How to Assist an Autistic Student to Thrive in the Classroom: Part 1
How to Assist an Autistic Student to Thrive in the Classroom: Part 1 By Dr. Michelle Garnett and Professor Tony Attwood In this two-part series we provide many useful recommendations and strategies for assisting an autistic student to thrive in your classroom. Whilst we have prepared this information primarily for teachers, parents and carers will find the information helpful. In the first part we describe the ways in which being autistic makes being in the classroom a challenge. We also describe the two most useful tools for assisting an autistic student to thrive in the classroom. In Part 2, which will be published next week, we provide specific ideas and strategies based on our combined experience of over 80 years to assist teachers to make the school experience a success for their autistic students. What is autism? Autism describes a different neurology that is characterised by difficulties in social/emotional reasoning, often a narrow range of interests, a “one-track” mind and a different sensory system. Our current definitions define autism as existing on a spectrum, with levels that describe both level of support required and how noticeable the autism is. Level 1 indicates that autism is marked, and some support is needed. Level 2 means that autism is more noticeable and moderate support is needed, and Level 3 denotes high support needs and a very noticeably different profile. See our blog What is High Functioning Autism? for more information. Social Communication Difficulty Your autistic student, regardless of the level of autism, will have social communication difficulties as described below, unless they use masking and camouflaging as coping mechanisms, see our blog on Camouflaging. different verbal social communication skills that often result in limited social and emotional reciprocity during social interaction; which are more likely to be apparent if support is not in place; differences in non-verbal communication skills including difficulty reading facial expression and other non-verbal body language of others and difficulty using nonverbal communication to moderate social interaction. This may mean not showing the expected non-verbal expressions to initiate an open friendly interaction with others and or looking interested when others are talking about a topic that is not of real interest to them; Difficulties developing and maintaining social relationships with same aged peers – but may be able to relate appropriately with younger students and or adults/older young people who are accepting of their different social code. Your student will struggle with social relatedness and may have limited capacity to initiate appropriate social interactions on his own. Autistic students tend to experience discomfort in many social situations, increased levels of stress after social situations have occurred, and to be overwhelmed by strong emotions. However, despite these social difficulties, the majority of autistic students experience a strong desire to interact with their peers and to make friends. Because of their social communication difficulties your autistic student will experience confusion about what is friendly vs unfriendly behaviour and will be vulnerable to all types of bullying, including passive social rejection, malicious gossip, and use of comments that result in humiliation, or requests that result in asking inappropriate questions or doing silly acts and getting into trouble. We have found that other students may torment an autistic student in a manner that ensures a teacher does not detect the provocation, but only the negative reaction from the autistic student. Difficulty Understanding and Expressing Emotion It is common for autistic students to have trouble understanding, labelling, and regulating their emotions. While some students cope with their emotions by adopting a pattern of avoidance to activities/events that cause an emotional reaction (i.e. demonstrate a flight response pattern to emotional turmoil), others tend to cope with their emotions by adopting an aggressive approach aimed at mastering/changing activities/events that result in an emotional reaction (i.e. demonstrate a fight response pattern). Others may appear frozen to act because of the emotions they are experiencing. We find that an autistic student’s aggressive behaviour is an indication they are not coping emotionally, rather than an indication that they are making a rational choice to respond with angry defiance or naughty behaviour. Angry behaviour should be taken to be an indication of uncontrollable anxiety that is a direct result of being autistic. Instead of being punished or viewed as not acceptable the emotional response needs to be validated, by for example saying, “I can see that you are distressed” and then taking steps to manage the meltdown (see our blog on Managing a Meltdown). Classroom Consequences of Difficulties with Perspective-Taking Autism is characterised by “theory of mind” difficulties which means that innately and intuitively understanding another person’s perspective is not possible. Misinterpretation and confusion about social interactions area daily occurrence. In addition, limited theory of mind skills will result in your autistic student placing their own needs and wants ahead of the needs and wants of others automatically due to a different neurology, not a character fault. Their different neurology can lead others to believe that your autistic student is ego-centric with limited consideration of the feelings of others. This major source of misunderstanding by others can lead your autistic student to: be first to do something without consideration of the consequences; believe that they are the only one that is right or is following the rules; do things according to their own plan; believe they get things right the first time and refuse to do things again if they make a mistake; be a social “policeman” and perseverate on what they perceive is a social injustice (“it’s not fair”) or tell the teacher about other students breaking the rules with no perception that they are also breaking rules but in a different way. They are also likely to have their own rules in their head which they see no need to share with others, believing others have the same thoughts in their head as the autistic student does attend to the rules in their own head before or instead of attending to the class rules not understand why anyone else cannot see
