So I went to the you tube sit that Alec had on his blog about a women with autism and working with her language. If you haven't not see it you must. It's an eye opening experience.
I have worked with autistic people for 4 years now and I couldn't help but think about the people I work with and how she reminded me of my clients at work. Before watching this video I thought I had a great understanding of autism and how an person with autism might communicate. I knew that just because they cannot communicate with our standard language they will find ways how to communicate on their own, whether by pointing, facial expression, body position, or straight noises. I guess I never thought that I person who cannot speak would be able to read and spell words. I know it was very poor of me to think that it's impossible to teach a person with autism to read and write. I guess through this video i was amazed at the degree of ability she could do. I know this sounds bad but, what I wanted to say is that through this video I realized that just because the child or person with autism cannot communicate in our spoken language they can still have thought that is intelligent and feel oppressed by the our societies views directed towards them.
in my EPHYS we have been working with the idea of to educate our students on differences in the classrooms and how we all learn different form each other. To help our students understand being different does not make you a freak. I believe that this site would be an excellent tool to show middle years or High schools students to show them that people with autism are as normal as you and me, they just learn might communicate differently.
-Heather
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I know an autistic person who can read and write really well and can talk like you or me. I'm not trying to say that some people are worse off than others but on some level I think those who can communicate like us have a really tough time because they are expected to be "normal" and act "normal" because they seem like they can. They are given extra pressures to perform like a "normal" person because they can do all those things. It really bothers me that some people don't understand that there are some people who simply can not do certain things. It only brings the person down and makes them perform worse than they are actually capable of doing.
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