Hallway
I was walking a sweet little first grade girl back to her
classroom when we crossed paths with an older autistic student who was having a
rough start to his morning. I tried to set a blasé “nothing to see here” tone
with my body language, but she still gave him a look of wide-eyed curiosity. He
responded by stepping as close to her as possible, looking right in her face,
and announcing “You’re a BARF BAG,” before walking back to the special ed para
who was with him.
I took the girl’s hand and calmly kept walking. When we were
out of earshot I said “I’m so sorry he said that to you.”
“It was a little weird,” she said, looking at me with a mix
of amusement and fear, seeking my face for a clue as to which was the
appropriate response.
“I know that boy,” I
told her kindly. “He’s a really, really good person. He’s just having a bad
day.”
“Oh!” she said brightly. “He’s kind of like Joe.” (Joe is a first
grader in our school’s special ed inclusion program. Not using his real name,
obviously.)
“Joe used to say mean things to us, but he’s doing so much
better now,” she told me proudly, as if she were a member of Joe’s IEP team
herself. “And he’s spending more and more time in our classroom!”
Every trace of fear and curiosity was gone from her face.
Joe was already a part of her community, and she was able to extend that
understanding to another student who was very much in need of it.
Recess
Charlie (again, not his real name) was a first grader at one
of the first schools where I subbed. His favorite recess activity was running
around the perimeter of the playground, over and over, deeply immersed in
Batman fantasy. Sometimes the other children asked him to play, but he’d just
keep running as if he hadn’t heard.
One day, though, we were delighted to see him playing Batman
with a small group of boys. I was about to go on my lunch break. The other para
had come to take over recess duty for me. We paused in our
changing-of-the-guard routine to proudly admire our little dude running happily
with his newfound pack.
And then…our little dude pushed a kindergarten boy flat on
his face on the blacktop. The parent recess volunteers came running. One of
them swooped the kindergartener off to the nurse’s office. Charlie was just standing
there looking utterly confused.
“I’m sorry,” he said reflexively. And then, as if trying to
figure out where he’d gone wrong, he explained “He told me to get him. He told
me he was the bad guy.”
The other para calmly took Charlie aside to explain about
literal versus figurative “getting the bad guy.” I was about to head back
inside for lunch when I saw the kindergarten victim return from the nurse’s
office and sadly take a seat on the curb. I sat beside him.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said glumly. “I guess I’ll have to watch out for
that guy.”
“His name is Charlie,” I told him. “Did you know that
Charlie is just learning how to play with other kids?”
“Learning how to play?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Everybody’s learning in school. I’ll
bet you’re learning how to write your letters and numbers in kindergarten,
right?” He nodded. “Well, Charlie knows how to write his letters and numbers.
But he doesn’t know how to play Batman with other friends yet. He didn’t
understand that you’re just supposed to pretend-hurt the bad guy. You already know that.” The
kindergartner nodded proudly. “Maybe if you decide to play Batman with Charlie
again sometime, we can all help him learn.”
He liked the idea of helping a first grader learn something.
And he went off to enjoy the rest of his recess.
Camping Trip
This story
inspired me greatly in the early days of The Boy’s diagnosis. It’s about a 5th
grade camping trip, and how an autistic student’s classmates supported him as
he completed a challenging team-building game. The boy’s father and writer of
this excellent piece concludes:
They grew up with someone different
and knew well what he needed. And they knew they could provide it. They learned
tolerance, empathy and confidence that they could help those in need.
When the time came for The Boy’s 4th grade class
to take their camping trip, this story was at the front of my mind. I made the
very earnest, well-intentioned mistake of asking our principal to assign me to be
the special ed chaperone. She made the very earnest, well-intentioned mistake
of agreeing to it. I was the only special ed staffer, and also the only special
ed parent. What could possibly go wrong?
What, indeed? The Boy, who’d been having a very successful
school year up until that point, went off the rails before we’d even boarded
the bus. He started arguments. He responded explosively to teasing. He latched
onto one friend and responded with Medea-level jealousy if that friend spent
time with anyone else. He ran off into the woods by himself. He yelled at the
parent chaperones. He cried himself to sleep the first night in the cabin
assigned to staff because he couldn’t handle being in with the other students.
The parent chaperones tried to be polite about it, but I
could see the strain and confusion on their faces. By the end of the trip, one
of the moms had pretty much had it with my son, my stressed-out attitude, and
the whole lot of our autism inclusion students. “They’re not the only ones on
this trip,” she snapped at me as I tried to juggle their competing quirks and
needs.
There was one bright spot, though, and that was the NatureBridge
program itself. Our group’s camp instructor took The Boy’s behavior in stride,
or at least had a world-class poker face about it. When he walked right up to
her in the middle of a lesson and started examining the compass around her
neck, she gave it to him to wear. When he chose to sit by himself on a log
instead of journaling, she gave him space. When he charged up the trail ahead
of the group, she offered him a huge walking stick and encouraged the other
students to join him. He and about five gung-ho students led our group all the
way up to the top of the mountain.
By the time we’d reached the top, The Boy was chatting
happily with students he’d barely even acknowledged at school. Our instructor
set the tone for focusing on his strengths. His classmates and The Boy himself quickly
followed suit. And even though the trip was extremely challenging for him,
that’s not how he remembers it. He still talks about what he learned about
nature and how much fun he had climbing the mountain. As difficult as it was
for me personally, I count the trip a success.
Learning
This is the time of year when parents are trying to choose
elementary schools for their prospective kindergarteners. A preschool teacher
friend of mine told me that sometimes parents express concern about my elementary
school because of “all the special ed kids.” They worry that our special ed
students will make it hard for their “normal” children to learn. They worry
that perhaps their “normal” children might not be safe. This teacher has tried
to convey a positive, accepting message, but wasn’t sure it had been
successful. Did I have any advice?
You’d think I would have had lots of advice. But the
question just made me cranky and tired. I feel like I’ve been talking about
this for years. I feel like sometimes it’s all I ever talk about. I’m kind of running out of things to say.
Look at the stories above. I told them in a positive tone,
but will a reader who’s afraid of “all the special ed kids” be able to see it
that way? At the core, what do we really have here? A “normal” student got
called a name in the hallway. A “normal” student got pushed down at recess. The
“normal” students had their 4th grade camping trip disrupted.
We all know, of course, that special ed students aren’t the
only ones doing the pushing, name-calling, and disrupting. But yes. This
happens. Inclusion can be messy. I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t.
What should go without saying, of course, is that school is
messy, period. Life is messy. Relationships
are messy. Any time you let other humans into your life, guess what? Messy!
But that’s where the real learning happens. Those students
who had run-ins with their autistic classmates? They learned a real, authentic
version of empathy that they’re just not going to get from those Second Step
flash cards and puppet shows. Real learning isn’t all pristine and quiet and
well-coordinated. Real learning is spontaneous. There’s an urgency to it. It’s
organic.
I can’t say it any better than this dad did in his piece
about the camping trip:
Will the skills of tolerance and
empathy help these kids in their academic life? Maybe not. Will they help them
in the business world? I've dealt with enough CEOs to know that these are not
requirements for the job. But if we are trying, as parents and teachers, to
grow menschen, people of
integrity and honor, then I saw some wonderful evidence of success.
I’m proud of my school for serving autistic students with
understanding and fairness, and I’m extremely
proud of the students themselves. Every single one of them. What incredible,
well-rounded, empathic adults they’re going to become.
Happy Autism Awareness Month.
