A group of teachers from Jackson, Overton, Pickett, White and other Upper Cumberland counties are learning what it may be like to have autism.

That’s because they’re participating in a workshop here that simulates the learning experiences of children with autism. Those simulation experiences, organizers say, will help the teachers discover how to better accommodate the specific classroom and learning needs for those children.

Funded by a $51,000 Improving Teacher Quality grant from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, the “Picture This — Success for Teachers and Their Students with Autism” workshop runs from 5 to 9 p.m. on Thursdays now through May 10.

“It’s estimated that one child out of about 150 has some form of autism, so it’s not unrealistic to expect every teacher, at some point in his or her career, to have at least one student with autism,” says Helen Dainty, instructor of Curriculum and Instruction at TTU and principal investigator of the project.

“This workshop takes a proactive approach to prepare teachers to successfully instruct children with autism and foster a beneficial learning environment for every child in the classroom,” she says.

So how do teachers initially identify a student with autism? The answer isn’t always easy because no single test exists to diagnose the condition. Diagnosis is completed through a series of observation and interviews.

It’s what’s known as a spectrum disorder, Dainty explains, because it manifests itself in so many different ways, through such a wide variety of characteristics.

“A common saying is that ‘if you’ve met one person with autism, then you’ve met one person with autism,’ indicating that each individual expresses the condition somewhat differently, and that tends to be very true,” she says.

Characteristics most affected by autism, however, include communication skills, sensory impairment, behavior, play and other social interaction activities.

“The intelligence level of a person with autism can range from mental retardation to gifted, and anything in between,” Dainty says.

“That person may be exceptionally verbal or non-verbal; hypersensitive or desensitized to sounds, tastes, light or any other sensory stimuli; or have a tendency to echo or repeat back words or phrases said within earshot — not because his or her brain doesn’t process what’s been said, but because he or she just can’t formulate a verbal response,” she continues.

Therefore, students with autism tend to respond best to routine schedules, detailed instructions and visual examples — which is how the “Picture This” workshop takes its name.

“At the workshop, teachers will learn how to create daily and individual picture schedules for their students with autism — and those can also be beneficial to other students whose learning style responds to visual stimuli,” Dainty says.

They will learn to write social stories and academic narratives, which help prepare students with autism respectively for daily events and homework assignments, with the main areas of concentration being communication in language arts and math.
And they will hear personal experiences from parents and other teachers of children with autism.

After completing the weekly workshop, teachers must then participate individually in a two-hour classroom follow-up consultation session, which will determine how much workshop information they’ve been able to utilize in the classroom and support teachers within their classroom environment.

Participating teachers will also each receive about $1,000 worth of resource materials, including digital cameras and printing stations, Picture Exchange Communication System classroom kits, a variety of resource books and classroom reading books about children with autism and one-year memberships to the Council for Exceptional Children, which includes subscriptions to two publications — Teaching Exceptional Children and Exceptional Children Journal.