I was hit, grabbed, caressed, yelled at, and hugged. None of which was meant in any way malicious – hit because of excitement, grabbed for help, caressed because I had a bird on my shirt, yelled at so as to hear a question, and hugged to simply say hello. All amidst my first lesson in my first outing as a teaching artist. Sometimes I wonder if I should think a bit more before I say yes to certain opportunities.
Autism is an affliction I am terribly, and embarrassingly, unfamiliar. As the Educational Associate for Adaptive Arts – a theatre company devoted to creating accessible theatre for individuals afflicted with said disorder – one would imagine I’d have a bit more knowledge of the subject. And it’s not to say I don’t. Miss M (I’ll refrain from name-dropping here in these entries – we’re all equals in my diary) has given me a great deal of intellectual information regarding Autism and how it affects individuals. Though, of course, even that’s sometimes difficult to swallow because it's on a spectrum, meaning that many people are affected in many different ways. So, from the outsider’s point of view, it’s kind of a grab-bag disorder. Which makes walking into a classroom of autistic students for the first time to teach them theatre an awakening experience, to say the least.
I could not have been prepared, in any way, for what I would experience walking into that classroom for the first time. I just had to dive in, and though I knew that intellectually and had been telling myself that for the few weeks leading up, feeling it was all together very different.
The first thing I noticed was how intensely unique everyone in the room was. I thought of when I was a student, and how, when walking into a class for the first time, it was very difficult to judge what sorts of characters were there in the room. Gradually, over time, people will reveal themselves. Here, my first day in this class, within seconds I had a very clear image of what I was up against (which was the unfortunate phrasing I had in my mind at the time. It is always so much easier to be negative - I suppose it takes a leap of faith to choose to be positive). Of course, as I discovered, I couldn’t predict what they were capable of – we are all, after all, individuals, and our external selves rarely allow an honest glimpse of the person deep inside. Either way, I did become excited by this prospect – it is my philosophy that as an educator one needs to work with their students as individuals and not preach something more generic so the mass can take what it will. We all learn differently, and that was absolutely about to be the case here.
I was right, and wrong. Thankfully. I might like being wrong just as much as I like being right – if not more so, for from discovering we’re wrong, we learn (so long as we're willing to know we're wrong). I was afraid I was not going to get through to these kids at all, nor be able to figure out how I might over the next month of the residency. Those kids showed me. By the end of the first class, we returned to a game we started the morning off with – we asked them to make a motion expressing how they felt while saying their name. As the first activity, this proved very difficult, decisions had to be made, and we were scary new people asking them to show themselves to us. But finishing off the day, they were eager and excited to share (despite some having difficulties bridging the gap between wanting to and doing).
Where I was right was in that everyone did indeed need to be treated on an individual basis. I could not coax miss L into an engaging game of Knee to Knee with high-energy enthusiasm as I could mr. N. So walking around the room during the games was thrilling to find ways into these students very individual worlds, how to engage them and get them able to perform the tasks we set them to. Do I need to play the game with them, resulting in my need of their help? Do I demonstrate? Do I simply encourage? Do I come up with a similar activity, finding a new way for them to get their hands dirty with the material? There are a million ways to play, and that, essentially, is what we are here to do. Play.
My heart was sincerely touched at the end of the second session. I had worked a bit with one student on several games, mr. N, and was afraid he was too overwhelmed and stressed by us (me) pushing him to engage. I was having a hard time reading him (as I was most everyone else). When it came his turn in the circle at the end to express himself, he turned to his iPad (he was our only non-verbal student for the day) and typed out this little message:
“this was awesome.”
I can’t wait to see these kids again next week.
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