According to media reports, police recently shot (with a taser), a 12-year-old boy with Autism when he assaulted school personnel. I recently read a letter to the editor in response to this story. The author of this letter, while not condoning the incident, seemed to think that students with autism should be held accountable for their behavior in the same manner as other students and that treating them differently was enabling their challenging behavior. He's exactly right. And wrong.
As an educator, I believe in the capabilities of my students to grow up and live as independently as possible. I don't allow a child's disability to be an excuse for inappropriate behavior. Children with disabilities need to learn positive behaviors to function in society, just like any child.
However, the amount of time needed to learn these behaviors is vastly different for every child. Depending on the student's ability to communicate and the severity of his or her behavioral challenges, it may be unrealistic to hold him or her to the same behavior standards as other students, at least at first. Doing so would be like teaching algebra to a first grade student. It's not that she will be incapable of learning algebra, but fundamental pre-requisite skills must be taught first. Just like teaching academics, we have to start teaching appropriate behavior by meeting the students at their current level.
I once worked with a student who was exhibiting a variety of challenging behaviors in his classroom, including hitting, biting, yelling, and hiding under desks. As this behavior was dangerous to the teacher and other students, the student , who we'll call Jack, was assigned to my classroom. At first, I let Jack choose ALL of the activities that he did for the whole day (with the exception of lunch and recess, which were at a set time). This was what he was accustomed to for the past five years, so I chose it as our starting point. This lasted about a week, at which time I set up a schedule, with Jack still choosing all of the activities. My colleagues often came by to check and see what we were doing if the sounds of us playing ball got too loud. They weren't too sure about my methods.
In about another week, I added one teacher's choice activity per day to the schedule. No matter what protests occurred, I just ignored them, and did not back away from having the one teacher's choice on the schedule. I slowly added more teacher's choices per day to the schedule, until it was closer to his typical classroom schedule.
At the same time, the child was earning points toward a daily prize. Points were earned for doing his work, using nice words, and following directions. At first, he earned enough points for his prize if the day went by with no aggressive behavior toward another person. Eventually, all points were earned by having no aggressive behavior or work avoidance behavior such as yelling or shoving books off of the desk. Once these criteria were met, he earned his prize for behaviors similar to what typical children would earn rewards for in class. I also made sure to keep the classroom environment positive and accepting by praising and recognizing the child for every success.
It took almost two months to have him fully transitioned back into his classroom, which was wonderful, since the behaviors had been occurring for many years. When he was consistently having no aggressive behavior in my classroom, we started having him attend one period back in his typical class. When this was successful, he went to half days, then full days. Jack still has occasional behavior challenges, but has been doing beautifully in his inclusion class for several years.
In this case, treating Jack differently wasn't enabling him, it was giving him practice and instruction in the behaviors he would need to be successful in the classroom. The most important thing is to keep our students moving forward, no matter how small the steps need to be.
