6A - Jessica Tomic - Response to Debbie Berni

Debbie, as an educator with no formal background in disabilities, or autism specifically, I appreciated your writing. Offering a perspective on autism in the classroom provides readers with how significant an educator’s role is in student achievement.  Educators are active participants in support, collaboration, partnerships and accommodations and strategies; however, with inadequate and insufficient training, student achievement can suffer.  I also resonated with accommodations such as avoiding idioms and sarcasm.  Too often, we as educators are not as mindful about our language as we should be in the classroom.

What are some ways that teachers can offer support to the parents of students with autism spectrum disorder?

Educators can offer support to parents and families or students with autism spectrum disorder by building a strong rapport with the student and providing a safe environment for learning. Educators can also become involved in creating a partnership, as collaboration is a fundamental building block for student success.  Together, families and educators can create student goals and review progress and achievement.

What are some accommodations that teachers can make for students with ASD?

Accommodations and strategies teachers can utilize in the classroom include task analysis for sequencing and routines, keeping language simple and concrete and avoiding idioms and sarcasm.  Also, evidence-based practices include discrete trial teaching (DTT), pivotal response training (PRT), and functional routines (FR).

What steps need to be taken as an I.E.P. team in order to effectively place a student in the least restrictive environment?

Before implementing a student’s IEP, aspects such as intellectual ability, severity of autistic symptoms including communication, resistance to change, social skills, chronological and developmental age, presence of challenging behaviors (tantrums), aggression or intrusive stereotypical behaviors and specific skill sets should be widely considered by a team of educators and the student’s family.  Collecting data from the family, medical specialists, professional observations, or previous records is also necessary in determining the student’s least restrictive environment.  After all considerations, a tiered support system can be created and designed specifically for the student.

How can teachers help students with ASD to strengthen their communication skills?

To strengthen communication skills of students with autism spectrum disorder, educators can refer to evidence-based practices and strategies. Visual Activity Schedules (VAS), described as a series of images used to represent a sequence of events, prepares students for upcoming activities or steps within an activity or chain of events.  Students can also use iPads or other visual technology to pair the use of VAS with video modeling (VM), inadvertently allowing students to perform new tasks through task analysis.  Self- management, a strategy rewarding students for appropriately participating in a conversation, gives students “conversation points”.

What do teachers, who work with students with ASD, need so that they can effectively use the most-effective evidence-based practices?

Educators working with students with autism spectrum disorder required substantial training, coaching and support.  As with an educator in special education, “teachers need to be well versed in the many evidence-based practices that are available for students with ASD as they will encounter students on different parts of the autism spectrum” (Berni, 2016, p. 8).  Sufficient practice serves as a foundation and enhances further implementation.