Supporting Students with Autism
These are our key guiding principles which we keep in mind when supporting all our students, including those with autism, and we hope you will keep them in mind as you peruse our strategies for environmental arrangements, for teaching, and for assessment.
1. Presume competence - Consider the least dangerous assumption to maintain high expectations of all students.
These are sets of practices that teachers engaged in when they took on the framework of presuming competence:
(a) find situations where students demonstrate competence
(b) rethink performance and participation, and
(c) expect struggles”
(Kasa-Hendrickson, 2013, p. 61)
2. Neurodiversity - Promote diversity as a positive resource
“...[A]utism is the ‘way people are’ rather than a ‘thing people have.’ It is a reason for investigation, not an explanation in itself”
(Leary & Donnellan, 2012, p. 49)
3. If you know one student with autism, you only know one student with autism -
“...difficulty with speaking and moving one’s body do not indicate a lack of understanding, disinterest or an unwillingness to comply”
(Kasa-Hendrickson, 2013, p. 66)
4. For non-oral students with autism, rely on the following principles:
(a) Speak to and treat students with respect…
(b) Provide access to the general education curriculum…
(c) Support students’ performance and look for ways in which students could demonstrate their competence.
(d) Interpret difficulties as opportunities for supports
5. Local Understanding - “an educational dialogic in which the value, intelligence, and imagination (taken together, what we term citizenship) of all students, including those with significant developmental disabilities, are recognized and responsive contexts are crafted that foster increasingly sophisticated citizenship”
(Kliewer & Biklen, 2007, p. 2579)
6. Promote self-advocacy/self-determination students with autism - “Nevertheless, there is a strong and ever-growing self-advocacy movement among the autistic community, the community consisting of autistic people specifically rather than those who often claim to speak on behalf of them/us”
(Broderick & Ne’eman, 2008, p. 469)
7. Inclusive education & responsive instruction - See strong examples in videos and our reflections to them below:
"...With this program, Thaysa was celebrated and included just like every other student in the classroom."
- Evelyn Abraham
"A significant takeaway I had from the film was the strength of the classroom community, as well as the emphasis on inclusion that the school as a whole appeared to have. The inclusive environment, and the community upon which it was built, was evident throughout the video, and a vital component of genuine inclusion. Allowing Thaysa to participate in ways that worked for her, for example, doing work under the table, as well as allowing her to play the piano during the concert, are examples of making accommodations for Thaysa to be successful in school. The message that all students can learn from each other permeated through this classroom, as did the message of diversity and acceptance as the norm." - Ana Drehwing
"I think so many people are so quick to think that children will not include their peers with disabilities, but both of these videos demonstrated to me how they absolutely will if given the space and support structures to do so." - Megan Smith
"A big takeaway for me was how the staff – teachers, administrators, speech therapist, etc. – worked collaboratively to try to figure out what supports Axel needed in order to be successful as a community member." - Ana Drehwing