An introduction to my work with an ASD/ADHD/trauma student in 2020
This post will take you through my teaching journey with a student with multiple diagnoses of ASD/ADHD/trauma. It was a journey which had highs and lows, with successes and many challenges. It was a long journey so it will need a couple of posts to deal with the issues and changes we experienced.
After doing a few years of casual teaching at a mainstream school, we entered lockdown in Australia. The vice-principal asked me to work with a student at school.
I have been teaching for 47 years and have also taught in special ed. and autism settings. During my casual teaching days, I was able to demonstrate to the school successful behaviour management techniques in different classes, and good relationships with all students.
The student was at school each day throughout lockdown and needed supervision. The school wanted to help him academically and with emotional regulation and lockdown presented a good opportunity for him to learn At this time, he was in Grade 3.
This was a good decision to keep him attending school at this time by his mother as he had a good routine of attending school, and hardly missed school. Who knows what a break in this routine would lead to?
As I had taught him in previous years and had some success in getting through the days without any challenging behaviours, or him leaving the school to go home, they saw lockdown as a good opportunity to work on his challenging behaviours, with me as his teacher.
Introducing my student with ASD/ADHD/TRAUMA
This student has multiple diagnoses, with his trauma background substantially impacting his relationships with others. In a school of 3,000 students, he was noted as the most challenging student in the school. In the previous year, he had to move classes as parents complained about his behaviour in class.
His mother had high level of anxiety as she was desperate for answers, and she had a challenging life at home, as well.
One thing I must stress is that I have compassion and understanding for parents of challenging students. I believe they are the experts of their child and the most successful approach to any change in behaviour is to give parents that respect and bring them in on decisions and, yes, even ask for their advice on what works for them.
At the same time, parents love their child, no matter how difficult a child may be. Even challenging students have a lovable side, just as this student had, when he was in a good mood. I would advise all teachers to be gentle and careful with how you talk to parents.
If you want to be able to be truthful about a child's challenging behaviour, you need to have a balance in your communication with the parent. By this, I mean that a parent would love to hear that the student did something well on days, as well.
You will lose a parent's trust if you only communicate the negatives! They will side with their child as they will advocate for their child if they feel you only see the negatives in their child.
Not all parents will understand that a child with ASD may have an immature perception of a situation so you really do need to develop a good relationship with the parent so you can relay the real situation to them when there is a problem at school.
I would strongly advise regular communication on a daily basis that incorporates reflecting on good sessions and difficult sessions. It is not cumbersome and this strategy I used is being used by some teachers at the school I am at. You can access my simple weekly chart here. It is simple but works so well.
This chart will give you an idea of what we are doing with another child. You can copy it and customise it. My idea is always to have the child's input. If I disagree, then I will put a sad face alongside the child's happy face. I may make a simple notation at the end, or in the box, either positive or negative.
So a simple happy or sad face is all you need to give the parent valuable information about their child's day. They can sign it at the end of the day.
It is a successful strategy to get parents to relate to you, in a positive manner.
Children, and I think some staff also, were scared of my student as he had formidable rage when angry. The students should be given credit for their understanding and tolerance of what they witnessed, at times.
Working in mainstream can be challenging for special ed. trained teachers, at times as staff had different levels of understanding and tolerance. Some may see your calm demeanor as acceptance of bad behaviour.
Misunderstandings happen because of differing levels of understanding of ASD and other diagnoses. The staff I worked with were mostly great.
On the flip side, some schools may adopt a policy of NO CONSEQUENCES because they see the outcome as more challenging than the behaviour. There are different issues to face in a mainstream school.
This can be a dilemma you face in mainstream schools as most children in autism settings have consequences for challenging behaviour.
Also, some staff will reward a child for bad behaviour directly after an aggressive incident, to show the child kindness, hopiing the child will responds to this kindness, in the future. You never reward a child with his favorite motivator directly after a challenging event.
He should be following the steps set out in his behaviour management program when he loses his ability to control his behaviour. All staff should honour those strategies as it only takes one staff member to undo all the work you have done.
This did impact me as we had discussions and restoratives when he lost his ability to remain calm and he saw me as mean, after a while, as he did not like to reflect on his behaviour. He was wondering why I did not give him his favourite thing after he attacked someone.
It's really challenging for mainstream teachers to understand the challenging behaviours as they are not prepared for this in college.
The student's background
His behaviour was attributed to his skewed and immature perception of events, trauma in his family, his rigidity with slight changes, and his desire to control what was highly desirable for him.
For example, he was very active and loved sport but he wanted to control all aspects of the game. Of course, he didn't want to go out if he was bowled out and that caused huge problems. It still causes issues, even though he is two years older!
He wanted friends more than anything but he wanted the short-term gains, which were winning and never going out.
Adults will often say 'that's ok' when playing with a child and they are out in a game. The problem is that children with ASD will expect the same favourable treatment from their peers.
His anger would ignite very quickly and he wasn't capable of thinking rationally when angry. He would go from 0 to 100 in seconds and he had no respect or fear when angry. His trauma background would also kick in and he would mimic the behaviour he had grown up with.
So my challenge was to teach him an awareness of his moods, his behaviour, and ways to regulate his emotions so he and the school community and family could be safe.
On the education side of things, he had poor memory retention. Like many students, he had an awareness of his difficulty learning and this impacted his desire to do his work tasks.
The class he was in before lockdown had him working for 20 minutes, then 20 minutes outside, with a male aide. He related well to male aides as he loved outdoor activities, and needed physically challenging activities which regulated his body.
As you find in autism, learning is not linear so what he knew at one time would not be retained over time and you would have to start again. His language was immature for his age but he was creative with his ideas in writing. He needed a lot of support with written expression and grammar to complete his writing tasks.
Maths was very challenging for him and he had poor number knowledge. He had missed out so much of the basics and the support he was receiving in grade 3 did not give him independence as programming throughout the last couple of years did not address his issues at the level he was functioning in maths.
Something we take for granted in mainstream schools is a student copying from the board, book, or computer/iPad to complete work tasks. My student was unable to do this. I noticed that he would look at the text he needed to copy after he had put his pencil on where he would start writing. He would then copy from the book without lifting his eyes from the book.
He could not transfer his gaze from the text to his exercise book when writing. He could not retain what he needed to write.
Again, like other students with ASD, he had poor fine motor skills, so I would focus on listening to his ideas and scribe for him when we got to a point that I felt I would lose his attention if I forced him to write. His spelling was also poor as he was not a reader so I felt it was a good decision to scribe for him when I felt that he was getting frustrated.
The student I was programming for also could not maintain a good relationship with a teacher and, sometimes, the aides. He would try very hard for a while to be respectful but he would eventually swear and physically attack the teacher and aide. It was difficult for him to create goodwill with a person over time, as they had expectations of him which would build up over time.
No matter how kind and understanding they were, he would eventually turn on those working with him closely. So that was something I had to be mindful of, as I was on contract and knew I had to move on.
So I had to provide a 3 prong program- a modified education program for his self-esteem, self-regulation development, and social skills to get him ready for his class to return and work successfully on making friends.
Main takeaways from this post:
some students have more than one diagnosis which impact on them
keep important routines in challenging times
respect the fact that parents are the experts on their child, be humble and ask for their input and help
don't contact parents with negative feedback only. Provide a balance in your feedback.
build your relationship with both the child and the parent by communicating in a fair manner on a regular basis. Even challenging students have a likeable side.
be aware that the parent may see the school through the eyes of their child if you do not communicate with them regularly
accept that not all staff have an understanding of a student's diagnosis and strategies that are successful. Some staff may actually employ strategies that are counter-productive.
Education has many challenges-poor memory, lack of age-appropriate fine motor skills, inability to focus for long periods of time, inability to shift focus easily from reading to writing tasks, need for regular physical activity to regulate their body, modified education program, need for brain breaks.
students with ASD like to control their world, especially what they like to do.
they lack the social skills needed to develop friendships with their peers
they may have an immature, or skewed perception of events
they are rigid and small changes may upset them.
they may apply rules to others, but exempt themselves from rules when prioritizing their wants.
change your expectations to avoid overwhelm
relationships will change.
they need a modified learning program
they need to actviely be taught self-regulation
In the next post, I will discuss his daily program- its components and set up of the day. It was a period of developing an understanding of my student and each of us in the room being comfortable with each other-the student, the new aide who was very inexperienced, and myself. I will discuss the introduction of his communication book with his mother and what I felt to be important in this communication.
Stay tuned!
Meanwhile you can:
pop over to my Facebook page which has lots of great community posts about autism and like my page -Autism Gems
join my Facebook group Autism Support For Families and Teachers
subscribe to my blog and see all the posts @ The Autism Teaching Blog- How and What to Teach Autistic Students. (teachingautismblog.wixsite.com)
