Liz's Thoughts on Autism Workshop

I haven't had any experience working with students with autism. The workshop presented by Josh Plavnick really opened my eyes to the trials that the students, teachers, and parents have to go through. I found the statistics very scary, in addition to the large spectrum of characteristics that chilren with autism present. I haven't had any experience working with students with autism, but had a guest speaker in my TE301 class in the summer who worked with autistic children in her special education classroom. Many of the things Josh spoke about were facts that I had already heard from the speaker last summer, such as the notion that children with autism tend to fixate on specific objects or topics, like dinosaurs for example.

If given the opportunity, I would like to continue to attend workshops that deal with the topic of special needs children. Having no background in special education, I find that I want and need extra workshops and support because I know I will have special needs students in my classroom. I want to know ways to support their learning in my classroom as opposed to hindering it. One specific suggestion I found useful from Mr. Plavnick was the idea of peer support. Mr. Plavnick also had us come up with ways to match a special needs student with a peer and how important it truly was to make such a match with extra thought put in to it. I was really appreciative of Mr. Plavnick for coming to our classroom and giving us a very thoughtful presentation on Autism that really encompassed all special needs students. In fact, some of the ideas brought up during our discussion really included all students, and I found it very meaningful to me as a future teacher.