching is a job you have to love, if you don't you just don't have the energy, drive and enthusiasm to do the best job you can. And you have to be able to do a good job because it is such an important role - you are shaping the future, you are giving children hope for the future and showing them what is possible, how they can positively effect the world.
From that point of view teaching is great and you get to spend all day with children! Everyday is so different and to a limited extent you are your own boss. Your classroom is your realm, you establish the rules for your class in order to create a large family where you all can feel comfortable and respected. It is a great feeling to greet your class in the morning and know that they all want to be there, that they want to share the dramas of the evening/morning with you.
However, teaching is also very frustrating! Class sizes are getting bigger and it was hard knowing that some days you might not say more than a few words to some of the children in your class. You don't build the same relationships that you do when working in a specialist setting with maybe 6-8 students. As a class teacher it can be extremely challenging to meet the needs of all the children in your class, especially when you have 30-35 children, 10 of those with special educational needs. I never felt that I was doing a good enough job!
There is also mountains of paperwork, a lot of it replicated. The government don't seem to trust teachers assessment anymore, there is so much arbitrary testing and the test score will taken out of context as gospel.
There is a big emphasis on inclusion currently and of course on paper I would completely agree with this. But in my experience, some children are losing out because schools are insistent they should stay in a main stream school, that they should muddle along. Obviously there are advantages to this,for example;, they are socialising with 'normally developing children' and of course it depends on the child. But I think sometimes schools see it as failure if they concede that a child should go to a specialist setting. When actually in a specialist setting they would have access to teachers with specific expertise, therapies, additional equipment and they can socialise with children that have similar differences.
Also teachers seem to be more and more devalued by the government. They want teachers to work til their older, do more in the hours that they work, have less planning time, receive less of a pension - oh and increase the standard of teaching! How can that possibly work?!
A lot of these issues will be the same in schools that specialise in catering for children with special educational needs I know, but these are some of the frustrations I had and some of the contributing factors to my decision to wanting to leave.
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